Dave Meinert On Seattle's Changing Nightlife Scene

Dave Meinert manages bands like the Hey Marseilles and the Lumineers. He’s involved with the 5 Point Café, and he started Seattle’s other big music festival: the Capitol Hill Block Party. He's also been a driving political force for the last few decades, helping shape the culture and nightlife of this city.

In the early '90s he booked shows for Odd Fellows Hall. Of that experience he remembers:

The police wanted to shut that place down because it was all ages. We did raves, hip-hop, punk rock shows. We got a lot of pressure from the city to close. At one point a lieutenant from the precinct told us they'd leave us alone if we stopped doing black shows.

We did a show right after that, that was a traditional Ethiopian group and the police shut that show down. There was no dancing. They just saw black people so they shut it down. It was a very different scene. You couldn't do that now, but back then, even as recently as the early '90s, it was a very different culture here.

David Hyde spoke with Meinert on his political activism and how the nightlife scene has changed in Seattle over the years.