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Reviews
Razing the Bar: A Documentary About the Funhouse (2014)
About so much more than just a punk rock bar ...
"Razing The Bar" is an amazing, touching, insightful and often hilarious documentary about the life and death of Seattle's beloved punk rock bar, The Funhouse.
It's a beautiful film that lovingly portrays the gritty and giddy reality of what a functioning underground music scene looks like, but also digs deeper into the more universal issues of what the larger affects of involvement with such an artistic community has on people's lives over time. Even more, it sounds an important warning bell about the threats that rampant, unthinking gentrification poses to places like this that breed the culture and vitality that attract people to a city like Seattle in the first place.
While Seattle enshrines and mummifies its storied past as a "Music City" across the street at an antiseptic tomb like the EMP, it does nothing to preserve the kinds of places that once allowed young, poor, desperate, vital musicians to make that kind of culture in the first place, a culture that "Razing The Bar" captures perfectly.
This film is now working its way into the festival circuit, and if you have a chance to see it, regardless of your city or your background, it's not to be missed.