Pike’s Peak

“After the last dirty film ended at six-thirty this morning, I went down and woke up the last three customers.”

In 1964 Seattle mayor J. D. “Dorm” Braman revived the city tolerance policy, assuming it ever really died. He’d been supported by high-rolling operators of gaming clubs and took up their cause in office, restating the notion that vice was easier to police if it was licensed and regulated. It was also around that time that Frank was expanding his area of sinful expertise, becoming a full-time restaurateur: a “Nightlife figure” as the libel-conscious newspapers called him. He had opened the Magic Inn on Union Street and the Firelite Room on Second Avenue, where, by 1965, he featured go-go dancing on a regular basis. That helped turn downtown Seattle and its uphill neighborhoods into a carnival of life. It was, jazz historian Paul de Barros writes, “a time when Seattle, which now rolls up its streets at ten o’clock, was full of people walking up and down the sidewalk after midnight. When you could buy a newspaper at the corner of 14th and Yesler from a man called Neversleep—at three in the morning. When limousines pulled up to the 908 Club all night, disgorging celebrities and wealthy women wearing diamonds and furs.”

Pike Street had somewhat lower expectations. It was Seattle’s zipper, running east from the waterfront crotch, awash with card rooms and bars, con men and streetwalkers, porn houses and topless joints. Much of Pike’s denizens assembled in such places as Pizza Nick’s, a hole-in-the-wall known as the Abruzzi Pizza House. That’s where Nick stood in the window and tossed dough for thirty-eight years. It was located where Niketown now stands. As Nick said after being told his building would be coming down in 1994: “There’s some kinda tennis shoe store goin’ in here.” To its last day, Nick’s still had its original air conditioner, refrigeration, and, for the most part, its so-called decor: fake brick walls and Nick, the real deal. At the tables had sat a legendary mix of prostitutes and pols, prizefighters and priests, cops and comedians. But the main attraction was Nick, in a white apron, extending a white-floured hand and saying things like, “If these walls could talk, it would be a miracle!”

Across from Nick’s was a bowling alley above a cigar store called the Carcinogen. The alley and store were both run by a businessman and sometime porn dealer named Slim Montgomery, who would be arrested several times by telephone. The cops had gone through the magazines on his racks—from Knob Job to Juicy Juggs—and knew porn when they felt it. They returned to headquarters, got approval for a bust, but didn’t feel like driving back to the store to pick up Slim. He had seemed like a nice guy, so they called on the phone. Slim answered and said, “OK, I’ll come down.” That happened a few times, meaning an expensive cab ride now and then, but Slim said he eventually wised up. “I bought a bus pass.”

Around the corner was the Nikko Garden, a seventies go-go joint where, if you complained, a barmaid swatted you with a stick. The nearby Caballero was a topless joint where a blind man was once seen sitting in the front row, tapping his cane to the musical beat. Across the street was the Gay Nineties, which actually was gay in the seventies. The Club Chi Chi, all crappy and wonderful, was up Pike near the Flick, the street’s last porn theater. The day the Flick closed, its sole employee called the Seattle Times: “After the last dirty film ended at six-thirty this morning,” he said, “I went down and woke up the last three customers. The workmen are starting to take out anything of value right now. They should be done in a coupla minutes.”

Nearby, on Union Street, was Bob’s Chili Parlor, later replaced by the Sheraton Hotel. Old-timers recalled the night that parlor owner Bob Kevo slugged a man named Russian Nick, knocking him over a table in the upstairs card room. Russian Nick had been impatient for a seat at a dice game, and Kevo was an equally impatient maître d’. Nick took out a gun and shot Kevo in the brain. In court, claiming self-defense, he walked. Kevo had attacked him first.

At the bottom of Pike, where it hits First Avenue, was the old Turf eatery and bar, having relocated after losing its longtime space on Third Avenue. Pensioners liked the inexpensive menu, hookers came in to rest their feet, hustlers traded watches for drinks, and the bouncer was once a candidate for Washington secretary of state. Democrat “Big John” McKee, who in 1984 drew the ballots of 667,985 people in a losing effort against incumbent Republican Ralph Munro, was ejecting from the bar some of the same people who said they voted for him.

It seemed a mostly mellow joint, but bartender Jerry Gene noted, “Sometimes it’s like the United Nations with knives.” He counted his wounds. “Let’s see, I’ve been punched, stabbed, broke my leg chasing a guy—but I also saved a life giving mouth-to-mouth. I always try to help the people who don’t hit me.” At the end of the night, Gene put on his coat and picked up a dollar tip. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said. “I need the agony.”

Across from the Turf was the Mirror Tavern, the kind of place you’d get thrown into. The Turf eventually relocated up the street again, but the Mirror joined the pantheon of dive bars and porn joints drowned by the progress of the nineties and thereafter. So did the Liberty Jewelry & Loan pawnshop whose owner, Martin Levy, and his daughter and son-in-law all went to prison in 2008 for selling stolen goods bought from drug addicts. In its place today is the Hard Rock Cafe, with its roof-top bar. Next door, on the First and Pike corner, is a Starbucks, fashionably renovated in 2009. They are part of a new world where bartenders will likely never again have the experience of old-time barkeep Uncle Tommy, who used to hold forth on nearby Pine Street in Ciro’s Rickshaw Room—owned by two of Frank Colacurcio’s sisters.

“I turn around, and a naked guy is sitting at my bar at six in the morning,” Tommy said a few years back. “‘OK,’ I think, ‘heeere we go.’” As he recalled the conversation:

Tommy: What can I do for you?

Naked Guy: Drink.

Tommy: Sorry, can’t serve you.

Naked Guy: What! Just because I’m naked?

Tommy: No. Because I know you don’t have any money on you.

Naked Guy got up and left. “And if he had money on him,” Tommy added, “I still woulda refused. Who knows where he was keeping it?”