For nearly twenty years, Seattle’s U-District was home to a quirky and much-beloved dive bar, Café Racer. Filled with eccentric wall art, tattered thrift store furniture, and colorful regulars, Café Racer was a vital hub for the local arts community during its time in the neighborhood.
The jazz and free improvisational communities were no exception. In 2010, a group of students from the jazz studies program at University of Washington formed Racer Sessions, a regular improvisation-focused jam session at Café Racer that quickly generated local and national attention.
In December 2024, organizers held the final Racer Session, calling it an intentional "retirement." But, for nearly 15 years, these experimental sessions nurtured lasting friendships, innovative creative projects, and experimental, jazz-adjacent bands, some of which are still actively performing today.
Married couple Ivan Arteaga, a saxophonist, and Katie Jacobson, a vocalist and songwriter, were core organizers of Racer Sessions and vital fixtures of the Café Racer scene for much of the 2010s. In 2018, they moved to New York City, and in June they opened Pacha Café, a coffee shop, Peruvian-inspired eatery and blossoming third place for creatives in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“In terms of a place that feels like a third place [for] people who would like to feel comfortable in a café working on something artistic, not necessarily professionally or like as a show, even, that's something that we really thought was beautiful [about Café Racer]. We're intentionally trying to have our space feel like that,” Arteaga said.
Arteaga, who was born in Lima, Peru and raised near Bellevue, Washington, is a graduate of UW’s Jazz Studies program. He was involved in the beginning of the Racer Sessions and with Table & Chairs, the record label formed in 2011 to support the myriad of musical projects forming around the jam session.
Jacobson, meanwhile, grew up north of Seattle in Mountlake Terrace and attended Central Washington University. She stumbled upon the Racer Sessions after college when she moved into a house with several UW student musicians, including Arteaga.
Jacobson, a vocalist, pianist and songwriter, began as a jazz studies student at CWU before abandoning the program for philosophy. Racer Sessions ultimately helped Jacobson rekindle her love for music, and she formed her own band, Honey Noble, as a result.
“We were both enriched by it and found a place to do lots of things together, both socially and artistically, which of course did deepen our relationship,” Arteaga said.
In 2018, hungry to try a new place and expand their musical connections, the couple moved to Brooklyn, where they’ve both worked a variety of part-time jobs, including teaching lessons at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
Arteaga also worked as a barista, which led to co-owning another Brooklyn joint, Café Calaca, which opened in 2021. Two years later, the plan for Pacha Café got off the ground when Arteaga decided to pull out of Café Calaca so he and Jacobson could start a business together.
“Katie wasn't an owner, and her and I have all of our ideas, values, ways of making decisions, things that we think are important, things that we're learning, that we really care about,” Arteaga said.
They’ve poured all of that shared passion into Pacha Café (unrelated to the cafe in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood by the same name). The Brooklyn café serves recipes inspired by the couple’s regular travels to Peru and by Arteaga’s love for cooking, passed down to him from his mother and grandmother.
“A lot of it is classic café fare. We have avocado toast and we have a breakfast sandwich. But, we also do traditional Peruvian tamales, which is a breakfast item, and then we have some lunch things, like a lunch sandwich and a big broccoli bowl,” Arteaga said.
Likewise, they assure KNKX that the espresso, which they get from Brooklyn’s Variety Coffee Roaster, is up to Seattle standards. In fact, they chose the brand specifically because it reminded them of Seattle’s Café Vita.
“The level of coffee that we want and expect to serve at all times comes from being West Coast people,” Arteaga said.
As for its vibes and physical space, Pacha Café was built out with their beloved Café Racer in mind. Friends from the Racer community who also have since moved to New York, including bassist Luke Bergman and composer-guitarist Ryan El-Solh, joined work parties to help build out the café space before the June opening.
“Racer was such a model, like we even chose the physical space that we have because it has three separate spaces. It has a front room, it has a back room, and it has a backyard,” Jacobson said. “We really liked Racer’s hang out at the bar and chat with your friends while listening. But you could also go into the back room and just work or do a puzzle or be totally separate.”
Since Pacha Cafe’s doors opened, Arteaga and Jacobson have been intentional about creating a place where people of all stripes feel invited and seen, as Café Racer did so well.
“People like the coffee, they like the food, but we're also really friendly, and so then we just get to know people,” Jacobson said.
According to the owners, Pacha Café already has a loyal group of regulars, including dancers, crafters, whittlers, musicians, and visual artists who come to enjoy art in community. Even celebrated guitarist and former Seattleite Bill Frisell, who also frequented Café Racer when he lived nearby, has stopped in to try their tamales with a “cold fashioned,” a nonalcoholic coffee cocktail.
Arteaga and Jacobson also plan to start presenting some events, including quiet, small-group live music. They envision a mix of musicians from the community and, once they have more time, their own personal music projects.
“I think that's going to be a really amazing moment of my worlds meeting a little bit,” Jacobson said.
Before they started the café, Arteaga was developing an experimental jazz meets Latin-American music ensemble with bassist Stomu Takeishi, guitarist Sebastian Cruz, and drummer Michael Davis. Jacobson, too, has a standing duo with bass clarinetist Michael Coleman.
Within a year, they hope to cut back on their hours and return to their bands. For now, they have put band leading on hold as they nurture their new café and arts community hub, which they say is already moving in the “right direction.”
“I feel indebted to these places, where — they were cafes, they were restaurants — but they really encouraged me as a young musician to just try stuff and spread out,” Jacobson said. “And it's cool to now be in a position where we're owners of that kind of space.”
