At Slog, Savage suggests that the space about to be vacated by the not-lamented Sugar might present a good location for the about to be evicted Pony -- which was, after all, created in the very short-term in that space that will be torn down.

But, as often happens on Slog, the comments are as interesting as the original post. After a few bar history comments that miss the history of the nabe's gay spaces, "Daddy Jeff" offers this great bit of history reminding us that Savage's suggestion would take us forward into the past:

Here is some the back story on the Sugar space. The guys (Jimmy & Lance) who opened up the Eagle (fna the J&L Saloon) got the lease on the Seattle Boxing Club in 1983/84. For many years, events and parties that were too large for the J&L (commonly known as Judy's Lounge) were held there as well as some dungeon parties. iN 1989 Jimmy opened up The Balcony Bar which was modeled after Chaps Bar in SF. The IRS seized the Eagle and Balcony for back taxes (the day Jimmy died). Kenny paid the back taxes and sold off the Balcony. It reopened as the short lived Ramrod. Then the girls had the bar as the Easy for the next five years. After that, it was one club after another. FX - the bar before Sugar also had gunshot problems. The building has been sold twice in the last two decades. The upper floors of the building are tagged as unsafe to use.

I'm pretty sure there's another name that should be in here. The name escapes me  at the moment -- is it the "Kenny" that Jeff mentioned? He managed J&L and oversaw its conversion into the Eagle.

Because I only vaguely recall those kinds of details, I'd love to hear even more about all that. After all, whatever you might think of the space, Eagle is one of the more successful clubs in the town. And that's not something anyone who visited J&L in its first months would ever have predicted.

But still... It's great to see these bits of history -- those places and people that helped contribute to this strange mosaic we've become and that the neighborhood.

(In a box somewhere, I have a few pics of J&L's grand opening, for which Jim Tully -- another of those names -- decided the SGN staff should rent tuxedos. We looked pretty spiffy.)