MISCmedia for 3/30/00
Rendez-Who?

TODAY'S COLUMN IS DEDICATED to that timeless vaudeville comic of the Stiff Records era, Ian Dury.

WATCH THIS SPACE: No sooner had we printed the precarious status of the Frontier Room than rumors spread about potential changes at Belltown's other remaining old-folks' drinking house, the venerable Rendezvous.

For the sake of our out-of-town readers, some background: The area surrounding Second Ave. and Battery St. used to be Seattle's "Film Row," where the major studios had their regional distribution offices. The Rendezvous restaurant and lounge was built on this block in the '30s by a company that built and furnished movie theaters. Its back room, a former private screening room where the movie distributors previewed their latest offerings to theater managers, was designed as a miniature version of the auditoria this company designed and supplied.

In recent decades, the Rendezvous has had two simultaneous main uses. The beautiful back room has been a reasonably-priced rental hall for Belltown's young hipsters to hold birthday parties, film screenings, performance-art pieces, and music shows. (At least three music videos have been shot there.)

The crowded barroom, meanwhile, has proudly served strong cocktails and cans of Rainier beer to merchant seamen, fishing-boat shoreleavers, old-age pensioners, working-class widows, and young adult alkies-in-training. As building after building in Belltown has gotten torn down or upscaled, the Rendezvous is one of the neighborhood's last remaining unpretentious dive bars.

But for how much longer?

Here's all we've been able to confirm: The building's been sold. The new landlors have evicted the apartments, band-rehearsal spaces, and bicycle shop, which had all been on month-to-month.

The Rendezvous itself, and the Sound Mail Services private-mailbox service next door, have long-term leases, which will apparently be adhered to for now.

But eventually, rumor-mongers claim, the new landlords would like to assume management of the restaurant-lounge and (yes, that dreaded word arises once more) "restore" it.

As one who's held public events in the Rendezvous's classy old meeting room, I'd loathe any changes that would make the pensioners and fishing-boat people less welcome there.

Maybe we could hold a benefit toward keeping the Rendezvous more or less as-is. I'm sure we could get Dodi, the local band named after the Rendezvous's legendary veteran barmaid, to play at it.

TOMORROW: Boy, we've sure got some demographics.

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