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On August 19, the social media accounts for Rendezvous Seattle posted a three-photo “letter to our community,” announcing that the business had been purchased a week earlier and that it would “temporarily close” for renovations, effective immediately. All events would be canceled until further notice, it read, and people who’d paid a deposit on the Jewelbox Theater or the Grotto event spaces were told to contact management. It was signed not with human names but instead “The New Owners.”
What the letter didn’t mention is that all but one member of the Rendezvous’s staff was also laid off. This announcement has really brought the chair down on Seattle’s arts community, as four different performance venues contained within the historic bar are lost to them for now: the main bar area and dance floor, the art deco Jewelbox Theater, the basement-level Grotto, and the intimate Red Velvet Lounge in the back.
At first, nobody seemed to know who had actually bought the business, and in a city that’s suffered recurring waves of loss and trauma thanks to clandestine corporate takeovers—and in a community of drama kids, no less—the worst was widely assumed. Nervous rumors began churning right away, fueled by fear and question marks.
On August 20, veteran Seattle emcee and Stranger Undisputable Genius of Comedy Emmett Montgomery wrote a post on the subject on his social media accounts, which read in part:
For almost two decades I have had the joy of being one of the ghosts in the odd haunted house that was this impossible beautiful thing. … It was a place to take beautiful risks and an important part of Seattle’s ecosystem.
I don’t know what type of community the “New Owners” think they will have after burning bridges with the artists and weirdos … who they have displaced and financially injured. This is a cruel and ignorant attack on the city I love and a desecration of a sacred space for Seattle strangeness.
A hail of angry comments followed, suggesting that the owners’ letter reeked of ChatGPT, calling them cowards for not identifying themselves, and posting pleas for available stages to host orphaned shows.
Turns out, the mysterious new owners of the Rendezvous had walked among them for decades.
Semon “Simon” Tesfai and Jamie Lee bought the business from former owners Max Genereaux and Alex Myers on August 10. Alongside a long career working in Seattle bars, including Re-bar, the Crocodile, and Bathtub Gin, Tesfai himself was once a tenured performer in the Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling circuit at Re-bar (RIP), and he’s helped produce and support countless other live shows in Seattle over the years. Some of the angry commenters have even worked with him, reportedly, not realizing they knew a New Owner personally.
Tesfai’s wife and co-owner, Lee, although not a performer, is the co-executive director of the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority. For 50 years, the nonprofit has restored and retrofitted historic buildings while working generally toward “preserving, promoting, and developing the unique ethnic neighborhood” of the CID.
This info confounded the narrative a little and gave the community some new questions to wrestle with. Tesfai and Lee seem like friends to Seattle’s performance community, not the types to turn this beloved historic venue into a Cheesecake Factory, per the conjectured fears of the crowd. But why did they cancel all the events? Why did (almost) everyone get fired?
***
When I sat down with Tesfai and Lee in the Grotto, Rendezvous’s historic underground speakeasy—a classic renovation scene with stepladders, cardboard boxes, and wire rolling shelves loaded with dinnerware—Lee had an answer straightaway.
“Well, the problem is that we don’t have the proper permits to open yet,” she says. “We’re still waiting on King County Public Health and insurance [and] a few other things too.” They don’t have a Toast point-of-sale system set up yet, either—a process involving extensive hardware installation, site readiness checks, and a comprehensive onboarding program that can take four to six weeks.
“Without those things,” Lee says, “we can’t open.”
Tesfai says there were a few surprises waiting when they took over the space, too. They plan to use the kitchen upon reopening. But the previous owners didn’t really use the kitchen, he says, and there was no way in hell it would pass inspection. They have a chef friend who’ll serve Oaxacan food once the kitchen is up to code.
Lee and Tesfai have a litany of problems to solve first: electrical issues, spaces with no HVAC (like the sweaty, sweaty Grotto), and a gloomy, dark paint job in the main bar and dining room. The vibe grows tense as they talk over the enormous workload and short timeline. The biggest project of all, they say, is to build an all-ages-friendly layout, since right now, the bar is right in the middle of the main floor.
Tesfai says he’s long lamented Seattle’s dearth of all-ages venues. He recalls seeing his first show at the Vera Project back when it was at Theatre Off Jackson, which led him to “craft a wider lens, a wider scope of the city, as an East African kid with a sheltered upbringing.”
“I was a Chief Sealth [High School] kid,” he says, “and I remember three of my friends dragging me out and it being like the first time I’d seen a show, the first time I’d done anything without family! It was huge. Ever since, I’ve been a supporter of the Vera, but their ethos has stayed stagnant, to the three-to-five-piece rock bands. And like, I still love it! … But I think there’s an investment in youth and youth musical interests that is not served in this city.”
He says he’s working with the Rendezvous building’s owner, Jerry Everard, to build a partition between the main bar and the dance floor, along with a separate entrance on Second Avenue, so they can have all-ages shows without kids entering the bar. They’ll “prioritize” the Grotto as “more of a speakeasy—a private, more adult place.” He says they’re planning industry-night shows for people who work on the weekends, and they’ll add wheelchair access and spaces for people who either can’t legally drink or just don’t want to be around drinkers.
