Personally, I have a slew of good memories of the place and am sorry to see it go. I've even played there a couple of times with former past and present Fanta employees and/or artists, including Jeremy Eaton, Peter Bagge, Andy Schmidt, Adam Grano, Kaela Graham, Demian Johnston and my wife Rhea Patton. Their sound guy, Jim, is the best sound guy in Seattle. I didn't go there so much anymore (the last time was to see Midlake a month or two ago), but I don't know if that was me getting older or them getting less relevant. Mostly the former, probably a little of both. But I spent a large portion of my 20s there, and they did some good things for Fantagraphics over the years. R.I.P.
Here's a couple of pics from 1997, of the "40 Buck Rock Opera", performed at one of the Croc's ATM art shows. The band was a mostly-Fanta staff: Jeremy Eaton on vocals/umbrella, Demian Johnston on guitar, Andy Schmidt on bass, and me on the skins. As you can see from the signs on the monitors, the largely improvised 'rock opera', fueled by the inspired theatrics of Eaton, was for sale for $40. No one bid.
