Fucking in the Streets

Last Friday, a few dozen nightclubs and live-music venues in
Seattle—ranging from the Crocodile to Cowgirls,
Inc.—observed a minute of silence to mark what organizers were
calling, just a little hyperbolically, “the night the music
died.” The event was staged by the Seattle Nightlife and Music
Association (NMA), a coalition of music professionals and club owners,
who organized a similar, though five minutes long, moment of silence
two years ago to protest onerous new nightlife regulations then
proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels. (The NMA won that fight, successfully
lobbying the city council to pass more sensible legislation.)

The reason for this weekend’s minute of silence? City Attorney
Tom Carr. Carr is running for reelection against challenger Pete
Holmes, and, as reported in last week’s Stranger (“Remain
Silent,” Dominic Holden), many club owners feel that Carr is unfairly
harassing them in retaliation for their enthusiastic endorsements of
his opponent. (The long-standing general feeling among club owners is
that Carr has a personal vendetta against drinking and nightlife, as
evidenced by his spearheading of Operation Sobering Thought, an
abject failure of a bar sting that included several showy arrests
but resulted in zero convictions and, ironically, probably undermined
Nickels’s proposed regulations.) The moment of silence was meant to
illustrate what the NMA fears could happen if Carr were reelected: the
silencing of Seattle nightlife.

Participation varied. The Crocodile closed its doors completely for
the night. At the Showbox at the Market, there was no minute of
silence, but the marquee was kept dark in a display of solidarity. At
Neumos, the minute was observed a half hour earlier than planned, at
11:00 p.m. instead of 11:30, so as not to interrupt Chicago rock
provocateurs the Jesus Lizard‘s scheduled set.

The Jesus Lizard are no strangers to Seattle’s weird nightlife
hang-ups. In 1996, the band was banned from performing here by an
overzealous fire marshal who took issue with lead singer David Yow’s
stage diving and other onstage shenanigans. In 2009, they came back to
headline the Capitol Hill Block Party. In the intervening years, the
city’s civic leaders have progressed from upholding draconian
regulations like the Teen Dance Ordinance (1985–2002) to
establishing “Seattle City of Music,” an initiative meant to recognize
the cultural and economic value provided by a healthy music and
nightlife industry. It’s a long arc of progress from grunge-boom
backwater toward the kind of world-class music and nightlife capitol
the City of Music initiative imagines—and it’s a progress to
which Carr seems stubbornly and archaically opposed.

At 11:35 p.m. at Moe Bar, the Cure song playing on the sound system
faded out and was followed, without any announcement or fanfare, by
exactly one minute of silence (or at least bar chatter without
background music). Nobody seemed to notice, and it wasn’t even clear if
this was the minute of silence or just a minute of
silence, say, while the bartenders switched iPods.

But if the stunt was less than spectacular, the sentiment is clear
enough and the cause is sound: Tom Carr is bad for music and nightlife
in Seattle, and if you value those things in this city, then it’s time
to send him packing and vote for Pete Holmes.