With the Alaskan Way Viaduct demolished, the OK Hotel building once again fronts the water, making it prime real estate for the first time in ages. That was the strangest thing about visiting the site last month. I had never been in the OK when any sunlight had hit the building, as the viaduct had served as a giant shade for all those decades. “The place was a dark cavern,” recalls Akre.
When Freeborn and partner Matthies discovered the building in the mid-1980s, it was an abandoned fleabag hotel with 300 tiny rooms. “We had to drag hundreds of beds out of there when we cleaned it up,” Freeborn says of the creation of the OK. They were able to rent cheaply in part because, as with much of Pioneer Square, the property was owned by a family that saw it as a longtime investment. “My landlords wouldn’t pay to fix a single thing,” Freeborn recalls. “I never had a lease. We could have had to close at the end of any month, but we kept it going for 15 years.”
Over the years, the club hosted Jane’s Addiction, Hole, D.O.A., the Goo Goo Dolls and many other bands when they were up and coming. Whether it was avant-garde jazz or funk/rock or punk, pretty much everyone who ever played the OK was an “alternative” band (appropriately, Isle of Plants focuses on “alternative” meat and dairy). The space was important enough to late-1980s California band Sublime that it’s mentioned on the group’s song “Thanx,” from its debut album. Queens of the Stone Age played their very first live show there, as Josh Homme then lived in Seattle and Freeborn gave him a slot. The OK also put on every major Seattle band of the era: Soundgarden, Mudhoney, The Gits, Tad, Love Battery, the U-Men and many more. In the later 1990s, the club booked more jazz, and became a place where locals Bill Frisell, Amy Denio and Wayne Horvitz would hang ou.
Freeborn and Matthies now run the Royal Room in Columbia City, another popular music club with eclectic bookings. Though they’ve re-created some of the original venue’s vibe at the Royal Room, Freeborn admits there’s never been anything else in Seattle like the OK Hotel.
The Central, the Crocodile, the Showbox, the Vogue and countless other clubs had a role in the Seattle music scene during that decade, but no other place had quite the same feel. “Some of it was simply the timing,” Freeborn says. “It was perfect timing for the perfect place.” But Akre points out a more concrete reason: “The stage was 2 feet off the ground, so all the performers were essentially on the same level as the audience,” she recalls. “It made audiences and bands very connected.”
Rabena and Stanko hope that Isle of Plants creates the same kind of connections for Seattle’s vegan community. Their goal is meant to be sustainable: Bring vegan food to an urban setting with limited grocery options. Currently, patrons order online and pick up their tofu and veggies at Isle of Plants. They hope that customers use transit or are already within walking or biking distance, but they will also run out to customer cars for pickup. “We see this is as something that will be good for people’s health, good for the environment and good for Seattle,” Rabena says.
With the store still in its fledgling days, I arrived late on a Sunday, and there wasn’t much left in stock, so I can’t speak to their selection. But what they lacked in packed shelves, they make up in passion. “We are committed to creating a hundred percent vegan hub for urban Seattle,” Rabena says. In addition, they plan to have “cooking classes, meet-ups, and taste testing” at the location.
Both Rabena and Stanko are 27, so neither ever experienced the OK as a venue, but given the history, they’ve been thinking of perhaps hosting small acoustic performances at some point, maybe on First Thursday Art Walk nights. “We’d welcome anyone who was here back in the day, too,” Rabena says. As the store ramps up, she says, more in-person shopping will be set up by the fall. A new park is opening across the street, so perhaps this storied location will once again be the center of cultural and societal shifts in ever-changing Seattle.