Just another Wednesday night at the Comet

Seattle, Capitol Hill, 1981: Ed is a regular at the Comet. It's Wednesday night. He plays the jukebox, drinks beer and talks to whoever sits next to him. A couple of film buffs, a white guy and a petite Asian girl, sit next to Ed. The film buffs are going back and forth about the movie they just saw at the Egyptian. Two girls and a guy walk in.  They are wasted.  The guy can barely stand.  One of the girls bops around and the other puts quarters in the jukebox. “Start Me Up” from the Stones comes on. The girl that bops around, jumps up on a table and starts dancing.  She rip's her shirt off and the bar is alive.  Regulars hoot and holler. The girl that bops around, whips out two matches and places the cardboard tips in her mouth. She nibbles on the tips, num, num, num. They are soggy. They are similar to the consistency of wheat paste. She sticks them on her pencil eraser nipples and lights them on fire.  The petite Asian girl looks at Ed and says, just another Wednesday night at the Comet. 

I worked with Ed at a glass artist's studio. He told me that story one day while we grouted hundreds of glass mosaic pods and listened to 91.3 KBCS. He said it was just another night at the Comet.

I took the picture of the Comet, not too long ago from my car window, as I drove by during the Seattle heat wave of 2009. The RZA concert poster caught my eye.