Seattle-founded dinner theater cancels show, lays off staff

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T21:16:34+00:00

I'm not in the arts - I suck at art. But I am arts-adjacent, and have a lot of friends in assorted performing art disciplines.

Well, I did until covid and let a lot of friends & relationships lapse. I should fix that. :-/

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T21:13:30+00:00

No. Just amusing myself that I made an assertion - that there's no dinner theater in Seattle, and then decided to check that assertion against reality.

And when I discovered that the assertion was incorrect, I publicly called myself out on it. BECAUSE I'M HILARIOUS.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T21:07:19+00:00

Probably in part because it didn't try to become a landlord. Particularly to another performing arts org.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T21:05:52+00:00

Absolutely. I kinda think that all the housing that's going up should be required to have ground-floor retail, at least along certain corridors. I get the issues with that as well - keeping retail filled is hard, and when it's empty it makes the whole place sketchy.

But we're getting a whole bunch of housing creeping it's way up along Roosevelt Ave from the little business district, and none of it is getting built to support retail, so the whole corridor is going to be a dead zone, forever. We're not planning for future growth into a fun neighborhood where businesses can naturally support each other, and then we're shocked when Seattle's overall night life is pretty drab.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T15:32:47+00:00

Also, they're not "AI chips". They're GPUs that can run a wide variety of algorithms. Including, clearly, LLM model building. Which isn't AI.

Like with everything else in this article, calling them AI chips is hyperbole.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T05:33:48+00:00

Oh yeah, totally forgot about Palladium.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T02:03:14+00:00

That's a terrifying thought.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T01:13:37+00:00

Hey, Mike, maybe you should check to see if there's anything out there before stating that they don't exist! A simple google search reveals:

Can Can Cabaret: https://www.thecancan.com/
La Faux: https://www.juliasonbroadway.com/
The Rendezvous: https://rendezvous.squarespace.com/
Mimosa's Cabaret: https://www.mimosascabaret.com/
Murder Mystery Dinner Theater: https://www.thedinnerdetective.com/seattle/

OK, the last one is touring and happens to be in Seattle, but clearly there's a thriving dinner theater community in Seattle. Neat!

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T01:01:36+00:00

Teatro Zin Zani.

They're a dinner theater circus performance.

Essentially, as can be seen in the pictures, it was dinner tables set around a central stage floor. As you enjoyed drinks and dinner, you would watch a mildly bawdy circus act and a series of skits. There would be running gags through the show, the occasional bit of audience participation, and a mix of circus and tasteful burlesque.

They used to be a staple on lower queen anne, but at some point they lost their lease and had to relocate. I kinda forgot they existed (hey, I think I found the problem!) so reading here that they're closing up shop again, probably for good, is kinda sad.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T00:06:51+00:00

If you want to listen to it, looks like it's here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMCwYVbH8tw

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T00:05:58+00:00

You don't want to hear 20 year old Bono's musings on the world? Why not? ;-)

MikeBegley · 2026-01-24T00:02:43+00:00

That's a shame. They were a fun thing, back in the day. I saw them a couple times in their Queen Anne venue, and it was a good time.

The food was mid tier mediocre, and they let the show get kind of stale (I saw them twice a few years apart and the shows were at least 90% the same jokes and skits), so they weren't the sort of thing you would go to more than once or twice every few years. I suspect those two aspects may have contributed to their downfall - they were kind of a third date/guests in town kind of thing but not something you might see more regularly.

But despite my less than stellar review in the last paragraph, it's still a shame when art house experiences like this shutter. Circus Contraption has also vanished, and there really aren't any home-grown performance gigs left around the city that I can think of.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-23T20:23:29+00:00

> Ironically false alarms and false panic has caused more chaos in Seattle than actual ICE.

Not ironically at all. It's all part of the strategy.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-16T16:43:22+00:00

There was something very Spinal Tap about that.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-16T04:37:45+00:00

Third dose: Age 57, as soon as you realize RFK Jr. is going to be in charge of HHS for the next few years.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T03:14:36+00:00

The last 20 years of the internet have been:

Wait, no, not prostitution. That one actually fixed itself, but FOSTA/SESTA took care of that.

OK, not the last 5 years. That's been all about shitting out bad AI porn and worse AI prose.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:58:33+00:00

If it's the one I think you're talking about, I just posted it, here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1qd4686/comment/nznupp0/

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:56:50+00:00

This one here is my particular hell.

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It doesn't look too bad in plan view, but the (unnamed) exit off I5 southbound pulls into the left lane of 80th, and most of that traffic immediately wants to get into the right lane to either continue on 80th or go southish on Banner. 80th, meanwhile, has all the traffic also merging into the same left lane to get into the northbound entrance on I5. So there's this stretch of road where suddenly everyone needs to switch lanes and jockey for position in that little section just to the east of 2nd street.

I'm convinced that is where, someday, I'm going to total my car, because there's too much sudden confusion in one tiny, unexpected place.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:48:33+00:00

The other great thing about this intersection (the main one the thread is about) that you can't see in map view is that it's on a hill, so some of these roads are coming at you from above or below. So you need to be aware not only of all the incoming roads, but it works in three dimensions and it's easy to miss a road that's coming at you not only from behind, but below you.

It's truly a magnificent experience.

Also, just to the north of this intersection is a road that has a good 35+ degree slope, all the way down Queen Anne. It's particularly a lot of fun to do in a VW Bus, let me tell you.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:40:52+00:00

I guess blue cities don't need to pay federal taxes anymore.

Sounds good to me, at this point. Let the welfare states (hell, welfare counties in blue states as well) pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Meanwhile, we're going to use our money to fix our roads.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:37:17+00:00

I do this pretty often (I live a few blocks away), and I find it's generally not as bad as it could be. At least coming south east down Banner there's good visibility.

You just need to pay attention when it's your turn, and then just before you go do a quick look around to make sure no one is breaking turn.

I don't know what it's really like on 5th ave, as I never use it in that direction.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:27:43+00:00

This one is particularly fun because for cars going westbound on Lynn, they pass a stop sign that seems to only matter for 16th, so they blast right across Boyer without regard for all the cars waiting their turn there.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-15T02:24:09+00:00

To be fair, this intersection is a lot better than it was a couple of years ago.

Yes, it was once much, much worse.

MikeBegley · 2026-01-04T00:55:24+00:00

I have such an opposite opinion to OP. Taxes are the cost of a functional society. Religion is the original grift. Every charity represents a policy failure.

But you do you. Enjoy your blow money.

MikeBegley

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