“From an artistic standpoint, those elements are important to me, so I can invest back into the city that I love,” Tesfai says. “So that is part of what is making this not an immediately turnkey situation.”
“What he’s not saying,” Lee ebulliently adds, “is that this is a dream he’s had for so many years. We’ve looked at spaces across Seattle for a long time, so we’ve been ready when thinking about costs and what we need to build and so on. I just work at a nonprofit, but he’s the visionary here.
“And hindsight is 20/20,” she confesses. “Were there things we should have done differently? Sure.” She mentions that they’re first-time business owners, and that unfortunately, this is how they’re learning some important lessons.
If Tesfai and Lee succeed in their purported plans for the Rendezvous, it does seem like a big net positive for the city. Seattle absolutely does need more all-ages arts spaces, and the venue would be so much more versatile with updated electrical, HVAC in the stuffy underground Grotto, and a full-service kitchen. With Lee’s elite background and network in historic building restoration and Tesfai’s font of creative ideas, they’re poised to do a lot of good here. E.g., as we chatted, Lee and Tesfai were lightly discussing the idea of hosting chef popups once their kitchen is up to code—such as a popup comprising the recipes of their moms, a Chinese immigrant and an Eritrean immigrant respectively. That would be dope as hell.
“I would just like to say that I’m not a fat cat,” says Tesfai, who’s opened up by this point and is putting some emotion on the table. “This place really means something to me. There’s a bevy of Seattle talent… and I hope to honor them with the efforts that I’m putting into this building. I think I am a representation of this arts scene—I’m coming from working on Dina Martina shows and Ms. Pak-Man shows with Scott Shoemaker and Brown Derby shows. My challenge is to make this arts scene as great as it can be—I don’t plan to pull anything away from it. And I don’t own anything here. I just am leasing the right to make a platform for creative folks to present their talents.
“Respect to artists who might be concerned about where their platform may be,” he goes on. “They don’t know me. But I also don’t know y’all, so give me the opportunity to be an artist and have a vision for the place that I’ve invested in. I understand people’s concerns, and they don’t know to not have them. But the benefit of the doubt goes a long way.”
Giving him the benefit of the doubt might be easier said than done for the freshly laid-off Rendezvous staff. In his defense, Tesfai points out that the former staff were Genereaux and Myers’s employees, not his, and says he’s interviewed some of them and decided to keep one person on staff. Lee admits that communication has not been the greatest between them and the former owners, and she says their understanding was that Genereaux and Myers would tell their staff that they would not be employed by the new owners. The message, it seems, wasn’t transmitted.
Investor, historian, and former Rendezvous co-owner Max Genereaux is also known locally as “The Reviver.” His thing is buying crusty historic dives and repairing them until they shine anew, which was the plan with the Rendezvous along with the bars he still owns/co-owns: Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard Smoke Shop, Pine Tavern, Al’s, and the Sunset Tavern. (See also: his stunning 2022 reno on the Smoke Shop, especially the diner half of the bar, replete with a killer menu update.)
Over the phone, Genereaux says, “The Rendezvous was an emotional project for me. It was all about saving a dying historic business. I went in with all heart.”
As an aside, he does mention—casually, if germanely—that none of his former Rendezvous employees were working there full-time when the sale went through. “Two people had three shifts per week, and everyone else was one shift per week, so it was super part-time.”
Later, via email, he writes, “Restoring old bars operationally and physically is hard,” mentioning his great disappointment and regret over failing to revive the Rendezvous the way he’d hoped to. He wishes Tesfai and Lee “the best of luck.”
***
Until mid-August, the DJ, emcee, and “Seattle’s burlesque super villainess” Morgue Anne worked at the Rendezvous for 10 years, doing audio, tech, booking, and various admin work. She says the staff were initially told that they would keep their jobs after Tesfai and Lee took ownership.
“People kept going, ‘They’re gonna abruptly close. We’re gonna show up one day to a locked door,” she says. “When we had the first meeting about it, I directly asked, ‘Are we going to close? Do we still have our jobs? What can I plan for?’ And they told me, ‘No, we’re gonna keep things running as is.’
“So I was talking to people, being like, ‘No, we’re not gonna close. Your show’s totally fine.’ So I went to bat for the Rendezvous as an institution, and I got made a fool of. They made a liar out of me.”
Lee and Tesfai say via email that they communicated the layoffs “pretty early in the process.”
“On July 27, we reached out to have them tell staff that, if they are wanting to stay on, to contact us to have a meeting,” Lee writes. “Only two staff reached out. How this was communicated by prior ownership to staff was not under our control.”
Even when she got the news that she was indeed losing her job, Morgue Anne says she had to ask Tesfai for it point-blank. She says she and Tesfai were on a phone call, discussing rekeying the locks one moment, when he began talking about keeping her on to work for a four-week transitional period as a contractor. She stopped him and asked if, at the end of the four weeks, that would also be the end of her time at the Rendezvous.
