Break Down with DJ Riz and Hump!: Wednesdays at Re-Bar, Seattle, WA

This postcard advertises DJ Riz Rollins’ new weekly Wednesday night appearance at Re-Bar, in Seattle’s Belltown, which began with an opening party on September 27, 1995. Rollins also began his still-running radio show Expansions on what is now KEXP that same year. 

Riz Rollins (b. 1953), known as DJ Riz, is a long-time DJ prominent among Seattle’s Black and LGBTQ communities. He grew up and went to college in Chicago, where he sang in the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket choir, before moving to Seattle at 25. He began DJing at Re-Bar in the 1990s and is also a mainstay on KEXP, formerly KCMU, a student-run station at the University of Washington which gained local recognition for being the first to air grunge bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden in the 1980s. On KEXP, Rollins hosts two mixed genre shows, Drive Time on Mondays, and Expansions on Sundays, which he first launched in 1995 as a response to the rise of acid jazz, a mix of funk, soul, hip hop, disco, and jazz, in the local club scene that had yet to take off on radio. 

Steve Wells and Patrick “Pit” Kwiecinski opened Re-Bar in January 1990 at 1114 Howell Street, which had long been a safe space for Seattle’s LGBTQ community. The Night Hawk Tavern (or Nite Hawk) opened in the 1930s, creating a center of gay nightlife featuring cabaret, followed by Thirsty’s in the 1970s, which then became Axel Rock, a dance-focused venue, in the 1980s, and finally Sparks Tavern, which added full-length stage plays, before Re-Bar moved in. Until 2020, when Re-Bar, like many venues, closed indefinitely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they hosted disco nights, art exhibits, theatre, drag, burlesque, and live bands, supporting generations of LGBTQ patrons and performers. Along with DJ Riz, who got his start as a DJ, David Schmader put on his first three plays and drag performer and comedian Dina Martina was born at Re-Bar. The venue also hosted one of the longest running poetry nights in the West, Seattle Poetry Slam, and a weekly Sunday dance night, Flammable. On September 13, 1991, Re-Bar also hosted the infamous release party for Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind.