Pearl Jam, the Jack and a Black Crow
Pearl Jam, the Jack and a Black Crow
Ripped from the pages of Zeeks’ print magazine, Fuel Your Stoke
In November, 1997 Doug McClure and Tom Vial (D&T for the purposes of this piece) took over the ground floor lease in the iconic Triangle-Building located at 5th and Denny, right under the Monorail and across the street from Chief Sealth Park. The 2nd floor tenants? Pearl Jam.
D&T have always liked the Zeeks’ environment centered around PNW staples such as huge pieces of fir, exposed brick, blackened sheet-metal and polished-concrete. The previous tenant, Julia’s (still kicking-it in Wallingford!), had more of a white-tablecloth café feel. So, when Zeeks took over the space, D&T naturally started to peel back some of the fancy stuff to expose the building’s Northwest bones.
One day they removed some innocuous looking aluminum 2x4s.
Later they were drinking beers and admiring their work, and genuinely feeling victorious when, like Doug says, “some tall, skinny guy with long hair charged-in screaming at us!”
Turns out the 2x4’s they had removed were vital support beams! As a result, half the people working upstairs at Pearl Jam headquarters were stuck in their offices because the floor had sagged so much that their doors didn’t open anymore.
That is how D&T met Pearl Jam.
Feeling that it would generally be bad juju to take out half the members of one of the world’s greatest rock bands, D&T immediately went into MacGyver mode to get the problem fixed. How? They sourced some huge, rough-cut and recycled old-growth fir beams from a ship- yard in SODO, picked them up in person and then somehow put them in position to keep the offices of one of world’s best rock bands from caving in.
The problem was that even after getting the beams in place there was a sag in part of Pearl Jam’s floor. Tom’s dad, Hurricane Dave Vial, diagnosed the problem — there was still a gap in one section located between the old-growth fir and the floor joist. Doug simply ran out to his Isuzu Trooper, grabbed it’s car-jack, jammed it into the gap and jacked it up until the floor was level. Problem solved!
Zeeks made up for trapping Pearl Jam in its offices by plying them with free pizza and beer once the ovens and taps were in. That fueled their stoke — for a while.
Then Zeeks installed its now iconic rotating, neon sign on the corner of the building — right in front of band manager Kelly Curtis’ office window. Kelly Curtis is a legend. Like all legendary rock band-managers he is formidable and not to be trifled with. In Doug’s words:
“Kelly scared the shit out of us!”
When the sign went up, Kelly summoned both D&T to his office. “You guys are a pain the ass and too loud. We are moving out! Good luck with your pizza joint!”
D&T came back to the restaurant the next Monday morning and a crowd of people were surrounding and pointing at the Zeeks sign. Why? There was a crow standing on top of the sign as it rotated. Nobody could tell whether it was real or fake. Turns out it was fake and Pearl Jam had pranked Zeeks on their way out…
Epilogue
D&T and Pearl Jam are all good now. Our crew in West Seattle tells us Eddie is a regular take-out customer at that shop. Not that they would ever take us up on it, but Kelly, the band and the rest of the squad from those days have free pizza at Zeeks for life. Not only is this a reward for being patient neighbors, but for also being hometown heroes and making the whole Pacific Northwest proud.
The Triangle-Building is still standing! It is now the Zeeks Pizza Building and the home of our flagship pizza-pub and company headquar- ters. In the restaurant you can still see the brick wall, fir beams and Doug’s car-jack from the back dining room. Oh, and Hurricane Dave had one of Zeeks’ most popular pizzas named after him.
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