Joey Arias, Raven-O, and Sherry Vine at Re-Bar, Seattle, WA, February 14, 15, 1997

This poster advertises two performances by Joey Arias, Raven-O, and Sherry Vine at Seattle’s Re-Bar on February 14 and 15, 1997. 

Joey Arias is an openly gay performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist living in New York City. He was born in North Carolina and moved to Los Angeles at the age of six, where he later became an early member of the comedy troupe the Groundlings. On December 15, 1979, Arias and his close friend, Alternative musician Klaus Nomi (1944 – 1983), performed with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live. Arias gained popularity after making cameos in the 1988 films Mondo New York, Big Top Pee-wee, and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. It was at Wigstock, the infamous East Village drag festival which ran from 1984 to 2005, where he debuted his signature blunt black bangs, a tight, high ponytail, and sleek eyeliner, a nod to Billie Holiday on the cover of Lady in Satin. In the 1990s, Arias covered Holiday’s music in a show called Strange Fruit, which ran for over a year at the Astor Place Theatre in New York, and he performed weekly at Bar d’O in the West Village. In 2003, he moved to Las Vegas to emcee in Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity, before moving back to New York in 2009. 

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 during the COVID-19 pandemic, closed indefinitely, they hosted disco nights, art exhibits, theatre, drag, burlesque, and live bands, supporting generations of LGBTQ patrons and performers. KEXP’s Riz Rollins got his start as a DJ, becoming a big part of Seattle’s Black music scene, 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. 

This poster was designed by Ellen Forney (b. 1968), who is a cartoonist based in Seattle. In the 1990s, her autobiographical comic strip I Was Seven in ‘75 ran in The Stranger, and her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines, in collaboration with comedian Margaret Cho, writer Kristin Gore, professor Camille Paglia, and Stranger sex columnist Dan Savage, among others. She has published work related to mental health and political activism, curated a travelling exhibition on comics and health for the National Library of Medicine, and painted two murals in Seattle’s Capitol Hill light rail station. 

This poster was printed by 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 (b. 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, 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.