The Can Can

Every time Cody and I go to Seattle, we try to do a few new things, as well as some of the time-honored traditions.  When preparing for the trip, I stumbled upon a cab company called Crown Black Car Service.  They are a local group of young musicians who, in addition to playing in bands that perform music that only my father could possibly like, also operate a successful fleet of black Crown Victoria cars.  And they happen to be cheaper than a taxi from the airport to the downtown area.  Here is their site.  Try them out if you're in Seattle!  They're cheap, reliable, and they'll have some interesting tunes playing during the drive.  (I realize you might be thinking of Doobie's Taxiola, but it's a little higher-class than that.  Although they ARE proud of their town.) 

But I didn't write this post to tell you that.  I wrote this post to tell you that whilst perusing their web site, I discovered a page of links to places around Seattle that these cab drivers like to hang out at.  And one in particular looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a shot.

The Can Can Cabaret & Kitchen is in downtown Seattle right at Pikes Place Market.  It's in the basement beneath a flower shop on 1st and Pike.  You can get into the club with "standing room only" tickets for $10.  For more, you can actually get a table with a server so you can enjoy dinner AND the show.  And it is one HELL of a show, I tell you what......




This was a really rad little bar with mosaic tiled walls, low ceilings, dim lights, and good drinks.  It was very small.  I suspect that if this bar were in Boise, it would attract the same sort of crowd that hangs out at the Neurolux or the Balcony.  This is one of the few bars in Seattle that sells real (supposedly) absinthe.  If you've ever tried absinthe, you know that it tastes sort of black licorice-y.  I hate black licorice, but Cody loves it, so he tried some.  He said it made him feel a little funny and a lot thirsty.  It does give you a very loopy, special sort of buzz.  Not wanting absinthe, I told the bartender I like whiskey and he made me some sort of fantastic peach-colored whiskey martini called a "Night Court" or something weird.   

The show was....... something else.  It started off with a movie of a giant  mouth- complete with rainbow braces, metallic gold lipstick, and a goatee- lipsynching to a very high falsetto voice singing a Bohemian-type folk song.  After that, there were cross-dressers, corsets, Minnie Mouse ears, fright wigs, rouge, a midget in a diaper, and a giant cardboard cut-out of a sparkly hand doing the shocker.  The man pictured in the poster above was chasing other men dressed as ladies around the stage and attempting to pinch their hineys.  He had spectacular legs, though. Don't worry, there were women, too.  They were just as scantily clad as the men. Neither of us could actually tell you what the show was about.  I don't suspect it bothered to have a story line. 

We spent the first ten minutes of the show with our jaws on the floor, the next ten minutes squinting in disbelief, and the ten minutes after that laughing hysterically and shaking our heads at each other.  During intermission, they showed a short indie-flick of two men on a beach showing their muscles and their tiny swimming trunk bulges to a lady in a red dress.  It had subtitles, but they were fake subtitles that the Can Can staff had added, so they were ridiculous and had almost nothing to do with what was happening on the screen.   It was disturbing.  It was grotesque.  Far and away, the weirdest thing Cody or I had ever seen.  We had a BLAST. And we didn't even get mugged on the way home.

*This is a photo that should give you just a sample of what the show looks like.  I did NOT take this photo.  I poached it off the internet.