Weve lived in this neighborhood, north on The Ave, about eight years now. Its got three vegan restaurants, a punk rock pub, a killer comic store, a weed doc place and the best dispensary in town, an improv theatre which used to be an all ages venue, a massage parlor, a wonderfully culturally-interwoven pizza place pick-up dive, a couple drug fronts, bike shop, hip hop haircutting place, and an overpriced dubstep frat joint, among other shops and things. My awesome uncle used to own a restaurant here before he founded a gourmet restaurant near Green Lake. That space became a beloved vegetarian place and moved to Fremont (and an alt-weekly writer just made fun of its name; maybe it has something to do with the whole Kerouacness of mossbacks, but it doesnt occur to most of em to mock Buddhists). Now that place is Mars, which makes designer cocktails and has surreptitious art events now and again. We used to have an aces used record and video store and Atlantic Street Pizza, but hey, nothing lasts forever. Actually, this north end of The Ave seems like its actually just outside forever, never really cool due to tourists and transients, but still ramshackle and feisty and was not coincidentally where a lot of us would hang out in the late 70s and early 80s before there was a scene. It still has that same scatter-shot corner soul vibe, spilling over with expatriates from more expensive areas of town, aspiring artists and small time crooks, and of course bouncy University students. Theres an area like this in many cities, but it goes unnamed, because its where the entrenched residents roil, and they cautiously relax like broken down magicians trading ancient tricks.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:07:16 +0000
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