Beth Fell and Zachary Orgel first opened the 616 East Pine space in December 1995 as Penny & Perk, a nostalgia store that sold furniture, books, clothing, TV and movie memorabilia, and old home video games. As a promotional stunt for the store, they hosted an Atari 2600 game tournament in August 1996. Its success convinced Bell and Orgel to focus on gaming. They opened Hi*Score the next February, with vintage video and pinball units. They expanded into the adjacent storefront the following year, and started hosting free all-ages shows. But they lost the annex space to redevelopment last spring. At that time, they'd already spent more than a year looking for a new location. But, Fell said, "We have come to the realization that our business is not wanted here. Developers and landlords have continually turned up their noses up at the idea of an arcade/all-ages venue in 'their' neighborhood." Fell said she and Orgel would look for another site in a less gentrified area.
Al Mycon, 78, was as responsible as any individual for the recent Ballard arts renaissance. Like the late Sam Israel in Pioneer Square, Mycon owned old buildings that remained affordable to artists because he skimped on their upkeep. He died September 2 after a long illness.
The Spokane-born Mycon moved to Seattle after high school to work at Boeing, and immediately started investing in local real estate. After returning from WWII service in the Navy, he started an auto-repair shop on Eastlake Avenue. He invested the profits from that business into further real-estate acquisitions. His holdings included five historic buildings on Ballard Avenue, including the New Home Hotel and the original space of alterna-art venue Galleria Potatohead. It's partly because of Mycon's disinterest in redeveloping his properties that Ballard Avenue qualified for historic preservation in 1976.
Music scene vet Blaine Stare, a longtime Mycon tenant, remembers him as a "super-curmudgeonly, pretty straight-shooting, strange guy, a millionaire living in a shack. He was my patron saint for a time."
Mediapassage.com, which called it quits on September 24, ran an ad-sales website on behalf of newspapers and magazines. It was a spinoff of American Passage Media, the college-marketing company that also spawned Seattle FilmWorks and PhotoWorks.com.
