PORT ANGELES — You can zero in on the empties, or you can listen for the live music.
Downtown Port Angeles is seeing a flurry of fresh venues, and restaurants that are both health-conscious and open late. So while there’s much talk about the vacant storefronts, business owners such as Galen Hammond are busy with new ventures.
Galen and his mother, Lisa Hammond, have turned the former R Bar into the Metta Room, which with its high stage, dance floor and bar looks like a nightclub.
But “I wanted more of a community events center,” Galen said of the lounge at 132 E. Front St.
Metta is a Pali word for friendliness and goodwill — “community” is the word Galen uses — while he and his staff host “Tapas Tuesdays” with Latin music, board-game nights Wednesdays and “Feast Your Eyes” nights with movies and other activities Thursdays.
Local bands, from PufnStuff to Good Machine, and out-of-town acts such as Bellingham’s Yogoman Burning Band take the stage Fridays and Saturdays, with cover charges that stay under $6.
Yogoman, a six-piece ensemble specializing in Jamaican and New Orleans-style dance rhythms, arrives at the Metta Room tonight for a 9:30 show, and then visits Bar N9ne, 229 W. First St., same time Saturday night. Cover charge: $5 per night.
“Two different vibes,” bandleader Jordan Rain said of the downtown spots.
He also summed up his band’s mission, which could also fit as the venues’ goal: “We’re trying to get people in the Northwest out of their shells” through music and dancing.
“It’s hard sometimes” to get out there, Rain said, “but you feel better” afterward.
The Metta Room is probably twice the size of Bar N9ne, added Galen, who hopes to keep booking touring bands, to draw bigger audiences.
He also wants other art forms present, so local painters Doug Parent and Jeff Tocher adorn the Metta Room’s walls with their canvases.
The venue also has family friendly “Gather and Create” afternoons of arts and crafts, Saturdays from 2 p.m. till 7 p.m.
On a recent Saturday, Seattle country songstress Jessica Lynne stepped up for a blistering set — and in the midst of it, invited local singer Jennifer Smith onto the Metta stage. The two women had just met. Up there together, they harmonized, natural as could be, on “Landslide.”
Beside the Metta Room is another Galen and Lisa Hammond production: Turnip the Beet, a fast-food bar stocked with local, organic and free-range ingredients. The toasted pitas, wraps, salads and Graysmarsh Farm blackberry cobbler are available till 11 p.m. most nights and till the wee hours of the morning on weekends.
Around the corner from the former R Bar is the former Peaks Pub, now the Lazy Moon Craft Tavern. Live music happens here at 130 S. Lincoln St. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights as well as some Saturdays.
In a laid-back atmosphere befitting the name, local singer-guitarists Doug Parent, Dan Maguire and Ches Ferguson invite a variety of players to make music with them. They start fairly early in the evening: 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, for example, is Ferguson’s standing Wednesday gig.
Out by the water, Port Angeles has a new restaurant row-let: La Belle Creperie, Jasmine Thai Bistro and the new H2O, which opened just before Thanksgiving.
Owner Young Johnson devoted some nine months to remodeling the old India Oven at 222 N. Lincoln St. — “I gutted the whole thing,” she says — and now employs 26 at her airy lunch and dinner spot.
H2O’s menu is about organic vegetables and free-range, hormone-free meats, while the atmosphere is oceanic, with a photo mural of LaPush and a large driftwood bundle suspended over the foyer.
“You go anywhere along the coast, and you see the pirate theme. It’s all dark,” said Johnson. “I wanted little splashes of the Northwest,” in bright blue and natural light.
“It was scary, assuming the lease on the building,” acknowledged Johnson, who sold her Seattle convention planning firm before embarking on H2O.
But “the city of Port Angeles has been a support. They’ve been here for me every step of the way.” People walking by, seeing the new bistro take shape, also urged her on.
H2O was one of the downtown businesses that took advantage of the city of Port Angeles’ facade improvement program, said Nathan West, the city’s director of community and economic development.
Other restaurants nearby have either participated in the program or applied for one of its grants: up to $10,000 in matching funds for a facade lift.
“Our downtown has created a supportive environment,” said West, “for some really unique businesses.”
Other downtown shops and venues that have opened or come into new hands are Poser Yoga, the yoga and dance studio at 128 E. Front St.; Sweet & Salty FroYo, at 116 N. Lincoln St.; and the Ballet Workshop, the dance school at 117 W. First St. that offers classes for children, teens and adults.
Galen Hammond, the owner of three downtown businesses, didn’t like Port Angeles when he arrived in 1997. He was just 15, and had been living in hip Asheville, N.C.
But he and his new hometown have changed.
“I really like this town,” Galen said. “We’ve had nothing but blessings in PA.”