Drinking in the Arts

A journey into the night with three creative drinkers.

Portrait photography by Andrew Waits for City Arts; dioramas designed by Emily Busey, photographed by Justin LaRosa

THE INSTIGATOR
Greg Lundgren

On a bitingly cold night in late December, Greg Lundgren sits at the empty bar of the Double Header in Pioneer Square waiting for my arrival. A whiskey neat and a Manny’s sit in front of him next to a neatly arranged pair of leather gloves and wool scarf. At the sound of my high heels hitting the worn floorboards he turns around, greeting me enthusiastically. Sliding onto the barstool next to him, I am relieved to see that I am not the only one overdressed for the location. Always dapper, Lundgren is wearing a crisp white button-down wool vest, a tie and a suit jacket. Four or five other patrons, all sporting jeans and sweatshirts, shoot pool behind us. 

After we settle in with our drinks, Lundgren begins to expound on the Pioneer Square bar scene. Although he lives on First Hill while working and owning two bars in the same neighborhood (Vito’s and the Hideout), Lundgren enjoys venturing to other locales to check out the watering holes and meet new people. Being an arts instigator himself, and a forceful entrepreneur in the artistic community, Lundgren is naturally drawn to Pioneer Square. 

“Pioneer Square used to be a dirtier, grittier, cooler scene,” Lundgren says, his eyes scanning the disarray of paintings and signage crowding the walls. “I have great memories of this place. If I go to art walk, this is where I will come for a beer, but then nobody else does and I think that’s a shame because it could be something great. It may not be the coolest bar, but it has the potential to be the coolest bar.” He looks wistful for a moment, then launches into his own ideas for making the bar better. These include removing a large majority of the knickknacks on the walls, taking down the TVs and bringing in live entertainment for the stage. And, of course, more art. 

The next stop of the night is the Pioneer Square Saloon. As we walk along 2nd Avenue, we momentarily dash out into the middle of the street to better view Jeff Johnson’s hundred-foot-long mural on the side of the Metropole Building, a work that Lundgren boldly claims is the “best piece of public art produced in Seattle in the past decade.”

The Pioneer Square Saloon was the location of Lundgren’s first art show in Seattle. As we sip our beer and wine (the saloon doesn’t serve hard alcohol), a slightly ragged man wearing a Mickey Mouse sweater comes up and tells us about the Baptist church he attends. Lundgren admits to not being religious but listens attentively, asking questions and engaging with the man, whose name is, appropriately, Mickey. Later, he tells me that meeting people like Mickey is the reason he comes to the Pioneer Square Saloon.

When I first e-mailed Lundgren asking him which bars he wanted to hit, number one on the list was Cowgirls Inc. Assuming it was a joke, I agreed to go along. Needless to say, it wasn’t a joke. After leaving Mickey with a few spare dollars, we made our way to the popular hot spot. My suggestions of other bars went unheeded. 

“I think I’ve hated on Cowgirls Inc. so wrongly because I’ve never been there,” Lundgren explained. “I think we have to go in the door before we can really pass that judgment.” It was the night before New Year’s Eve, so the place was quiet. Lundgren chose a spot at the bar, upon which no fewer than five waitresses danced. He had a Maker’s Mark, neat. The atmosphere was somewhat overwhelming, with strobe lights, loud dance music and lots of exposed skin. Lundgren took in the surroundings, insisting that, like the Double Header, Cowgirls Inc. could be fantastic if people stopped worrying about what everyone around them thought and just had a great time. For both of us, this was a two-drink stop. A few days later I asked Greg if he would ever go back. His reply? “Most definitely. I haven’t danced on the bar yet.” RACHEL GALLAHER

THE ACTOR
Charles Leggett

Asked where one might find him drinking, actor Charles Leggett says that there are only three places where he really drinks: backstage, on his patio and at Solo Bar. I find the veteran actor at the latter location, sitting quietly on one of the Lower Queen Anne bar’s couches with a knit scarf around his neck and his hands full: a Power’s Irish Whiskey, neat, in one and a Clausthaler non-alcoholic beer in the other. 

We say our hellos, when the bartender comes over and asks if the actor would like another of the combination, which he refers to as the “Chuck.” As the bartender walks away, Leggett confirms that the drink is named after him. He grouses that the name has yet to make it onto the menu, which features drinks named after fellow actors, including the Dylan O’Connor (Power’s Irish Whiskey, a pint of Rainier), named after Peter Dylan O’Connor, and the Hylander (a Sauza Gold shot, a pint of Rainier), named for Tim Hyland. “I think it needs a better name than the ‘Chuck,’” says Leggett, who switched to the non-alcoholic beer last year after he started on blood thinners. “I think they should call it ‘Leggett’s Compromise.’”

