Imagine spending an afternoon shopping for trendy clothes, eating in a really fun restaurant, then going bar hopping until the wee hours in joints ranging from an historic Grunge Rock pub to a tiki bar, all the while rubbing elbows with some of the most colorful people in Seattle. Now imagine doing all of this ON JUST ONE BLOCK! On Pine Street between Summit and Belmont Avenues you can have more fun on one block than you can in some entire cities…BUT NOT FOR LONG!

Later this year all seven of the fun, funky, colorful little businesses on this block will fall before the relentless wrecking ball of progress, to be replaced by – you guessed it – another condominium complex. The impending loss of so many popular, iconic Capitol Hill gathering places in one fell swoop has been heralded as “The Death of Pike/Pine” by the Seattle Stranger, as “a tear in the neighborhood’s fabric” by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and as a “painful” example of a development trend by the Capitol Hill Times.

Numerous writers have compared the demise of this block to recent transformations in Belltown and Freemont. Many people have pointed out the irony of developers using the “colorful” character of a neighborhood like this one to attract people while they simultaneously destroy that character. Others see just another chapter in the perennial story of gentrification, with rich people pushing poor people out of a neighborhood once it becomes desirable or fashionable.

Even most critics of this change see it as inevitable, however. After all, these are not buildings of great architectural interest or historical importance. They are just a hodgepodge of little run-down buildings, occupied by businesses that could be described, more or less, as “dives.” Yet, is there not a place for “dives” in our world? Are there not things to be cherished on the seamy side of life? Of course there are. Why else would people flock to this strip day and night, making it one of the most happening spots in the city?

This website is a celebration of the 500 block of Pine Street in its final summer as a strip of funky little businesses. It is a celebration of all wonderful, obsolete, misfit things in this world that are doomed by the inevitability of change.