(The following is what I’ve written for this week’s Capitol Hill Times.)

I’m hosting a big shindig on Thursday, June 15, and I hope you’ll show for it. It’s at the Rendezvous Grotto (2320 2nd Ave.) and it’s called “The 20th MISCiversary.”

Twenty years ago this week, I started a little column in a little monthly paper based out of Belltown.

In those months and years since, I’ve watched a lot of people, places, and things come and go.

I saw the Seattle rock scene declared dead on at least a dozen occasions. But it refuses to go away; despite the occasional attempts by politicians and the record industry to kill it off for good.

I’ve seen downtown housing go from almost extinct to a hi-growth industry.

I’ve seen local politics pretty much stay the same, with the usual “downtown vs. neighborhoods” and development vs. preservation arguments repeated like a familiar jingle.

Speaking of jingles, 20 years ago commercial radio didn’t quite suck as awfully as it does now. Cable TV was still a novelty. (Remember when music videos were widely derided as a threat to real rock? Heck, remember music videos?)

Yes, Virginia, there was online communication in 1986. It was in the form of dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs), running off of the home PCs of their respective systems operators (“sysops”).

I resided then in the Consulate Apartments on Belmont. It was the first post-college abode I’d managed to stay in for longer than six months. The manager at the time was a flamboyant yet cynical gay guy who, unfortunately for me, parked his motorcycle directly beneath my unit; prior to his late-night treks to Chinese restaurants, he’d be revvin’ up the thing for a good five to ten loud minutes. He’d installed a Dymo Labelmaker sign inside the back door: “Don’t let strange people in. We have plenty.”

The bar at the end of that block, now Kincora’s, was then a notorious dive tavern called Glynn’s Cove. When I got my first non-toy computer, I snuck it in via the back door so as not to let any Glynn’s patrons learn I had something worth stealing.

There were reasons for this concern. The Pike-Pine corridor’s sidewalks were frequented day and evening by drug dealers/users, aggressive panhandlers, and streetwalkers of all genders. Today’s fashionable foot traffic in the area was much sparser. There was no Linda’s, no War Room, no Capitol Club, no Rudy’s, no Cha Cha, no Six Arms, no Area 51, no Manray, no Neumo, no Harvard Market, no Elysian. There were gay bars, though fewer than nowadays; one of them had the slogan DARE TO BE DIFFERENT posted outside and a six-foot-long dress code posted just inside.

Some places that were here on the Hill then are still around now, but different. There was the Fred Meyer Marketime that became Broadway Market that became QFC. Today’s City Market was Mallstrom’s Market, whose beer racks bore the warning “No ID, no beer—even if you ‘just live up the street.'”

And there were a lot of neighborhood landmarks that are just gone now.

All the low-budget, low-rent, low-pretension hangouts, where the menus were still printed with dollar signs and nothing was listed under the rubric MARKET PRICE. Ernie Steele’s. Lion O’Reilley’s. The Broadway Coffee Shop. Andy’s Cafe. The Cause Celebre Cafe. Pizza Pete.

Shopping in the neighborhood was less about unique knick-knacks, more about practicality. There was the First Hill Thriftway (later Shop-Rite), perhaps the Platonic ideal of a small indie supermarket. A Different Drummer Books. Hardware and home-electronics stores. The still-missed City Peoples Mercantile.

I can’t even begin to talk about the disappeared arts institutions. The former Empty Space Theater on East Pike (a mild walk from the new Empty Space at Seattle University, three “spaces” later). The original 911 Media Center, descended from the multimedia producing organization and/or. All the gallery and exhibition sites that have come and gone during the intervening years, from the Vox Populi Gallery to the Union Garage. The Apple Theater (which was still showing new pornos in ’86; its supply of shot-on-film product soon ceased, but it reran the old films for another decade). The Broadway Theater.

I’m putting a book together about this “Vanishing Seattle,” the city of funky humor and rough-hewn honesty that’s increasingly displaced by the newfangled upscale-luxury everything. I’m looking for photos and mementos of beloved former local stores, restaurants, celebrities, bars, buildings, bridges, and Bubbleators. If you’ve got any, let me know with an email to vanish@miscmedia.com. (All items will be promptly returned.)