by Gillian G. Gaar - From Belltown Messenger #67 - May 2009

Checked out the new Crocodile on its opening weekend. I wasn’t invited to the “pre-opening” shindig, but the first evenings were free to the public, and I also attended Fastback Kim Warnick’s birthday bash at the joint. Clean space, fun décor (old show posters), good drinks. But once the crowds come in (as they did for Kim), it’s hard to move and even harder to hear; I asked the bartender about bottled beers, but she only gave me the names of the tap beers, and it was too loud to try and sort the matter out. I miss having a back room where you can go and chat, though maybe that situation will change now that accompanying restaurant Via Tribunali is open.

I was invited to Tribunali’s pre-opening shindig, but couldn’t make it, as I was bound for Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking that same night. It was fun hearing Princess Leia yuk it up about her oft-troubled life, but it wasn’t quite as pointed and lacerating as I’d hoped. I’d thought the...

I always wanted to write a book about the “Seattle Scene” explosion of the 1990s. In fact, after the publication of the first edition of She’s A Rebel, I was approached by an agent to put a proposal together on the subject, which I did.

Alas, it was deemed “too late” for such a book. It was 1993, after all; wasn’t the Seattle Scene “over”?

No, actually, though as the events of 1994 showed us, it hadn’t quite come to a dramatic conclusion yet either. Since then, I’ve been watching other folks continually steal my thunder on the topic. Such as the editor of this fine rag, whose tome Loser first came out in 1995. [A newly-updated edition is now in the works—Ed.]

Four years later saw the publication of The Encyclopedia of Northwest Music, edited by James Bush. In 2007 came Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge by Kyle Anderson; not a history, but a series of essays, written with all the condescension you’d expect from a Spin writer.

Now there are two more contenders, which actually complement each other nicely:...