In the ’80s, Seattle—especially its western peninsula—used to be a dreary, uncool place where Friday night meant getting fucked up on kamikazes and rocking out to a cover band in a cavernous bar. The venue which epitomized this era was the RockSport, which unplugged its Jagermeister machine for good on July 14. Those were less-complicated times. People sported mustaches and tight denim without a whiff of irony. South King County was populated mostly by white trash, and South Seattle was mostly black. Nobody caught shit from cycling activists for cruising around Alki or Shilshole in a muscle car, and Sir Mix-a-Lot passed for hip-hop. The death of the RockSport is the death of Simple Seattle. MIKE SEELY