According to legend, coffee was discovered in Ethiopia in the ninth century, first roasted, ground, and brewed by the Turks, then brought to Europe by Venetian traders. Coffee quickly spread throughout Europe and the first coffeehouse in England opened around 1650. Coffeehouses became known as “penny universities” because one could get a fairly good education sitting with a cup of coffee (a penny a cup) and listening to learned men as they discussed matters of great import. Not many years later, coffeehouses opened in Boston and Philadelphia, and were frequented by artists, poets, philosophers, and revolutionaries—like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
I’m not sure when coffeehouses and folk music became associated. But by the mid-1950s at the latest, many coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, Boston, and Berkeley offered entertainment, often in the form of a resident folk singer.
The first coffeehouse in Seattle opened in summer of 1958. Rusty Thomas, a New Yorker, had come to Seattle to open an antique shop and discovered that, although there were plenty of coffee shops (not the same thing), Seattle was bereft of coffeehouses. Seeing an opportunity, he opened the Café Encore on upper University Way. Within a few weeks, local folk singers began dropping in. Rusty didn’t pay, but he let the singers sing for tips.
Seattle’s second coffeehouse was opened by Bob Clark in spring of 1959 next door to the Guild 45th theater. He also owned the theater, hence the name, The Place Next Door. He quickly realized that having a folk singer-in-residence on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings would greatly enhance his business. The Place Next Door was, perhaps, the nicest coffeehouse in Seattle, a bit on the “artsy” side, with paintings by local artists on display. The singers sang in sets, with breaks between, much like a night club. Clark paid the singers, and some of Seattle’s best folk singers performed there regularly.
In 1960, Walt Wilcox, a retired policeman, opened a coffeehouse on Westlake Avenue, on the end of a dock among the yacht brokers on Lake Union. He decorated the walls with bullfight posters and dubbed the place The El Matador (redundant?). He intended to hire a flamenco guitarist to entertain. A flaw in the plan was that, at the time, there were no flamenco guitarists in Seattle. So he had to modify his plans and hire folk singers.
Next came Pamir House, named to evoke images of wayside inns along the Silk Road where it winds through the Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan and Afghanistan—the “Hindu Kush.” Located on lower University Way, John Timmons intended it to be an Indian restaurant. But a distressing lack of clientele prompted him to convert it to a coffeehouse.
It was small; nevertheless, Timmons often had two, three, or more singers on Friday and Saturday evenings, swapping songs and doing impromptu duets and ensembles. It was like a private song fest and the audiences liked the informality. Many of Seattle’s better singers sang there at one time or another also. John Timmons paid the singers regularly and promptly.
Lee Capilli and local artist Val Laigo opened The Door in downtown Seattle, around the corner from the Music Hall Theater. Occasionally they hired a folk singer for a weekday evening, and on one weekend, Friday and Saturday, in 1961 they hosted a pair of concerts featuring a mix of folk singers from Seattle and Vancouver, B. C. But the main entertainment at The Door on Friday and Saturday evenings was jazz.
Toward the end of the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, Bob Clark turned his efforts to opening another art and foreign film theater in downtown Seattle and sold The Place Next Door to folk singer Stan James. Stan, interested in Australian songs and folklore, redecorated and changed the name to The Corroboree, which is a ceremony in which Australian Aborigines interact with the “Dreamtime” through singing and dancing. Stan had regular singers on Friday and Saturday evenings, and he instituted an open mike on Sunday evenings.
Avid mountain climber Eric Bjornstad opened a small coffeehouse a block north of Pamir House to provide a hang-out for other mountain climbing enthusiasts. He named it The Eigerwand, after a mountain in the Swiss Alps that he had ambitions of climbing. Soon, of course, someone came in carrying a guitar case and asked if he was planning on having entertainment. His answer was an emphatic “No!” Wise move, because the Eiger was little more than a hole-in-the-wall, and with a dozen or so customers in place, there was little room to swing a guitar. Most coffeehouses were open only in the evenings, but the Eiger was open during afternoons as well. This tended to draw hordes of chess players, which is not quite what Eric had in mind either.
Shortly thereafter, he opened another coffeehouse, The Queequeg, named after the tattooed harpooner in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It was on the Ave across from, and a bit north of, Pamir House. Whereas entertainment seemed to have been an afterthought in the Café Encore, the Place Next Door, and Pamir House, the Queequeg was set up from the start with entertainment in mind. Large, at least as large as the Place Next Door, it had a sizeable stage, not just a riser. All of the seats along the rows of marble-top tables faced the stage. The Queequeg also featured some of the best folk singers in the area, plus occasional visitors from out of town, such as Rolf Cahn.
