With reporting by Sebastian Garrett-Singh
It’s hard to say why these things happen but they do. The Capitol Hill Mystery Coke Machine is worthy of Internet headlines. Again.
The latest fizzy bubbles of viral interest, we think, were shaken up by this Huffington Post click-bait — The 1 Weirdest Thing You Never Knew About Your Home State posted on March 11th. What has followed has been a rapid regurgitation across the web — all the way to Vice’s predictable conclusion: SEATTLE HAS A HAUNTED SODA MACHINE.
It’s true. Located on E John in front of the Broadway Locksmith shop, the machine continues to dispense pop and mysteries in exchange for your three quarters. CHS found a Capitol Hill family happily visiting earlier this week after they read about the machine via Der Spiegel’s site. “Refreshment in Seattle,” Google Translate claims the story is headlined. “The mystery of the mysterious Coke machine.”
The mysterious mystery machine dates to at least 2002 when The Stranger’s David Schmader published the definitive examination of the important Capitol Hill landmark. If you hate things like Santa and the Easter Bunny, you’ll want to read Reddit Seattle’s take on the “mystery.” CHS believes in the Easter Bunny so we won’t ask questions about why the mystery soda machine gets its power courtesy the locksmith business. The locksmith also can’t explain the renewed interest in the machine that will soon stand in the shadow of the Capitol Hill Station light rail facility and apartment developments. “All of a sudden it took off,” an employee said.
You can find the Mystery Coke Machine at 918 E John — or check out its Facebook page for more (or less) information.
I happened to notice the machine being filled up last Sunday morning, even before I was alerted to the Vice article, by an anonymous looking guy with what leaked like a couple of milk crates of cans. Had I only known…..
That machine has been there forever. Like…literally, forever. At least as far back as BJ Monkeyshines across the way at Broadway & E John, which was late 70’s I think?
Errrr…I think ^ . Ha ha ha…no, seriously, it’s been there forever, or at least since pop cost a quarter from a machine.
Yeah, it was already there in late 1993 when I moved to town.
[…] Most widely publicized Capitol Hill food and drink hotspot lately? The Mystery Coke Machine. […]
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[…] spring, a ripple of media attention from across Seattle and around the world helped Capitol Hill’s strange soda vending machine along John just east of Broadway capture people’s imaginations as tales of the possibly […]