Frank L. Barbarick, 70, was a federal postal inspector in Seattle. However, thanks to his bit part as a dead man in a 1959 Ed Wood Jr. film called Night of the Ghouls, Barbarick was regularly in demand as an interview and research subject for historians and enthusiasts of the B-film master.
The film (which mixed elements of Wood’s earlier Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space) was considered too inept even for the B-movie distributors that handled Wood’s previous features, and was shelved after test screenings. It remained unseen until it came out on video in 1982. Barbarick died October 29 of an unspecified lingering illness.
The Trapeze Art Collective (a cooperatively owned studio and gallery space) was evicted from its East Pike Street location, in a loft building increasingly occupied by architects and other upscale office entities. In a piece of good news seldom found in this column, the Trapeze members almost immediately found another space two blocks away, which they christened last weekend with a public art sale.
StairMaster Health & Fitness Products filed for bankruptcy and said it would lay off most of its 360 employees in January. The Kirkland-based company made stairclimbers, exercise bikes, and treadmills. I’m sure there’s a joke here about running out of breath or running in place, but I can’t think of what it could be.
Alex Shulman, 89, spent his life buying and selling various business properties (real estate, restaurants, beverage distributorships, even an entire railroad town in Montana). But his best known operation was the Gov-Mart retail chain, which he co-owned with Seattle parking lot czar Joe Diamond. Gov-Mart was the region’s first discount department store circuit. Its name, its militaristic eagle-and-stars logo, and its bare-bones interior design were derived from the post-WWII Army-surplus stores that initially spawned the discount biz. Gov-Mart operated from the early ’50s until 1974, ultimately falling victim to bigger chains with more housewife-friendly brand images. (One of its former outlets is now the Rite Aid strip mall at 130th and Aurora.) Shulman died on November 20 from cancer.
The site of the Funhole, one of Seattle’s first punk clubs, was demolished the week before Thanksgiving as part of Suzie Burke’s big new Fremont development. (The building next door, housing the Red Door Ale House, was moved one block west.) The tiny back-room space packed as many as 300 fans into sporadic shows between 1976 and 1980, starring such groups as the Lewd and the Mentors. The space most recently housed Ooh-La’s Hair Design.