In the mid-1960s, things began to change. Since folk music had been caught up in the fickle ebb and flow of popular music tastes, it was replaced in the mid 1960s by the “The British Invasion” led by The Beatles. Audiences dwindled, and the coffeehouses as venues for folk singers began to close one by one.
Other coffeehouses did open in the area, such as The End on lower Brooklyn Ave, and The Llahngaelhyn on Eastlake just south of the University Bridge, but The End didn’t have entertainment at all, and The Llahngaelhyn featured jazz.
It was great while it lasted!
This did not end folk music in Seattle by any means. Many people had become attracted to folk music and that interest didn’t fade with changes in popular music tastes. It was at about this time that the Seattle Folklore Society came into existence and a few years later, in 1972, the Northwest Regional Folklife Festivals began.
Don Firth (1931-2015) was one of the founding members of the Pacific NW Folklore Society. His interest in folk music began with the folk music revival in Seattle in the early 1950s. This was taken from his “reminiscences”: “For some time I have been writing personal reminiscences of the folk music scene in Seattle and elsewhere during the Fifties and Sixties. Not a history. That, I’m afraid, would be a ‘four blind men and an elephant’ operation, so what I’m doing is more of a memoir—my own personal observations.”
How about “The Last Exit on Brooklyn” or the “Last Exit” or just “The Exit” South and one block west from the Ave. There was another coffee house associated with a church just off the street to the east of the Ave. Your discussion of the location of The Eigerwand is confusing. It sounds like you have it mixed up with the Queequeg. The Eigerwand was next to the European Cafe and a mortuary Co. that had a low wall that became known as the “hippie wall” because it was a favorite perch on the street. Then they put an iron fence on it. Those marble tabletops went to the Last Exit when the Eigerwand closed. Originally they were dividers in a men’s restroom.
The Fringie Wall. Walt Crowley in his book confused it with “Hippie Hill”, which was on campus due east of the Church where The Edge coffee house was located. The “iron fence” was metal spikes that kept you from sitting on it. The “European cafe” was Woerne’s European Pastry Shop and Restaurant. Loved the Viennese Pretzels.
Fringies! I loved that term! It seemed so fitting for the time. I recall hearing that the term “fringies” was coined by a King-5 reporter. Don’t know if that’s true. Anyone know? And I remember a guy who everyone called “Barefoot John”. Seemed he kinda wandered around in the District with a guitar slung over his shoulder and was often seen playing in the laundromat on the Ave. Circa 1963.
Yep, the “fringies” were around Seattle (at least the U District) when I was at the UW, and must have predated the “hippies” by a couple years.
PS: I’ve lived in SW Pennsylvania for a bunch of years and came across your post while poking around for old places from my college days. One was, indeed, the Pamir House where we freshmen went to hear folk music. It was our Greenwich Village. I’m sure we saw the musicians shown above, and that’s where I first heard the wonderful “Wreck of the Ruben James” …
PPS: In the early ’60s we had a high-school folk trio and did a lot of Kingston Trio. None of us could play the guitar so I played the piano, and tried to keep “Sloop John B” from sounding like “Great Balls of Fire.” Still, we may have been the first to play, well, folk-rock …
The word “fringies” was invented by a publisher of a University District newspaper. It was intended as an insult but the targets of the insult adopted it with pride.
Before the Eigerwand was in its final location, I understand it was another block north. Then, (as I recall) it moved down to the east side of the Ave, just north of the European bakery. This was about 1966. The only place I remember The Queequeg was at the east end of the University Bridge. I remember the Pamir House being on the west side of the Ave, across from the Eigerwand.
We called it “The Wall”. It bordered the funeral home parking lot just North of the Eiger (when the Eigerwand was on the East side of the Ave). The iron fence was added to the wall after it had become one of our favorite places to loiter.
I worked at both the Eigerwand and Queequeg in 1963-64. The Eiger was on the west side of the Ave between 42nd and 43rd. Queequeg was on the east side south of 42nd.
The Eiger had barrels for tables in front of a long bench on one side and conventional tables with benches on the opposite side of the long narrow space. The panelling was rough wood and Eric, who built the interior himself, hung pitons, ice axes, and other climbing paraphernalia on the walls. At the front just inside the door was a raised platform with a table where the serious chess players sat.
