Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Pearl Jam's first five shows happened in this room, back when the band was still called Mookie Blaylock and the club was called the Off Ramp. El Corazon at 109 Eastlake Avenue East in Seattle occupies a building that has housed a live music venue, dance hall or bar continuously since 1910, cycling through names - Au Go Go, the Eastlake East Cafe, Sub-Zero, the Off Ramp, Graceland - before promoter and heavy-music lifer Dana Sims opened it as El Corazon on 4 February 2005. The Off Ramp years made the address sacred ground. Nirvana played its first proper Seattle club show here and debuted an early version of Aneurysm in 1990; Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Mudhoney all cut their teeth on the stage; and the only Temple of the Dog show for 25 years happened in the room. Cameron Crowe shot scenes from Singles here, freezing the club's grunge-era grime on film, and locals have long called it "the CBGB of Seattle." Under Sims the venue became the city's punk, metal and hardcore hub: an 800-capacity main room with a bar mezzanine, running all-ages shows nearly every night with a bar for patrons with ID. Chris Cornell, Ghost, Mastodon and Skinny Puppy have all played it, while a generation of Seattle bands - Macklemore, The Fall of Troy, Aiden, Schoolyard Heroes - used it as their launching pad. The attached 200-capacity Funhouse, revived here after its original Seattle Center location closed in 2012, handles the smaller bills, complete with its leering clown mascot. The building has lived under a demolition cloud for years - permits were issued in 2019 for residential towers on the block, with the clubs slated to return in the redevelopment - but the venue has continued operating throughout, outlasting deadline after deadline the way it has outlasted every name change since 1910. Visitors should expect a proudly unpolished room: the famous sightline-blocking pole in front of the stage is gone, but the low ceilings, sticker-bombed walls and loud PA remain. It sits at the base of Eastlake just north of downtown, with pay lots a block away, a short walk from the South Lake Union streetcar.