The Belltown Messenger news box at the Northeast corner of Second and Bell street in Belltown (in front of the old Speakeasy/211 Club vacant lot) has been removed for maintenance after suffering from numerous graffiti attacks. Messenger circulation manager Rex Lameray told us the box isn’t coming back to that location. “That corner is dead,” said Lameray on October 21, hours before a man was shot in the hand at the very same spot. “We also had a box in front of the old Crocodile, at the other end of the block, and that was tagged up within a week. It seems Eastern Second Avenue between Blanchard and Bell is a rough place for newsboxes, which corresponds with the block’s high hipster factor. This also shows that vacant lots and closed nightclubs (the new owners of the Croc building are building out a new space as we speak) attract blight and ... bad art.”
The Messenger’s other newsbox is in front of the clean, civilized Cinerama right now.