Image by Megan Holmes
About Place
Issue #26
Smells like work spirit
By Mairead Case
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 12:00am
Sub Pop — the record label whose repertoire includes Nirvana, the Shins, Rosie Thomas, and Sleater-Kinney — has moved, and their new digs are shinier than cellophane. Up until August 2005, the label operated out of Belltown, Washington, a skyscraper-rich area fringing downtown Seattle. There, office quarters were so tight that online sales rep (and Charming Snakes frontwoman) Lacey Swain had to stash CD overflow under the front window ledges.
Worse, the staff members were no less crammed than those Mudhoney LPs. “It’s kinda tough,” says Sub Pop publicist Joan Hiller, “when you’re on the phone with the Village Voice, and two feet behind you, your co-worker is talking about the Constantines with KNRK, and two feet to their right, someone’s telling CosmoGirl why Jimmy [Tamborello of the Postal Service] doesn’t want to do an interview about pillow-talk, slumber-party madness.”
In August 2005 — thanks in part to the dot-com implosion and increased online sales at the label — Sub Pop packed its vinyl and moved a few blocks down 4th Avenue to a new home, complete with lime-colored walls, Art Deco lamps in the board room, and plenty of warehouse space. “For the first few weeks, we totally felt like we were on the Real World,” Hiller says.
One of the biggest changes was the move from street level to the third floor. Gone are the dudes trying to score record deals by flirting with the receptionist — as are the junkies yoinking Emergen-C from the staff cupboards. “We shared bathrooms with the coffee shop next door,” Hiller says. “And once, this guy came in the front door, got a bowl and some water and started microwaving. When we were trying to usher him out, he kept muttering, ‘I’m just making my soup. Just making my soup.’”
Gone also are the 14-year-olds dreaming of Kurt and Courtney’s heart-shaped box. “I miss seeing people walk by and smush their faces up against the window,” says Carly Starr, Sub Pop’s director of international marketing and publicity. “Staff meetings aren’t as entertaining as they used to be.”
Gone, too, are the claustrophobic workspaces. “I’m terribly lonely now,” Swain says, but Hiller quickly adds that “we’re still within punching range of each other. We just have to get up and walk a few feet to do it. It’s amazing how much more efficiently we work now that we’ve got our own departmental organization systems and independent spaces.” Hiller says she’s decorated her own with “flowers, plants, fake Oscars, a Postal Service gold record, and panels of communist Chinese families.”
Despite all the Bowie-style changes, Sub Pop’s trademark snark and boozing have remained very much intact. “We yell, get drunk together, and generally treat each other like brothers and sisters,” Hiller says. “We absolutely work ourselves to the bone for our bands and each other.”
Perhaps the happiest beneficiary is Dinky, Sub Pop’s sweet and shaggy-eared dog. “He is psyched,” Hiller says. “He has way more room to move around, and he loves the air-hockey table. He tries eating the puck.” Better that than the gold records.
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