Eric had a beard, smoked a pipe, and wore a blue, very puffy down jacket. He preferred classical music and was a strict employer. One time i wore a pleated skirt and a bulky sweater and he told me never to wear that outfit again.
Hey, is that you Pat?
God bless!
David Hoffman
Now in Santa Rosa, CA with one grandchild and many memories.
Rick Holbrook, Mike Murphy and I helped round up the ice axes, etc. and helped mount them to the walls
I sang folk at the Pamir and a few other places back in the mid 60s, studied and did my homework at the Eiger, and hung out with the houseboat crowd downhill from Eastlake Ave. I remember the Eiger had a small fireplace, and in wet Seattle winters, it was lovely hanging out there. There was a man who walked great distance through Africa to come to the US to attend college, Readers Digest did a story on him, and he managed to get a scholarship from a college north of Seattle. Eventually, he landed at the U of W, and we would spend many hours chatting at the Eiger. I met all sorts of fascinating people there. I hitched from Seattle to San Francisco Sept 66, so when I moved away, I came to miss those days. I was really sad when the Pamir house got torn down, and eventually the other coffee houses fell by the wayside. I transitioned from the folk music scene to the rock and roll scene in San Francisco. I retain many fond memories, with the Eiger always my favorite.
My parents lived in houseboats on one of the lakes during their courtship in the early 60’s, my dad had a small sailboat called the Black Watch and he would pick Mom up at her houseboat and they’d motor and sail around for their dates. I think it was on Lake Washington that their houseboats were, but not sure.
Are you the Judy Neeley who attended Lincoln High School?
Hey, Barry….Are YOU Barry Grimes, who I did know pretty well, played on our famous Food Giant Little League baseball teams, played on Lincoln’s 1965 City Champs baseball team, etc? This is Jack Bell writing here!…Glad to see that you are still alive and kicking!
I think the African man you’re talking about was Legson Kayira, a Bushman. He wrote a book about his experiences.
In the mid sixties I was attending Wilson High School and a member of the Wilson Chess Club. My friends and I also played chess at the Tacoma Chess Club. Uncle Vic would show up on Friday Nights and play. He was our hero. He spoke of the Eigerwand in the Seattle U district and suggested that we should check it out. Saturday nights we would load up in my 54 Chev and head for Seattle to the Eiger and play speed chess for 25¢ a game and drink Espresso. We were so cool, oh ya. Uncle Vic would stride in with a flourish with a folded Latvian newspaper under his arm and a box of fried chicken. He would hold court all evening with games, problems, and lively chess discussions till the wee hours.
Spent a lot of time with my friend Victoria at The Eiger. I saw Bob Dylan down the street at a very small venue when he first started touring.
Still have my Fringie button
Hey, is that you Pat?
God bless!
David Hoffman
Now in Santa Rosa, CA with one grandchild and many memories.
A friend of mine and I from high school drove all the way from Bothell to play music at the Pamir House, The Queequeg and the Eigerwand on Friday nights in the mid-1960’s. I used to perform EVE OF DESTRUCTION and Woody Guthrie songs on a Stella 12-string acoustic guitar, and my friend, Hal, would perform his Bob Dylan and Dovovan tunes. My most vivid memory is of meeting a folk singer by the name of Jim Trout who had a Martin D-18 guitar that he said someone had fallen on and smashed into pieces. He had the tenacity and patience to glue the thing back together again, and I remember it playing and sounding fine.
Any idea what years The Door was active? We have a poster for The Door advertising Folk Rock Jazz and are trying to date it. Thanks.
I remember The Door, and I think I went there several times from late 1964 to early 1966. There was a trio called the Bob Lamone Trio that performed the song “Hiroshima,” which affected me greatly. I liked The Door a lot.
The Door operated from 1959 through 1964 and was owned by Ben Laigo. I just interviewed him last month for an upcoming piece I am writing for Historylink. He still has an incredible collection of photos, menus and memorabilia from The Door.
Hi, This may be a shot in the dark. But my father, J. David McCollum, was a folk singer in coffeehouses in the late 50’s-early 60’s. The story he and my mother told was that they actually met when she was a waitress and he was singing in a coffeehouse where she was working. I tried searching him on Newspapers.com but got nowhere. I do have a hand-drawn poster that is promoting a radio show or appearance that he did on KING radio. Other than his stories about it and the poster, I have no idea which coffeehouse or if indeed he had a show on KING or not.
Would you have any information on this? Dad died in 1989, and Mom died in 2000, so I have no one else to ask at this point!
