Last Exit on Brooklyn

[3] The cafe's name was suggested by Paul Dorpat, editor of The Helix, as a play on Hubert Selby Jr.'s counterculture novel Last Exit to Brooklyn.

[6] The cafe was known for its original espresso concoction named the Caffè Medici – "a doppio poured over chocolate syrup and orange peel with whipped cream on top".

"[8] The Last Exit was the subject of a 1987 retrospective in The Seattle Times in which Cisski described his intent to "create a haven where students and the benign crazies" were welcome and where "everyone felt equal and there were no sacred cows".

I remember the din, the open-mike music, cigarette smoke, impromptu poetry readings, the arguments of lefties, libertarians, crackpots, and cultists.

[16] Descriptions of the interior and atmosphere of the Last Exit appear in Kristin Hannah's 2008 novel Firefly Lane,[17] in David Guterson's 2008 novel The Other,[18] and in Marjorie Kowalski Cole's 2012 The City Beneath the Snow: Stories.