Crocodile Rocks

It's Thursday around midnight in Belltown. At this hour, most of the faintly lit streets acquiesce to the night. A few pedestrians stroll toward home or on to their next destination. An occasional car cruises by, the traffic stopping and going in an uneven flow, obeying signals that change haphazardly as if to invite disorder. But there's little room for disorder in the Belltown of the 21st century. This neighborhood once teemed with drunks, drug dealers, and only slightly less unsavory characters, but the high-tech boom and earnest development have left it as sterile as a village in a Disney theme park. The chic restaurants that dot the streetscape have cute, naturalistic names like Falling Waters and Mistral, in a part of town where the only reference to nature used to be "It's the Water" spelled out in neon on Olympia beer ads. On the stretch of Second Avenue between Bell and Blanchard, however, a drunken, bloody scene makes this Thursday night look more like Belltown circa 1990. A wheelchair-bound man clenches a fist, his fingers poking through holes in bicycle gloves. He's bleeding profusely, with darkened blots surfacing around his nose, mouth, and eyes. A few feet away, a security guard attempts to quell another man's rage. He's drunk, maybe, or adrenalized from being inside the rock club. It's tense, and it's a sign that whatever gentrification Belltown has under- gone doesn't apply at the Crocodile.

An hour later, Kevin Watson is overseeing the audience's exit after an otherwise peaceful show. The solidly built 29-year-old head of security says such violent incidents are rare—he estimates that a member of the crowd gets out of hand once a month at most—but he's keenly aware of how quickly things can escalate. Last year, a melee at the front door that started with an out-of-control patron taking a swing at him ended with Watson suffering a broken ankle. This evening's incident began when the alleged culprit began fondling women and hitting other customers. As security struggled to remove the rogue patron from the club, the man in the wheelchair was accidentally knocked over and trampled. He was later treated by medical professionals. Watson still seems rattled. "I'm OK . . . now," he says, flashing a cautious smile. Security is one of only dozens of concerns at a nightclub like the Crocodile, the Belltown institution that celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. Most clubs its size don't endure because subtle changes in the neighborhood or the staff upset the balance, or the owner gets burned out, or the taste of the booking agent (sometimes known as the talent buyer) falls out of step with the music community.

But the Crocodile inspires loyalty in both its customers and its staff. Watson has worked the door and watched over the crowds for five years. He replaced the original head of security, Bill Koonce, a Navy man who left only after being transferred to the Bay Area. Watson says he still enjoys his job even though he's been punched, bitten, head-butted, scratched, and had a finger and that ankle broken in the line of duty. Anytime you put a few hundred people in a building with live music and alcohol, he notes, "you're going to have some kind of conflict. Not everyone is going to get along."

WHAT'S AMAZING about the Crocodile is that for 10 years, almost everyone has not only gotten along, but treated the three spacious rooms at 2200 Second Avenue as a sort of central meeting place for Seattle's world famous music scene. It's more a clubhouse than a nightclub, where rock stars, accountants, doctors, waiters, critics, exotic dancers, and poets come to drink, eat, and to check out the bands. It's been a launching pad for the Presidents, Zeke, Modest Mouse, and Death Cab for Cutie. It's the type of club where Kim Thayil of Soundgarden and Krist Noveselic of Nirvana can throw together a band and play covers. One recent bill featured Britain's ascending psychedelic rock group Doves and the New York garage-pop purveyors the Strokes, who signed to a major label contract a few weeks after thrilling the sold-out crowd at the Crocodile.

"It's become synonymous with Seattle indie rock," Sean Haskins, booking agent for the Showbox, says of the Croc.

The woman whose idea bloomed into the Crocodile, Stephanie Dorgan, sits alone at a table in the empty dining room on a recent Monday, the only day of the week the club is closed. She's surrounded by a dog-eared memo pad, a stuffed datebook, a cell phone, a cup of coffee, and a glass of water. The red, orange, and violet hues of her flowery blouse are sharpened by the light pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She's in a reflective mood; it's 10 years to the day since the club first opened its doors, hosting a show by the Posies (playing under the pseudonym P.O.T., for Posies on Tour).

In one sweeping 10-minute narrative, during which she pauses only to take the most-needed breaths and to ward off would-be lunchtime patrons unaware that the restaurant is closed Mondays, Dorgan recounts the events that led to the club's opening in late April 1991. The oldest of four siblings from the Tri Cities in Eastern Washington, Dorgan attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, moving on to law school at Berkeley. As a young lawyer for Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, she worked on cases involving the First Amendment by day, but at night she attended rock shows and played darts in downtown establishments like the Frontier Room and the Vogue.