Food & Drink Jan 4, 2012 at 4:00 am

The End of an Era

Comments

1
3rd AVE TURF! FOREVER!
2
Theres always Joe's in the ID
3
I ate breakfast at the 1st & Pike location ages ago (probably in the late 90s) during a visit before I moved here. That meal was infamous. As much for the "WTF is this place?" factor (you needed tokens from the pull tab lady to use the women's bathroom) as for the degree of hangover my friend and I were experiencing at the time. We coined the term "differentiating the shakes" while reading the menu. That's a term still in use to this day.

That said, servers were kind (the description is of the clientele in the article is pretty spot on from my memory), the coffee was hot and the food was better than the meal we had at the Rendezvous Broiler (whooo boy!) a year or so later.

Viva the Turf!
4
Mr. Kiley's second post-script: "** The Turf has also inspired some embarrassing writing over the years: writers who overemphasized its seediness so that they could indulge in faux-Beat rhapsodies or writers who overdramatized how “intimidating” it was. I hope these memories do not contribute to that canon."

Sorry...they did!
5
seriously its not dead stranger...its the same place they charge 50 cents more for everything and thats it. way to over dramatize
6
I will miss the Turf. It has been one of the last standing memories of my youth. In the early to mid 90's I spent most of my adolescent days and nights running around the 100 block of Pike with my other hoodlum friends. Many of their parents or older siblings, aunts, uncles hung out at the Turf. We'd stop in time by time asking them for a little spending money for food, or drugs or to pay our parents phone bills. We would make fun of it yet we all had a connection to it. It was part of our neighborhood. Pike Street has changed dramatically since the 90's. The old arcade on the corner, the adult arcade that was upstairs from the wig shop, the Vu...it has all been traded for nicer venues. It is a sad day as the author of this article states "the Turf was for the poor" and it was a meeting place for years, now the "poor" can no longer afford it.
7
My favorite memory of The Turf was a standoff right outside the restaurant between Seattle cops and a homeless guy with a samurai sword, circa 1997. Lasted ten hours. Somehow, it epitomized the legacy of the restaurant itself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtRgweQxX…
8
I only went once, and recently, but the drink was strong, and cheap.

what'll Ludi's be like?
9
[See post #7]
I remember the sword guy. Traffic, including my daily-commute Metro bus was stagnant for hours. When I finally got home and found out what the hassle was, we all thought "Jesus Christ. Hasn't anyone ever heard of fire hoses? It was a bad day for Seattle P.D.
10
Brendan, your writing is beautiful in its directness and lack of affectation. I had some very, very bad food at The Turf once and never went back, but your eulogy made me see the good in the place.
11
It's the same place with slightly higher prices. NEXT...
12
It won't be the same place if the poor are priced out. The whole thing will change, and it'll become hollow and phony. That's what always happens when working-class places are taken over by the middle class and up.
13
@12 - Oh, those HORRIBLE "Middle Class" ...

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