http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Former-home-of-Skoochies-DV8-Cirque-Playhouse-3894066.php Woulda been DV8 back in '99. http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/rip-dead-nightclubs-of-seattle/ I think I mixed in about 2/3rds of those clubs.
That place looks way too fancy. I went and did a Google street view of the area and it looks like they razed everything and replaced it with tall mixed use buildings. This place was not more than a block off Denny; memory is fuzzy but I think we were holed up in the Best Western. hard to say as all the building are different. The bar that got raided was not more than 20,000 feet, was a bit run down on the outside and did not have a lot of signage on the building indicating it was a business. The only reason we knew this place served food is that we saw the "A rating" Health inspector sign on the door from the parking garage of the hotel. I'm 90% certain it was on Denny. We walked by that park every night and talked to the drunks and weird kids as we walked from the site to the hotel, so it is possible the place was on Thomas. Then again there is a ton of Amazon offices and a fucking Whole Foods in that area near the park now that was not there when I was working, so who knows. In other news, holy shit has Seattle changed in the 17ish years since I was last there.
Nope. Sorry. Just confirmed with a guy who used to DJ at Skootchies and DV8. The building in question was at 8th and Denny. It was Scoochies until '85, when it became Oz, then a skating rink, then something else, then DV8, then an abysmal interpretation of that gawdawful Polly Esther's/Culture Club franchise bullshit universe, then Amp, then a hole in the ground. The article shows what it looked like as Amp. Here's what it looked like as Polly Esther's: Seattle has changed a lot. Westlake Electric was on Westlake for 40 years, then they moved to Woodinville, then they died. In the time I was mixing in the clubs, the "hot spot" went from First Hill to Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square to Downtown to Ballard to Fremont. The club Real World Seattle went to (after we refused to let them into our club) became a righteous 5-star restaurant and then the home of Go2Net/Metacrawler and now office space.
EDIT! Turns out I did not move the Google Maps slider far enough. Name of the place was the Hurricane Cafe on Bell Street. For those who do not know, when you go to street view, you can click on the date and move the slider to go back in time. Looks like it has been closed pending land use change for a few years. Turns out I was looking at the wrong exit to the parking garage. It WAS a block off Denny. Your picture jogged something loose in the ol' noggin. We walked past that place a few times, I never went in there. That park was awesome when the sun was up; the sun went down and even I was all "let's go across the street, people."