Move Over Coffee: Juice Bars Are Gaining Attention

Seattle's other beverage - juice - celebrated a milestone a few nights ago: the 10th anniversary of The Gravity Bar, the offbeat and artsy juice-bar/vegetarian restaurant.

The birthday party, at which "aliens" wandered among the guests and "Venus" performed an interplanetary belly dance, came as the local juice scene is expanding.

Seattle may be a coffee town but it's a juice town, too, on a smaller scale. The Gravity Bar, with two locations - near the Pike Place Market and on Capitol Hill - was one of the earliest to get the localsjuiced.

Latest addition to the realm: Kirkland's cool-looking Juba, decked out in tropical pastels, serving a "new generation" of juice drinks, and arriving as the first of several planned Jubas in or around Seattle.

Other juice bars, in shopping malls, supermarkets and along city streets, attest to juice's staying power here.

"It's jammin' in Seattle," said Jeff Hagon, co-owner of LifeSource, a University District juice bar - though the going can be shaky for new juice joints.

Juba is the brainchild of Scott Greenburg, a lawyer, and Mike Ostrem, a former law-firm business manager.

"We thought there was a market out there for freshly prepared beverages that will cover the entire spectrum from juices to coffees, teas and everything in between," said Ostrem.

Juba offers all of those drinks, hot and cold. They're flavored with such things as almond mocha, vanilla and spices, taking them a step beyond places that mix only the fresh juices, Ostrem said.

Among Juba drinks: Mustique - papaya, ginger nectar and water; St. Vincent - tangerine-mango nectar "in our rich smoother base"; and Berry Cool - "a cold boysenberry mango treat in Juba's own iced tea."

The flavoring nectars are made at Juba's commissary/headquarters in Seattle. "Seattle, I think, is very responsive to new ideas," said Ostrem. "The market here is health-oriented and beverage-oriented."

Long before most, Gravity Bar owner Laurrien Gilman saw juice's potential in Seattle, and paired it with vegetarian fare at her two restaurants. Customers can order countless combinations of fresh fruit and vegetable juices.

The Gravity Bar's color and style intrigue out-of-town visitors, who insist their friends back home stop in when they visit here.

"We're almost more popular with people from out of town (than home-towners)," says Gilman, an artist in ceramics, photography and other media. "In a way, we're a very Seattle thing."

She says celebrity Gravity Bar regulars have included Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, "a total fan who's been here many, many times." (He ordered rice and peanut sauce every day, says a former Gravity staffer.)

But if juice-drinking keeps growing, as some predict, at least one of Gilman's party guests won't be responsible. A produce-truck driver, he said he delivers 400 pounds of carrots to the downtown Gravity Bar for juicing every day. As for himself, he said, "I'm a meat-and-potatoes man."