Night Watch / Tom Scanlon
One less Hideaway for punk crowd

Laura Kelly, aka MC Piece, above, and Marisol Masso, aka MC Sol, lead Jumbalaya.

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In Buddhism, there's karma: What goes around, comes around (more or less). In Belltown, there's barma: One joint closes, another opens.

Saturday night, First Avenue between Virginia and Wall streets was a busy hive of party-bees, buzzing around, battling for parking, flitting from one bar to another, waiting in line to be part of the beautiful-people scene at Axis, popping into Jai Thai or Tia Lou's to see what the post-dinner dance action was like.

Some party-bees were buzzing — and, likely, getting buzzed — at the Apartment, a swank new dinner/lounge spot next to the Bada Lounge. Others were talking to honeys (so to speak) at Torero's, the just-launched, upscale Mexican restaurant and bar, taking over for Fandango.

While the First Avenue crowd — seemingly affluent, carefree, trend-following twentysomethings — calls to mind the R.E.M. line "shiny, happy people laughing," the scene a few blocks away was far different. Here, dusty, surly people were gathered, at what may have been the last night of the Hideaway, a punk-rock bar that took over when the Sit & Spin closed last year.

Asked whether last Saturday was, indeed, the Hideaway's last night, employees there were as vague as if they were staffing a speakeasy.

Patron to bouncer: "I heard you're closing."

Bouncer: "Yep."

Patron: "When?"

Bouncer: "Tonight."
 
Patron: "Tonight?"

Bouncer: "We might stay open a couple more nights ... "

Patron: "Why're you closing?"

Bouncer: Wordless shrug.

Two bartenders were asked if it was truly the last night for the Hideaway. One deadpanned, "It's MY last night," before walking away; another nodded.

The Hideaway certainly resembled a listing ship, halfway gone. A beer cooler near the front door was nearly empty, a handwritten sign read "CASH ONLY" and the performance space — granted, never very fancy — looked just about stripped. The crowd was light, just a few dozen, looking like the typical Hideaway crowd: 22- to 25-year-olds, dressed not-to-impress, tattoos optional but strongly encouraged.

Owners Dave Eck — also of Dirtnap Records — and Jennifer Jurgensen had hardly put much money into aesthetics, and the sound system was "well" (as opposed to top-shelf). Still, this was a fairly important venue in Seattle, where hard-edge indie and straight-up punk bands could play, and the lineup was heavily local bands, as was Saturday's billing of the Amazombies, Sledgeback and others.

The owners did not return an e-mail, and the Hideaway's phone number rings into a fax machine. The home page of the bar's Web site (www.thehideawayseattle.com) hints at what might be the reason for closure: Titled "A Night at the Hideaway," it's a cartoon with progressive panels showing a neighbor calling the law, and a cop coming to the Hideaway to tell them to knock off the noise. (After the cop leaves, the sound man turns the dial up to "11.")

While the shiny happy people of "new Belltown" will hardly miss the Hideaway, its closing gives the punkers one more reason to be angry.

Around town

• Jumbalaya, the live hip-hop mainstay at the Baltic Room, is jumping ship and moving to the Mirabeau Room.

As delicious as the dish it's named for, Jumbalaya has been a Seattle nightlife highlight since it was launched at the now-defunct 700 Club. Led by the MCs Piece and Sol (Laura Kelly, Seattle's reigning poetry-slam champ, and Marisol Masso), Jumbalaya blends vocalists, musicians such as Maktub drummer Davis Martin and DJs Vitamin D and Roc'Phella.

Jumbalaya makes its debut in uptown Queen Anne's Mirabeau Room at 9 tonight ($8, ladies free before 10).

• "The Spirit of Guthrie Tour" makes a truck stop at the Tractor Tavern at 9 p.m. tomorrow ($15). Leftover Salmon's Vince Herman, RatDog (the Bob Weir band) bass player Rob Wasserman and Seattle singer-songwriter (and street performance legend) Jim Page will improvise songs based on Woody's lyrics and unpublished writings.

The Tractor has quite a weird week, with bluegrass-metal band Split Lip Rayfield at 9 p.m. Monday ($10) and absurdist rocker David "Pere Ubu" Thomas at 9 p.m. Tuesday ($12).

• The great Afrika Bambaataa brings his massive game to Chop Suey at 10 p.m. Thursday ($12). The breakbeat-DJ forerunner and producing legend ("Planet Rock," back in the '80s) is all over the place on his latest record, "Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light." Some of it is straight-up "Renegades of Funk" old-school, but the restless Bam doesn't stop there — he has Gary Numan, he has King Kamonzi, he has crazy hyped-up beats and shouts. Afrika lives in that place where hip-hop meets techno, and he's not going anywhere soon, apparently.

Some people just know music. Bambaataa is one of them. Any young DJ and/or aspiring hip-hop artist should bring notebooks, as this will be a master class.

• Karl Denson, formerly a side player with Lenny Kravitz, brings his funk-jazz-jam band Tiny Universe to the Crocodile at 9 p.m. Sunday ($25).

• Seattle expatriate Greg Dulli returns with the Twilight Singers at Neumo's at 9 p.m. Thursday ($13). Now living in L.A., Dulli has a new album called "She Loves You," on which he reinterprets Billie Holiday, Björk, Mary J. Blige, Gershwin's "Summertime" and — don't do it, Greg! — Coltrane's "Love Supreme." Because, apparently, no one told him not to.

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com