Lusty Lady to close

The virtual world constantly impacts the real world, and vice versa. Such is the case on First Avenue. The Lusty Lady announced that it will be closing in the next two months. The reason for their closing, according to the general manager, is a mix of the internet, local development, and lack of parking. While tall buildings grew all around it and hotels, condos, and high end shops moved in, the Lusty Lady was the last vestige of Seattle's Flesh Avenue. It will be difficult to do this tour without it. The air rights above the building were sold so the building itself will stay put, but the marquee?  "Debra Seaver, the Lusty Lady's General Manager since 1989, says the Marquee will be coming down when the business closes." according to King5. 

Dan Hitchcock Mural, picture from the Seattle TimesA few years ago a coffee shop moved in to the loan shop that Jimmi Hendrix bought his first guitar at. The property owners, Harbor Properties, painted over the enormous mural of Jimmi's face that was above the shop. I believe that was a piece of art that should not have been removed, an urban tribute to the history of Seattle. These buildings, their uses, and the history that exists in them if not sustainable now should be preserved in some way.

Seattle has changed so much since I was a young girl. Downtown looks nothing like what it used to in the late 1970s and early 80s. Yet there still are reminders here and there, like a stout old building sandwiched between two giant erections : the Harbor Steps on one side and the Four Seasons Hotel on the other.

Review from 2009

"Tonight, I went on the Seattle Lust Tour. I recommend it! It's only been running for three weekends now and provides a fun account of Seattle's torrid history. We stopped for a drink at The Triple Door midway through and then continued on to the Lusty Lady for optional peep shows, quarter provided by the guide if desired; I desired." - found on Kelly's blog (she attended the tour in 2009)



Shelly's Leg

~ excerpt from an article in the Seattle Times: Beloved Seattle by Erik Lacitis

"What's that you are hearing, blasting against your eardrums? It is KC & the Sunshine Band, telling you to get down tonight. It is Donna Summer promising that she'd love to love you, baby. It is 1975 and you're in Pioneer Square in Seattle's first disco, which opened a couple of years earlier.

You've just stood in line for, what, two hours? The line of some 100 or more people snaked up the block from Shelly's Leg where South Main Street runs into Alaskan Way South, where now you find the Our Home Hotel condominiums.

Photo from historylink.orgWhat a scene it used to be! This was supposed to be a gay club, but by 1975 it was overrun by straights wanting to be where it was happening. It got to the point that Shelly's Leg kept a card file by the back entrance with the names of regulars, and they put up a sign reminding all the straights that this was a gay club, OK?

Sometimes at the club you'd see Shelly Bauman in her wheelchair. Her money started it. There had been a Bastille Day celebration in Pioneer Square, and somebody rented a firetruck with some kind of cannon to shoot off confetti. In all the festivities, maybe beer - some kind of liquid - got poured into the cannon. The confetti hardened, and then somebody accidentally shot the cannon right into Shelly! She ended up losing a leg, but she did get something like $330,000 in an insurance settlement.

Shelly decided to invest $20,000 in that disco. Back then, you could start a club with twenty grand. Shelly's Leg took over a tavern that used to be a rock-'n'-roll joint called the Grapevine, and before that a jazz club called the Poop Deck. Her partners in the venture were Joe McGonagle and Pat Nesser, who died nine years ago of lung cancer. Shelly's whereabouts are unknown, although she had been living in Hawaii. It being 25 years later, Joe now works in accounts payable.

The Shelly's Leg club had two floors. The weekend cover charge was around $2. A schooner of beer was $1. The disc jockey spun those vinyl hits. Love to love you, baby! The dance floor was packed, the booze flowed. "We tried to keep the place free of drugs, and sometimes succeeded," Joe remembers. Around 12:30 in the morning, when the liquor control guys had gone home, everybody could get inside the club.

But, says Joe, he and Pat didn't exactly get along with Shelly. For one thing, they thought she was taking too much of the gross. The club fell behind on its taxes. One weekend in 1978, Joe and Pat told Shelly she could run the place. The next week the IRS padlocked it and Shelly's Leg was history.

"I know a lot of people have a lot of love for the place," Joe said. "Personally, I couldn't stand it. Night after night, repetitious, loud music. If I don't hear Donna Summer again it won't be too soon."