Flemming only owned the business for a year before selling it to Mark Weber and Rachelle Madrigal, who says things had changed in Kent by the time they took over the spot. "The community was very accepting; we had very little problems," she says. "It was a good moneymaker for us."
There were occasional incidents—such as the bar's windows being smashed out—but Madrigal suspects it was the work of a former employee, not someone opposed to the bar's existence. It was about that time, Madrigal says, that they started realizing there was a demand for nightlife in the Kent area; people from all over the South Sound area, gay and straight alike, would come by to hang out and wet their whistles.
Miller, Steven
Swank, the bar owned
by Travis Brown (pictured
at left), appeals mainly
to a lesbian crowd.
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Eventually Weber and Madrigal moved to Arizona, selling their business to Bonnie and Sarah Hayes, who owned it from 2004 to 2007. During this period, Trax went through a rough financial patch, before Dan Cornwell and his partner in business and life, Jason Barbon, purchased the bar. They changed the name to Vibe, Cornwell says, to reflect the different character with which patrons might infuse the place on any given night.
They reopened last July, and now lay claim to a devoted and growing group of regulars from the area. Chris Cook is a 26-year-old gay man who has lived in the south suburbs for the past eight years, occasionally heading up to Seattle for a night out. There, he tends to find "lots of drama and drunk people and drugs," he says, "and crowded bathrooms."
Furthermore, straight patrons like Des Moines resident Ryan Morey find Vibe a good place to get a beer and play a little pool. Plus, he says, "I've met some pretty neat girls here."
All things being equal, Swank, Vibe, and their hip, young patrons still may not constitute the sort of critical mass needed to give Kent true nighttime-destination status. Both bars bring plenty of people in on the weekends, but weeknights can be really sparse. On a Taco Tuesday in November, three women at the bar are the only Swank patrons for the better part of an hour. One asks Brown about broadcasting Seattle Storm games; he finds out later from a bartender that they've always been able to broadcast the games, so they'll be ready when the season kicks off in May. Brown is also trying to build up Swank's workweek business, adding karaoke on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Cornwell says that, at the moment, even competing nightclubs like Vibe and Swank benefit from having each other around; it keeps people in town and discourages them from making trips to Seattle or Tacoma. So he should be happy to know that Seattleite David Bisharat has applied to the city to open a martini bar, Shindig, just down the street from Vibe. Keyes, who will be the landlord for Shindig, says she believes it's supposed to be a more refined affair than the taverns and lounges that currently make up the bulk of Kent's straight nightlife.
Now they just need a sustainable customer base. Even with the area growing as people increasingly decide the perks of living in the city just aren't worth the cost, "those housing projects, those condos and apartment projects—those are really very important to creating a stable customer base for restaurants and clubs" in Kent, says Wolters.
If indeed the condo developers follow, he says, Kent will be "putting together the pieces, the building blocks, for what we believe will be a unique urban center." But urban development isn't a priority for Rae and Cook so much as urban entertainment. And now they're starting to get it, far from the high cost of living and frustrating parking of Capitol Hill. Kent has "definitely come up from what it was." Cook says. "This is a scene."
lonstot@seattleweekly.com
