Seattle's Lake Union Pub was pretty legendary for its punk shows, drunken nights of debauchery, fights, etc. The Pub is probably the setting for a thousand great stories. This photo was from a night in 1995 when Garageshock was going on in Bellingham and a bunch of the bands were also playing Seattle. My friend Mark, Maximum Rock'n'Roll columnist and member of the Boise, Idaho band Haggis, was visiting. I said let's check out this great garage show! And it was a great show, but it probably wasn't the greatest impression of my favorite club to have about 10 zillion fights break out. The legendary Makers beat on some people dancing too hard and drunk in the pit, who later got put up against the wall in the photo (Hooch the guy on the far right has been bugging me for ages to scan this, I finally found it). Later all hell broke loose with all kinds of fights.There are many accounts of how this night went down, here is the one from the old Statics page on the Rip-Off Records website:
"The Statics also played possibly their most infamous show that year, at the Lake Union Pub. It was a show going on during the Garage Shock ‘95 weekend, with The Statics, Kent 3, and Sinister Six. Most of The Rip Offs and The Makers were in attendance, and they noticed some skinheads that kept giving people a hard time and bumping into Zack’s mic when he tried to sing. The story goes the Makers started a fight with the skinheads at Greg Lowery’s urging, which turned into a horrendous all-out brawl that kept re-erupting as the night went on. Zack went in the alley after their set and saw the police with a bunch of skins against the wall, and overheard the skins saying “We’re gonna get those Mod motherfuckers”! Known to some as The All-Night Riot, it was better known as The Lake Union Pub Massacre, it’s victims immortalized in the thanks of The Makers middle-finger/self-titled LP."
Uh, as you can see in the photo, none of the people lined up against the wall are skins... they were a couple crusty/old school punk kids and half of them were girls. Also the Rip Offs weren't just in attendance, they played the show (wearing black stockings on their head with yellow police tape in front of them). The real fighting took place later in the evening after The Makers were long gone between skins, mods, punks and some Samoans and ended around 2am when a big skinhead was knocked out unconscious on the sidewalk out front and 3-4 cop cars converged on The Pub.
3 comments:
I think Hooch is wearing my old 20 hole doc's in that pic too. I met him fairly often when I was living in Bellingham and he used to come to some of our shows.
I wound up trading the doc's for a pair of Jack boots at the clothes shop below my apartment. A couple of weeks later I run into Hooch and he had the docs on. Come to find out he got them at the same place.
Ah yes, the Lake Union Pub. I remember when I played there, I used to have a towel on the floor next to my drum kit. When it was time to play, I'd swivel over, dry off my shoes, and put them on my pedals without touching the floor. Otherwise, my feet would get so wet with beer that they'd slip off the pedals. The good ol' days!
to the left of hooch is jason,heather and jenny (jasons GF)
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