“And he said, ‘Yes.’ A one-word answer. I kinda had to pry it out of him.
“The whole thing has been very, very weird,” she continues. “To go from ‘No, we’re not gonna change anything, and yes, you all have jobs,’ to pretty much firing everyone without telling people what’s going on, the moment the ink is dry on the contract.”
After the phone conversation, Morgue Anne says, Tesfai went back on that “yes,” offering her a host/bartending role to “utilize” her knowledge of the burlesque community. But she declined the offer.
“There is no more trust here,” she told him.
***
With the loss of four different low-cost venues, which hosted shows ranging from karaoke nights and goth dance parties to stand-up comedy showcases and full-length plays, other performers are hurting too. From November 2024 until, well, now, Sonnet Stockmar produced Improv Live!, a monthly comedy show, at the Grotto stage in the Rendezvous’s basement. The Rendezvous held an important place in the performing arts ecosystem, she tells me over Facebook Messenger. It was one of the city’s last accessible, affordable venues and a safe place for “independent artists doing drag, improv, sketch, burlesque, music, comedy, theater, etc., to experiment and devise new works.” Stockmar writes that she spent “countless hours” over four months working on her group’s Improvised Scooby-Doo show that’s slated for October.
“Jinkies!” she writes. “We are just one of many artists going through the same sudden struggle. I’m just hopeful that the new management will keep Rendezvous’s history in mind when they reopen. Without affordable, accessible venues, there is no arts culture. It’s not our hobby. It’s our art form.”
Since 2013, the Comedy Nest has found a home in the Rendezvous’s Grotto. A rare femme-/queer-safe space in the notorious boys’ club of stand-up comedy, it’s one of the longest-running comedy open mics in Seattle, of any flavor. Coproducer and performer Liz Thompson writes via email:
“The loss of The Rendezvous space has been devastating for the indie comedy scene in Seattle—it’s been one of the more accessible venues for community members and up-and-coming comedians to try out new mics, comedy showcases, or one-person shows.” The Comedy Nest helps marginalized voices be heard, she asserts, and that’s more important now than ever. “We hope the new ownership will welcome The Comedy Nest and other comedy shows back to The Rendezvous,” Thomspon writes, “but if not, we will relocate The Comedy Nest to a new venue.”
Timmy Booth has also produced comedy showcases at the Rendezvous over the years, and with the bar’s closure, he’s worried about other performers losing these accessible stages, where he’s tried out new concepts for his own acts.
“Yeah, it was always the most welcoming place,” Booth writes via DM. “Since I’ve been here, it’s been a place where performers can book other performers, where new producers can make something cool. And they were able to do that because the people [formerly] running The Rendezvous saw the value in building community and didn’t charge us an unsustainable price to try stuff! … And right now we don’t have any other spaces like that in Seattle as far as I know.”
Fortunately, it sounds like the Seattle arts community has rallied, and some of the orphaned shows have found new homes on other local stages. A day after I chatted with her, Stockmar writes again to say that, mercifully, Improv Live! has been offered stage space by ComedySportz Seattle at their Fremont theater.
***
To cut through all the kayfabe, the facts go like this:
The business called the Rendezvous Seattle was purchased in mid-August, not the building. It was bought by a local married couple and not, like, Sun Capital Partners—or even a Seattle-based restaurant corp like ESR or Daydream State. Tesfai and Lee have strong roots in Seattle’s performance community, the local hospitality industry, and historic building restoration, and rumors of them knocking down the Jewelbox Theater’s northwestern wall or making any other kind of radical architectural changes are, they say, unfounded. They’re modifying the main floor to allow all-ages shows, and they’re making some repairs, but the plan they’ve laid out is to keep things overarchingly the same.
And they’re enthusiastic about continuing to provide all four of the Rendezvous’s venues to Seattle’s performing community. This is, they say, the point of buying the biz in the first place.
Regardless of what is customary or legal when purchasing a business: When (almost) an entire staff is laid off, even if they’re not full-time, that’s wack. As well, it sucks deeply that the Rendezvous’s entire calendar of shows got canceled, and it super sucks that some producers were only given 48 hours’ notice after many hours of planning and rehearsal. It’s still a real sloppy look, and bad business besides.
But if Tesfai and Lee didn’t have all their licenses or insurance yet, or even a POS system, those shows just plain weren’t gonna happen at the Rendezvous. The bar may as well have been wiped off the face of the earth.
Ultimately, it does seem like Tesfai and Lee are well-meaning, if green, bar/venue owners, and they’re learning some quick, hard lessons about buying a highly visible bar on short notice. Some of this mess is their fault; some is certainly not. And they probably should have signed their names when introducing themselves to the community (and written the letter themselves, ahem). If the pair manages to repair, update, and reopen the Rendezvous as planned, then the city’s arts community—those who didn’t lose their jobs—could be better off than when they began.
Maybe, after all the devastating corporate gore we’ve seen in Seattle’s bars and restaurants lately, it’s dumb to be optimistic. But to borrow another wrestling term, a clean finish is still possible here.