Two fellow actors come by to say hello and Leggett pulls out his BlackBerry. Soon he is showing off a photo of himself dressed to look like an island native, wearing a grass skirt and a headdress made out of garbage while holding a canoe paddle like a guitar and doing the duck walk. The photo was taken two nights before at ACT during the 14/48 theatre festival, a rite of passage in Seattle’s theatre community that features ten-minute plays that are written, directed and acted over the course of a single day. “These are things I never do,” he says. “But that’s what happens with 14/48. It’s a treat for the audience, and I get to walk around afterwards and say, ‘Bah, humbug! Never again.’”

Asked what great drunks he has played onstage, the Bay Area native lets out a short burst of a laugh before recalling his first performance in the Seattle area, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew at the Village Theatre. “I played Tranio drunk,” he recalls. “The character isn’t written as a drunk, but I felt it was appropriate for him to be one.” More recently, Leggett, who begins rehearsals this month for the role of Lenny in Of Mice and Men at Seattle Rep, delivered a memorable performance as the raving-drunk conspiracy theorist Ray in a production of Steven Dietz’s Yankee Tavern at ACT. 

Playing drunk, says Leggett, is not about acting drunk, but about creating the feeling of drunkenness and then trying to act normal. “You’re acting from within something; you’re not putting something on,” he says. Leggett does a quick demonstration. His eyes deaden and his movements start to slow. He continues, “Being clear and navigating efficiently, those are the goals, not being sloppy and navigating sloppily, those can’t be the goals.” He pauses, his jaw going slack. “For me, it’s in my head. It’s a sensation behind my eyes.” His eyes move slowly towards the bar. “It’s like light spirits inside of a thick head.” And I’m convinced he’s drunk. MARK BAUMGARTEN

THE POP STAR
Lisa Dank

On a January evening, Lisa Dank ducks into Liberty, a Capitol Hill bar whose windows are fogged with condensation. Bypassing the low booths in the front, she settles in at a raised table in the back. At the start of this would-be bar crawl, the performer says she’s starting off the new year with “a quest for a more sober January,” ordering a club soda but recommending the Dragon’s Toe, a heady mix of bourbon, ginger water, cucumber and ginger ale.

Witnesses to Dank’s act – a spectacle that can include an oversized phallus, unwieldy costumes and her showmanship-in-heels – find a different persona offstage. Dank, born Juliane Popelka, was an accountant at nineteen and an economics major at the University of Washington, “an adult since before I was an adult,” she says. Now she writes and meditates every morning and turns out songs with electronic beats backing  her smoky, pop-friendly voice, rhyming about “soft-core porn, weed and unrequited love, the hardships of being an insane female doing music in Seattle.”

Liberty is a quick walk from her house, and Dank does all her business here: conducting interviews, holding meetings and mixing, editing and uploading her songs via the bar’s WiFi. “If I’m craigslisting or have to do heavy research, I do it here,” she says. “And there’s always something secret going on in that back room.” She’s usually privy to its goings-on: Dank has constructed a web of friends and collaborators, including Sammy LaForge, with whom she is working on an upcoming EP. 

Finishing her club soda, she drags me off to the home of artist Frank Correa – whom Dank calls one of her muses – and animator Nick Bartoletti. That is where they congregate, she says: “As a clan, we don’t like to go out so much as stay in and enjoy the fruits of our creativity.” In less sober months, she goes to Correa’s house to drink whiskey and watch videos projected on the living room wall.

Tonight, footage of step-touching Spandex-clad seniors accompanies R. Kelly’s latest (consensus: surprisingly decent). Guests convene around a vintage ’90s relic, an inflatable couch, in the kitchen. Dank sits at the table before moving out to the living room and back again, greeting those who drop in, bidding farewell to those with other events to attend, stopping occasionally to open her BlackBerry (“I have some weird stalkers on the Internet,” she says. “Twitter stalkers: Twalkers”). She offers me a cold Rainier from a bag on the floor but passes on one herself. 

Dank considers a stop at Chapel Bar for a drop-in performance with friend DJ Skiddle, but the group, eight deep, heads instead to the recently opened Rock Box, a Japanese-style karaoke bar where patrons rent private rooms. They pile into a wood-paneled space, lit in dim purple, order a pitcher of water and heft the songbooks from lap to lap. Someone notes that the walls have as many clocks as a casino (the room ends up costing $120).

When it’s Dank’s turn, she displays no outsize karaoke theatrics: she sits while singing on R. Kelly’s “Slow Jamz,” spitting out Twista’s rap with speed. “That took my soul out of me,” she sighs afterward, leaning back in her seat. She’s begun 2011 – during which she plans to turn out more music, tour the West Coast and consider a move to Berlin – with her blood alcohol level firmly at zero. Lisa Dank is ready to go. KATIE CHRISTIAN •