It’s official, folks: You no longer need to don haz-mat gear to use the bathrooms at the Comet Tavern.
One of Capitol Hill’s most venerable watering holes (it’s been open since 1938), the Comet officially re-opens in extensively cleaned-up form to the public today, some five months after a melange of financial and logistic issues closed its doors.
The tavern’s transformed pretty radically, with a much more open ceiling and a bit more natural light. Simple wooden booths, tables and benches comprise most of the furnishings, and wooden support beams lend a faint hint of country-pub hominess. The largely retro posters, signs, and ephemera peppering the layout feel natural and unforced. For the first time in a long while, food will be on the menu (yours truly sampled the Wild Boar Sloppy Joe and the Grilled Steak Sandwich, both of which are definitely a step above your average pub grub), and most importantly, the new Comet will continue to serve cheap beer. All told, they’ve done some genuinely nice things with the place.
There has been, and will surely continue to be, some carping about the joint’s re-jiggering: It’s hard not to romanticize the beery, sweaty atmosphere that the Comet accrued over the last decade or two as a loud/fast/sloppy music venue (see photo gallery for contrast, and bear with the muzzy quality of the pre-renovation images). But new owners David Meinert and Jason LaJeunesse have solid roots in several beloved local businesses–Meinert owns the 5 Point Cafe and LaJeunesse co-owns Neumos and Barboza, among others–and they’ve tried to create a comfortable, funky (in a good way) local hangout that respects the Comet’s entire history.
LaJeunesse chatted with us about re-opening this Northwest institution, and about the peril-fraught (and urine-soaked) challenges therein.
What were the technical challenges in getting The Comet ship-shape again? I would imagine the antiquity of the place would’ve made it a bit of an ordeal…
It definitely was a bit of an ordeal. We realized early on, that as soon as we touched any of the electrical stuff, we were gonna have to do a full upgrade. That added a lot of money right out of the gate. The plumbing was, as you can imagine, in rough shape, so we had to replace a lot of that. We completely ripped out the women’s bathroom–completely. Nothing stayed. Then all the refrigeration had to be completely gutted and rebuilt from scratch, including the walk-in that’s in the back bar, and the walk-in that’s underneath the mezzanine.
With a lot of those things, we didn’t necessarily know how bad they were…We ended up having to gut the entire place, whereas we originally thought it’d be more of a facelift. It ended up being a complete remodel, honestly.
What’s the situation for hosting live music at the new Comet Tavern?
There’s a light set-up for the bands. They’ll set up [for playing] in one of the corners furthest from the bar. At this point, we’re gonna play it show-by-show and see what makes the most sense, and once we find the spot that we like the best, we’re gonna hang a small PA system. Some tables will just get stacked up and other tables will get sent up to the upper balcony. Then there will be an open floor, just like there used to be. They had a small stage for the last incarnation of The Comet for a few years, but previous to that, the bands always played on the floor. We realized early on in this process that we’re not a concert venue: We’re a bar and tavern that has shows and games. We do a little bit of everything. It’s a lot more casual, and we’re OK with that.
I appreciate that the graffiti in the men’s room remains intact.
Originally, we were more like, “We’re gonna keep the graffiti, as much [of it] as we can.” And by the time all the urine-filled drywall had been cut out, we gave up…People had also been kicking massive holes in the walls over the years, and the holes weren’t getting repaired. So by the time we we filled in all the massive holes, there was nothing left of the original stuff: It was all just mud. That just goes to show how poorly maintained the bar was over the years. You can’t have that many people going in and out, drunk, and not maintain it for a decade. Places get destroyed quickly, you know? With the men’s room, it was like, “We don’t have to bust the brick, so it’s staying [laughs]!”
What was it like trying to acknowledge The Comet’s history as a performance venue while creating a more casual atmosphere?
Well, I think we realized that The Comet Tavern, as a punk club, was never what we wanted to do. The punk club was actually a very small sliver of the Comet’s history, so when we took it over, we were like, “We’re not gonna make it a punk club and do shows seven nights a week. What do we want to do with the Comet?” Well, I think the Comet was best suited as a neighborhood tavern, a neighborhood hangout, a neighborhood living room. So how do we do that, but at the same time how do show respect for the fact that it did have shows from time to time?
It’s hard to read some of the comments on Facebook, or online: “Oh, you touched the Comet–It’s RUINED!” or, “You touched the bathrooms! It’s not the Comet anymore!” The Comet’s bigger than anyone’s selective memory of it. When you look at the sum and the whole of it, we’re talking about sixty years of history to dig through. So when we realized that was what we were working with, it really freed us up to do our best in terms of what that means.
A lot of that inspiration, we got from the previous owners who held it for the longest. Sam Wright and Cathy Hillenbrand were both very gracious with us and invited us into their homes. We heard their stories, and went through their boxes of old Comet memorabilia. They explained what it was about the Comet that was important to them. That was probably the stuff that resonated the most with us.
How will the current Comet’s live performances differ from those before the renovation?
With Barboza and Neumo’s both, we do a lot of national touring acts, and a lot of big local shows. We charge a cover, and it’s very much run like a concert venue. With the Comet, there’ll be no cover, ever. We’re gonna pay bands from the bar, and there’ll be a tip option on people’s slips, so that when they’re here on band night, they’ll have the option to tip the band if they want to tip the band. It’s a lot more casual. And we’re not trying to build three-band bills. We’ll have a single band with DJs playing records…Again, it’ll be very casual.
You seem to be on a mission to preserve the neighborhood feel of Capitol Hill.
I don’t know if it’s a mission: It’s trying to preserve the things you love. I spent a lot of time here–I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 14 years–so for me it takes zero effort to find what’s good to preserve about the Comet. It just comes naturally, I guess.
As long as David Meinert refuses to support raising the poverty wage, I’m afraid I can’t go to this business. Too bad, because Jason is nice!
my thoughts exactly