Business & Tech

Miles Davis Has Been Claimed: Club Bart Bartender, Booker Talks About Closing

For 6 years, Melissa Smith has been slinging drinks and booking bands for Club Bart, which closes Sunday.

If you saw a band on Club Bart's stage during the past 6 years, Melissa Smith probably had something to do with it.

Tall, with platinum hair, and definitely in charge, Smith bartended and booked bands for 6 years at Club Bart. .

"We're upset, we just found out (Wednesday)," Smith said Thursday night right before the final evening of . "There were rumors going around, but we didn't know."

Bart Starks sold the club to two brothers, Smith said, who plan to open up a "European-influenced bistro."

"They are  gutting the place to its bare walls," she said.

The 15 Club Bart employees will have to find new work come Sunday, Smith said.

She said the Ferndale venue for breakfast, brunch, live music, comedy and drinks, was Starks' baby.

"This place was in his blood but he just couldn't do it anymore," she said. "No one was coming in."

Club Bart is holding a party Sunday called Cheers and Tears to, as Smith said, send Club Bart out in style. The breakfast crew will serve their menu until 3 p.m. and live music starts at 5 p.m. For more details go here.

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"I'm gonna miss the music. We had the best artists in town play on our stage: Chad Smith (from the Red Hot Chili Peppers), The White Stripes, Duende!, Whitey Morgan and the 78s," Smith said. "I'm gonna have to go through all my old posters. I wish I had recorded more of these shows."

The walls of Club Bart are plastered with posters and paintings that accentuate the charger in front of and behind the bar. Smith said people already have started coming in and asking if they can have them.

One of those posters is a giant image of Miles Davis. Its owner, however, already has reclaimed it, Smith said.

"Most of this stuff belongs to friends of Bart's," she said.

But beyond the decoration, Ferndale is losing something bigger, Smith said.

"A lot of people are upset. Lunchtime is not going to be the same. Sunday brunch is not going to be the same," Smith said.

Club Bart's willingness to open up the stage behind the bar to fledgling comics and musicians, openness to mix new blood and old hands, and inclusiveness are things Ferndale is going to miss, Smith said.

"We've made a lot of friends, met a lot of great people," she said. "And these people love Bart's so much. It's gonna be sad."


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