Since 1991, The Crocodile on Second Avenue has been the center of Seattle's music universe, and you are just steps from its door. Grunge was about to explode, and the Crocodile was the room where it gathered itself. Nirvana played here in September 1992 — a few weeks after Nevermind made Kurt Cobain the most famous musician on earth — in a surprise show that remains one of the great secret gigs in rock history.
Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees — all played the Crocodile in its early years. The room holds 600 people; the sound is loud; the ceiling is low. What happened in this neighborhood between 1988 and 1994 changed popular music.
Before grunge, rock was polished and theatrical. After grunge, the most important music was raw and self-deprecating, made by cold, underemployed young people from the Pacific Northwest who had something to say about it. The movement burned fast: Cobain died in April 1994, Layne Staley in 2002, Chris Cornell in 2017.
But the songs — Smells Like Teen Spirit, Black, Black Hole Sun — are still playing somewhere right now.