Broadway’s Boca steakhouse and bakery family mourns passing of Marco Casas Beaux

(Image: Boca Restobar and Grill)

One of the more colorful characters in Broadway food and drink is gone. Marco Casas Beaux, a creator of dining experiences across Seattle for decades, has died, his family of Capitol Hill businesses announced.

Monday, Broadway’s Boca Restobar and Grill and down-the-street Boca Pizzeria and Bakery remained closed to mark his passing. His Boca steakhouse in the old Queen City Grill was also shuttered in his honor after weekend service in his memory. They will reopen for business Tuesday.

“We will never know anyone like him. He was bigger than life and put everything into his work,” the announcement reads. “We ask that you remember his tenacity and the stories he told of a life well lived.” Continue reading

A Capitol Hill remembrance: Rachel Marshall, of Montana, Nacho Borracho, and Rachel’s Ginger Beer

Rachel Marshall ready to open her 12th Ave location of Rachel’s Ginger Beer in 2015

Rachel Marshall, the creator of Capitol Hill-born Rachel’s Ginger Beer and the co-founder of new era neighborhood dives Montana and Nacho Borracho, has died. Marshall was 42 and leaves behind her partner Adam Peters and two children.

Veteran Seattle food writer and longtime Marshall friend Allecia Vermillion reported her unexpected April 24th passing:

Peters asked if I might share news of Rachel’s death to the public. And I need to admit, it’s raw and personal. In my 12 years of writing about food and drink in Seattle, Rachel is the only “source” who crossed over into becoming a genuine friend. Ten years ago, I called to interview her about Nacho Borracho, the bar she planned to open with her bar business partner, Kate Opatz. At the end of our conversation, Rachel told me she was pregnant. I responded, “so am I.” Our sons have a three-month age difference; now they’re classmates who get up to mischief together. Our second kids were born barely a month apart.

UPDATE 4/26/2023: A sign posted at the 12th Ave RGB

CHS first met Marshall on E Olive Way in 2011 as she, Peters, and Kate Opatz got together to take over the space previously home to The Buck to open the now legendary Montana as a tribute to the small town dives they had grown up with. The goal back then was to create a bar that was “very divey and comfortable” and a “come as you are” kind of place with room in the back for Marshall’s growing ginger beer operation. Continue reading

Harriet Bullitt, the face of her family’s foundation as it built the ‘greenest office building in the world’ on Capitol Hill, remembered

Harriet Bullitt in 2011 (Image: CHS)

Harriet Bullitt, the face of her family’s foundation as it worked to create the super green Bullitt Center office building on Capitol Hill at 15th and Madison, has died at 97.

Bullitt, daughter of foundation founder Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, said her mother would have loved the building, though she “was not really a environmentalist — she just lived that way.”

“We are very proud to have our name associated with it,” Bullitt said in 2011 as the project broke ground.

The $32.5 million zero energy office building opened on Earth Day 2013 powered by solar energy and utilizing waste and rainwater in a structure lauded at the time as the “greenest office building in the world.” Continue reading

Kay Bullitt: A legacy of Seattle philanthropy — and a new Capitol Hill park

A view of the Cass Turnbull Garden (Image: Plant Amnesty)

Kay Bullitt

On the Capitol Hill of the future, the Bullitt name will evoke ideals of environmental conservation, public space in the shape of a northern Capitol Hill park, and gardens — in its past, a legacy of lumber and broadcasting, and a remarkable Capitol Hill resident who used her family fortune to support “a dizzying array of causes spanning education, racial justice, international relations, politics, historic-landmark preservation and the arts.

It’s a legacy strong enough to create something nearly impossible on an increasingly packed Capitol Hill — a new park. Continue reading

Roger Winters, who gave keynote at first Seattle Pride, remembered for lifetime of LGBTQIA civil rights work

By Renee Raketty

Seattle mourned the passing of Roger Winters, an early pioneer in the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. He passed away this week in his Shoreline home after suffering a recent bout of pneumonia. The former Capitol Hill resident and property owner was 75 years old.

“The Seattle community — and the world at large — lost a true champion for gay rights with his passing,” said Krystal Marx, Executive Director of Seattle Pride. “Roger’s decades of advocacy and political savvy helped to propel LGBTQIA+ rights forward in a way we would not have had without his involvement.”

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan agreed. In a written statement to CHS, she spoke of his relentless efforts to obtain equality for the LGBTQIA+ community. “Roger Winters worked for decades to ensure the dignity, rights and true equality for LGBTQ individuals. His voice and personal courage were unflagging over the almost 30 years that it took for LGBTQ people to get civil rights legislation,” said Durkan. “In the last four years, we have seen that these rights are far from guaranteed. This administration has directly targeted the transgender community and critical LGBTQ protections. In just the last few weeks, a U. S. Supreme Court Justice stated that hard fought wins for LGBTQ equality should be rolled back, and that some discrimination against LGBTQ individuals is a constitutional right. To honor the memory of Roger Winters and all of the other LGBTQ leaders we have lost this year, we must continue to fight.”

Susan Priebe, who met Winters in 2002 and became close friends, spoke with me to discuss Winters’ passing. She has agreed to handle his affairs on behalf of his family.

