Greg Nickels' Quiet Storm

Set on the residential backside of beach drive around the bend from Alki's bustling shores, La Rustica is not held hostage to the American Graffiti cruising culture that permeates West Seattle's public waterfront. Simply appointed and inconspicuous, La Rustica greets diners with a patriarchal maître d' in a maroon tracksuit and maybe a dozen white-linen-covered tables. With Puget Sound mere yards away and a menu chockablock with fresh-catch items, the Italian bistro accomplishes its presumed goal of transferring patrons' palates and minds to the Mediterranean Sea.

La Rustica is not officially open to the public on Monday nights, supposedly to give its culinary brain trust a chance to reconfigure plates to sate the fickle buds of the restaurant's small but faithful clientele (lines outside the small bistro's front door on weekends are all but guaranteed). Here, there is no more loyal patron than West Seattle resident and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, the former "Mr. Nice" who has belied his big-softy reputation by instituting a regime of Chicago-style hardball politics that has left a timid City Council cowed.

In Chicago—which happens to be the mayor's birthplace—when the mayor wants a table, the mayor gets a table. And for the past three months, Nickels has wanted all of La Rustica's tables—on Monday night, no less—diverting taxpayer funds previously earmarked for the Mayor's Office of Film and Music to instead nurture a stealth, underground music scene at the restaurant that Nickels hopes will spawn the city's 21st-century answer to grunge and put to rest the notion that his administration is hostile to any and all kinds of after-hours carousing.

Wayman Tisdale squeezes his 6-foot-9-inch, 280-pound frame into a wooden chair toward the back of La Rustica's tiny kitchen, tuning his bass guitar. A former star power forward at the University of Oklahoma and in the NBA, where he socked away enough loot to stay fat and happy without ever having to lift another finger, Tisdale has nonetheless forged a remarkably successful second career as a jazz musician. Not just any kind of jazz—smooth jazz, an offshoot of the real thing that has been derided by purists as being sanitized to the point of elevator music or dental lobby fare.

As he rehearses a riff from his chart- topping single, "Hot Ice . . . On the Rocks," the normally affable Tisdale tears into his genre's critics.

"I don't know about you," says Tisdale, clad in an olive green suit, Filipino wedding blouse, bolo tie, and white cross-stitch Capezio loafers, "but I tend to like music that makes me feel as though I'm sitting on a yacht off the coast of Santa Barbara, sipping chardonnay with a blond fortysomething divorcée who looks a lot like Linda Evans. What sort of cat doesn't want to hit that?"

As a sous-chef prepares a rich chocolate mousse for the invitation-only collection of guests assembled at the tables outside, Tisdale is joined in the kitchen by the New Age singer Basia, whose Time and Tide topped both adult contemporary and smooth-jazz charts in the late '80s. Like Tisdale, Basia is grateful for the oasis the latter genre has provided her career.

"Smooth-jazz fans are really the most accepting people I've ever encountered," says the middle-aged chanteuse, before launching into an impromptu scat attack. "Bo-zee-bo-shum-boop-bop-zam!"

In La Rustica's dimly lit dining room, Nickels and his wife, Sharon, sit at a 10-top assembled on a pedestal above all other tables near the restaurant's lone unisex lavatory. Here, Nickels is feasting on prosciutto and mushroom pasta, his wine of choice a private reserve '68 Frijon Rouge from the boutique label Hearthstone Cellars, compliments of the maître d'.

The mayor's personal garb is fetching, if a bit out of character: charcoal gray turtleneck, tweed blazer, black cowboy boots with silver heels, and the odd yet alluring combination of tartan pants and a big brass belt. Those close to Nickels say that, as with Al Gore, there are really two Gregs: Greg the politician and Greg the fun-lovin' guy. This is that guy.

As the mayor cracks wise about rumors that his predecessor, Paul Schell, was an adult incontinent, two chairs down, Nickels' go-to guy, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, scrolls through his BlackBerry, attempting to calculate how big a chunk of Nickels' secret jazz budget—known to mayoral staffers and close associates as "The Quiet Storm"—tonight's festivities will eat up.

"Tisdale's basically performing pro bono," explains Ceis. "He's rich enough, as is, and knows this is really all about showing young musicians what they can do with their lives. But Basia's costing us a fucking fortune. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little guilty about this one, but the mayor's a huge fan."