Let’s remember when the Crocodile reopened, on this day in 2009 (March 21)
It was a huge blow to the Seattle music scene when the Crocodile Cafe abruptly shut its doors in December of 2007. One of its most iconic venues, and a place where 75% of the bands you love played during its reign, it didn’t feel so much like a situation where business factors in a difficult industry could no longer sustain itself, but a punch in the gut to anyone tangentially related to the music scene. I mythologized the place a lot reading Rolling Stone as a teenager a couple hundred miles away, but had no idea that it would be a special place trying to navigate the music scene in my early twenties. I had seen hundreds of great shows there, but also saw friends meet their future spouses there. It was incredible.
Fortunately, a new ownership group opened a venue called the Crocodile in the exact same space, at Second and Blanchard in Belltown. After having two free preview nights in the preceding days (and IIRC, running out of beer early because the liquor license was approved late that afternoon), the Crocodile had its first proper show ten years ago today, a sold out affair with the band Hot Buttered Rum.
The Seattle Times said at the time:
Call it the Crocodile 2.0. When the storied Belltown club reopens Saturday with a Hot Buttered Rum show, fans will find a new stage, a redesigned layout and a new pizzeria. The rear paint-splattered wall is the same, though, and if that wall could talk it could speak about the club’s origins in 1991. Back then, grunge was the predominant local music flavor, flannel shirts were hip, Kurt Cobain was leaning against that wall some nights and a downtown club could attract a crowd with only a poster on a telephone pole.
And when I got a private tour a few days from the opening, I noted how few similarities there between music venues in the same space:
“You’re mind is being blown, isn’t it?” the Crocodile’s PR specialist Kerri Harrop asked me and she was correct. I tried to piece together what the club would look like from my memory of the prior location and the few glimpses I caught from the peaking through doors open as I would walk past it on my way to or from my Belltown apartment. Aside from a few artifacts held over (a few coolers, the infamous pole — which was moved to a non-intrusive spot near the stage), only the Crocodile name and the address are the same.
Tonight, Blaqk Audio, side project of AFI’s Davey Havok, plays at the Crocodile. You should go, or go soon, as their upcoming calendar looks great.
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