Main Street Saloonkeepers Blame Vaudeville for 'Strange Quietness'
Walla Walla’s nightlife operators grumble as a surge in family-friendly theaters and parks pulls young men away from the bottle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Walla Walla saloon men are complaining of a falling off in trade due, they claim, to so many places of amusement being established in the city the past three months. The saloon men are not alone in their complaints as cigar dealers also say they have noticed a strange quietness about the main streets at night of late. Now it is clear to them that the vaudeville entertainment and family theatre, band concerts, and side trips to Dreamland Park are responsible for attracting the young men from the gilded resorts where they have in the past been wont to congregate evenings. 'It is a fact that trade has fallen off to a considerable extent,' a Main street saloonman was heard to say the other day. 'The vaudeville houses are crowded nightly with young men who in the past have been in the habit of congregating on Main street and in the saloons. They are not what would be termed hard drinkers, but men who take a glass once in a while, and it is to this class that we look to for trade.'
“They are not what would be termed hard drinkers, but men who take a glass once in a while, and it is to this class that we look to for trade.”
The tension between civic 'boosterism'—investing in family-friendly amenities—and the traditional 'vice' economy of downtown is a perennial debate. Even in 1903, Walla Walla was transitioning from a frontier saloon culture to a modern city that prioritized diverse entertainment over a drinking-only nightlife.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.