New Years Eve at Re-Bar with DJ Riz, Seattle, WA, December 31, 1995

This poster advertises a 1995 New Year’s Eve party at Re-Bar in Seattle’s Belltown with DJ Riz Rollins. Known as DJ Riz, Rollins (b. 1953) is a long-time DJ prominent among Seattle’s Black and LGBTQ+ communities. He grew up and went to college in Chicago, Illinois, where he sang in the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket choir, before moving to Seattle, Washington, at 25. He began DJing at Re-Bar in the 1990s. He 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. 

This poster was designed by Hank Trotter and printed by BSK Screenprinting. Trotter (b. unknown) is an artist who, during his time in Seattle in the 1980s and 1990s, designed records at Sub Pop and Up Records and served as art director at The Stranger. He also learned graphic design from Art Chantry at The Rocket. Trotter now lives in Missoula, Montana where he works as a general contractor. Shane Bastian (b. unknown), Nick Sherman (b. unknown), and Jeff Kleinsmith (b. unknown) started BSK Screenprinting in a Seattle basement in 1992. They eventually had an office at 1419 10th Ave in Capitol Hill and were responsible for numerous well-known music posters in the early stages of Seattle’s Punk and Rock scenes. Seattle’s 1990s graphic aesthetic was developed here, where Art Chantry (b. 1954), Tae Won Yu (b. unknown), Ellen Forney (1968), Ed Fotheringham (b. unknown), Hank Trotter (b. unknown), Joe Newton (b. unknown), and dozens of other artists had their work printed for local rock shows, bands, theaters, and other businesses. BSK became BSK(T), sometimes stylized as BSKt on prints like this one, with the addition of Brian Taylor (b. unknown), who later formed a short-lived press called BLT (Brian Leroy Taylor), before joining Kleinsmith, Jesse LeDoux (b. unknown), and Jacob McMurray (b. 1972) to form Patent Pending Press, which ran from 2002 to 2008.