“Roger was deeply intellectual and also a fun-loving character — going from a profound philosophical statement one minute, to singing a ditty from a 50’s sitcom the next. He was a very loving and caring person, spending hours upon hours of personal time on issues and projects to improve everyone’s lives,” she said. “Roger was an insanely involved person, politically astute, a creative soul, and a very devout atheist… In the LGBT arena alone, Roger was involved with many groups from 1977 through the rest of his life.”

“Roger was a go-to leader and pioneer who helped pave the way for LGBTQ equality,” former Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen said.

Winters grew up in a conservative Christian household in Indianapolis and spent time on farms during his youth. He attended Indiana University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government. He went on to attend Harvard University on a fellowship where he became a Senior Tutor at Dudley House on campus and, later, graduated with honors in Political Science. He became an intern for Senator Birch E. Bayh, Jr., a Democrat from Indiana. In 1972, he joined the faculty of Central Washington University, where he was a Assistant Professor of Political Science. It was here, when he became involved in Seattle politics. He traveled from Kittitas County, where CWU is located, to attend board meetings of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington in Seattle.

“We white boys started out conservative because we were invisible enough to pass in a gay-unfriendly world,” Winters wrote to me in a text on March 23, 2019, while discussing his upbringing and personal growth. “Those of us who got active recognized that other people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pass were really needing the legal protection and anti-discrimination [law] we were after but we didn’t understand their point of view. We embraced diversity and sought to be inclusive.”

Continue reading

Remembering Seattle Gay News publisher George Bakan

Bakan, middle, whooping it up and celebrating the early returns for R74 on election night 2012 (Image: CHS)

Bakan, middle, whooping it up and celebrating the early returns for R74 on election night 2012 (Image: CHS)

George Bakan, Capitol Hill resident and publisher of the Seattle Gay News from the days when the AIDS crisis dominated its pages through marriage equality and 2020’s pandemic-postponed Pride, has died.

The 78-year-old reportedly passed away working at his desk on the paper he helmed since 1983 in a lifetime he also filled with fighting for civil rights, community activism, journalistic enthusiasm, and love of a good argument.

The Seattle Lesbian reported his death Tuesday:

A pioneer in the LGBTQ+, HIV and AIDS communities, Bakan was beloved by many who were influenced by his natural wit and personality. In the latter part of his life, Bakan devoted the majority of his time advocating for marriage equality, affordable LGBTQ+ senior housing and telling the stories of our time. He was the editor-in-chief of the SGN for nearly four decades.

According to a biography Bakan provided when he ran to lead the Capitol Hill Community Council in 2014, Rudolph George Bakan was born in Seattle, “raised in rural Bellevue and in the 1960s he moved with his family to Eastern Washington” — Continue reading

Outsider artist Darryl Ary remembered

Ary (Image: Vermillion)

A regular part of the scene around Broadway and a favorite of the Capitol Hill art world, artist Darryl Ary passed away in November. He will be remembered this week in a gathering at gallery and bar Vermillion.

According to city records, he was 63.

CHS noted Ary, who many knew from his regular presence in his wheelchair in front of the Broadway Dick’s Drive-in or at City Market, in 2015 as artist Baso Fibonacci made a public call for people who had purchased Ary’s paintings over the years to help curate a show of his work. In 2013, then City Arts magazine designer Dan Paulus called Ary one of his favorite artists in Seattle.

“Darryl Ary has been on his grind for the past twenty years, hawking his wares on the mean streets of Seattle, rain or shine,” Paulus said. “Scavenging scrap lumber for canvases, he paints and scratches brutalist images that have just enough pop culture jazz to simultaneously charm and repulse.” Continue reading

Capitol Hill neighborhood and ‘Right to Try’ patient advocate Donovan remembered

(Image: Jim Diers)

Friends and loved ones are remembering Ann Donovan. The former Capitol Hill Community Council president and activist raising awareness for metastatic breast cancer died this week, according to a Facebook group set up by her supporters.

A wife and mother, Donovan is remembered for her activism and support of the Right to Try bill in Washington to give terminally ill patients better access to experimental therapies. Continue reading

Plymouth Pillars, music, and good dogs — Goodbye to the Mayor of Melrose

Jones in 2011 (Image: CHS)

Friends, family, and City of Seattle officials are remembering Patrick Jones, the “Mayor of Melrose,” and his outsized work dedicated to a small area of the city.

Jones died last week reportedly in his sleep. He was ready to turn 61 this summer.

Jones, with his story of recovery from addiction as a former Marine and hitting rock bottom before arriving in Seattle with almost nothing, is remembered for his dedication to the neighborhood near his Capitol Hill Housing home around Melrose Ave where he made it a point to be a friend to nearly every type of person — and good dogs, too. Continue reading

Rosebud restaurateur remembered for work with Gay City, shaping of Cal Anderson Park

Robert Sondheim helped shape some of the best parts of the Capitol Hill you know and mostly love today. The restaurateur and businessman died earlier this month. Sondheim was 67 years old.

“He served on the board for Gay City, was part of the redevelopment of Cal Anderson Park, and was a longtime volunteer at MOHAI, among many other things,” the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce said about his passing. “Much love to his family, including his life partner Herman, and to his many friends and associates.” Continue reading