Thanks,
Elizabeth
Does anyone remember a Greek coffee and pastry place run by a man named Dimitri? It was truly eclectic and romantic, full of flowers and with lots of dark corners ideal for intimate conversation.
oh wow. i was just talking about this with an old time seattle person and she didn’t remember it at all.
i went there a couple three times on dates back in maybe 1967 or 1968. it was on about 10th and olive, south side of the road. a low building of maybe just one story. lots of sofas and as you say, dark corners and eclectic. it hung around for maybe a couple three years after i first went there and then just disappeared into the mist – or maybe i did. glad you remember it. we’re probably the only two in the world who do.
Remember it fondly- esp. since I worked there a bit –! *My dad taught eng. at U.W, and was friends w/ Dimitri thru the grapevine. He somehow got me a lil gig delivering diminutive drinks, espressos/ Turkish coffees/ desserts to romantic couples, which I remember fondly! One couple asked ‘how’s business!?,’
to which I replied, ‘it’s been kinda slow, actually.’ Dimitri overheard that interaction and immediately responded that one must uphold the illusion of abundance, regardless- *an early lesson in retail, which I well remember from the tender age of 10, or so!
Such a cozy/ romantic venue-!
*Am remembering Dimitris and responding here to this post from a similar venue, in the town of Petaluma, where I now live! Sitting at a lil filigree table such as those at Dimitri’s, altho his were painted white. It reminded me so much of Dimitri’s, I googled it and am now responding to this post!
Enjoying a lovely rosé, along w/ an octopus/ manchego cheese appetizer w/ olives and Marcona almonds-!!!
Yes, I remember Dimitri’s and remember the dark Seattle nights I went there in the 1970’s. My friend Gordon Sondland introduced me to Dimiti’s for its off beat, odd decor and vibe. I lived in Seattle for almost 30 years and loved the the many coffee houses that thrived there.
Up on the northwest part of the ave?
Yes! I knew Dimitri! The shop he opened (which, as I recall, was simply called “Dimitri’s”) was the most unique, most awe-inspiring experiences I’ve ever encountered throughout my life. I remember Dimitri (dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie) would often stand just inside the entry door and would personally hand a fresh-cut red rose to any female who would come in. I had a couple of my paintings on display inside the shop. To this day, the whole place remains in my memory more like a dream than a reality because it was so “unreal”. You probably get what I mean. I always wondered what ever became of that veritable treasure trove of art and antiques that were so meticulously displayed throughout every nook and cranny of that place.
I took several dates to Dimitri’s place, trying to impress upon these girls how sophisticated I was!…Anyway, my late uncle was a Seattle cop for 30 years..he told me a couple of stories concerning Dimitri’s “clandestine behaviors” that got him arrested a couple of times!…I will not elaborate on that…but it was the later 1960s. I Have no idea what eventually happened to Dimitri…One thing I noticed, was when me and my date would finish wandering thru the amazing roomful of artwork, Dimitri would seat you at a darkened table, and bring tea and small pastries to consume. At the time, I thought those pastries had to be exotic…but later, I found out that those “pastries” were just mundane, sliced up Hostess cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Ho-hos, etc!!! He was fooling us!
First it was a laundry, then Spiros Savvides opened it; only coffee and pastries at first. I remember when his wife offered me a skewer of souvlaki that they were planning to sell for 65 cents. Costas Antonopoulos was the baker (and partner?). The next owners were George Lagos and Charlie Tine. George’s two sons were just kids–Dimitri and Tassos. Dimitri is a grandfather now. He managed it and his father retired. I lived a block away in an apartment above a tuxedo shop with a Neon Penguin outside my window. “The Continental” was its name. It is sorely missed and was the place to be besides WOERNE’S European Pastry Shop. We loved both places. The U District is just not the same without those hangouts. I met my native-born Greek husband there and we have been married 50 years this year in December. I also hung out at the Eigerwand when I was in my 20s (80 now!).
…was moved to SF in 1960 at 15, returned to Seattle for school 1963-65…used to go to Public Market & discovered coffee place I liked across street in angular alley, but sorry I missed most of the folk oriented places other than Place Next Door when I got car (56 Chevy for $100) & would go to the Guild 45…was able to get beer at tavern across from Hasty Tasty, great days in Seattle…hung out at bookstore around corner from University Av, think proprietor was Stan Iverson maybe…moved back to SF in ’65, which was timely…sad Seattle so overcrowded today, it was special back then…