From Olivia in the CHS Facebook Group: “”

KEXP is celebrating World Goth Day, Bauhaus is playing the Paramount.

And The Cramp is ready to haunt Broadway again — and bring traffic to a standstill once more — with its mix of gothic fashion, loud music, and, maybe, live window shows.

Backed by original ownership, the infamous 1988-born Broadway shop has slowly re-materialized — from online presence, to street pop-up at sister store The New York Xchange, and earlier this year into its current incarnation upstairs inside the Broadway Alley building.

Now it is preparing for a full return from the dark fashion grave, braving the daylight of a sidewalk-fronting space in the building and a return to Broadway’s streetlife.

(Image: The Cramp)

“The pandemic has made businesses in the Alley Building close its doors and one by one these old Cramp spaces started becoming available yet again,” The Cramp’s ownership says about the reincarnation. “We rented two of the spaces for our online operations and our processing center but as more and more spaces became empty we decided to make the decision to expand our retail store into these empty spaces.”

Today, word is out on The Cramp’s plans to cast its shadows directly onto Broadway again. Will the window shows follow?

Being an upstairs store facing the street it was sometime hard to get people to know we existed in the beginning so we decided to do live window shows from Dancers, Burlesque and the all famous Drag Shows which ended up becoming one of the biggest forms of marketing we could have ever dreamed of having. With loud speakers on Friday and Saturday evenings outside our window on the 2nd floor people would wait around Broadway for it to get dark and the show to begin. This created somewhat of a huge problem with cars on the street as Broadway for 30 Minutes as traffic would come to a standstill with everyone watching the show. There were 2 shows nightly and a 20 min. break in between which helped get traffic to move again.

The store says the police department tried to shut the shows down, and the city threatened to revoke its business license. “We were on every news channel, every radio station at the time,” they write. “It was fun but eventually the street started to change.”

The shows ended. And The Cramp disappeared.

The Broadway Alley, meanwhile, remains one of the Hill’s more unique retail buildings. Recently, long time favorites have shuttered and been replaced. And one of Seattle’s most respected sushi restaurants is now secreted away in the back.

As for goth fashion on the Hill, Ritual has taken things to a new depth of darkness with its 2018-opened Pike/Pine boutique. “When you brings things to a monochromatic level, it brings a level playing field,” one owner told CHS at its debut.

In 2015, CHS talked with owner Carl Medeiros about his Broadway fashion ventures as Metro Clothing shut down after 15 years to be transformed into today’s The New York Xchange. Some of the old ’90s energy carries through including the Xchange’s sidewalk sound system. Now The Cramp is ready to rejoin the party.

For now, you’ll find The Cramp upstairs in the Broadway Alley building at 219 Broadway E where it is open daily, noon to 7 PM on Sunday through Thursday, noon to 8 PM on Friday and Saturday. You can learn more — and shop online — at thecrampstore.com.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