Star Wars-themed house show venue Mosh Eisley invites you to "Mosh Wisely"

By Julia Berkman
Mosh Eisley smells like moss and couches. Mosh Eisley looks like my eclectic grandmother’s house. Mosh Eisley is one of the most accessible and safe house show venues in Bellingham.
The Bellingham house show scene has been growing and changing for years on end. New venues are popping up all the time, from Blue Manor to the recently refurbished Karate Church. Mosh Eisley itself is only a year old, but under its previous nom de plume, “the Loudhouse,” it has been hosting shows for much longer. Why the name change? Junior Kat Varela, a longtime Mosh Eisley volunteer and insider, explained the new name.
“It was named [Loudhouse] because the owners said ‘all the other venues aren’t gonna let really loud bands play, so we’re going to be the ones that let bands play,’” they said.
Varela and the other new owners of the venue found that concept to be a bit too pretentious.
Once the house was under new management, the crew set upon a new name: Mosh Eisley.
Yes, the name is a Star Wars pun! Varela themself came up with the name, a play on Mos Eisley, the cantina in the original Star Wars films.
“All of us love Star Wars,” Varela said. “We just settled on Mosh Eisley, with the slogan being ‘Mosh Wisely at Mosh Eisley.’ I got a bunch of Star Wars cutouts and we just ran it from there.”
In the last month, Mosh Eisley has hosted a techno show, a folk acoustic night and a hip-hop show, in addition to their usual hardcore or queer punk shows.
“We book bands/artists who air [sic] on the experimental and/or heavy side of music and that push the musical envelope so to speak,” their official facebook page says. They host longtime Bellingham bands like Tetrachromat and House of Blue Leaves, to local new bands like Chimney. Some bands come all the way up from Seattle and Portland, such as the queer punk ensemble Babe Waves and the macabre Sweeping Exits.
“Whatever bands that wanna play, friends that wanna play, bands that are touring and need a place to crash, if we’re on the map for them it’s whoever wants to play.” Varela says. “We definitely give anyone a shot.”
Mosh Eisley also boasts one of the safest spaces in Bellingham’s list of venues. “WE DO NOT TOLERATE INTOLERANCE,” is written in bold text on their Facebook page. Many members of bands they book, as well as residents and volunteers, are queer, POC or trans. Mosh is determined to make their venue a place where people of all identities can congregate and get real sweaty. When asked what they would change about the space, Varela said that they wish that Mosh Eisley was wheelchair accessible.
Mosh Eisley isn’t a free venue per-say, but they understand the struggles of college life.
“We live in a college town, there’s no way I would be able to afford $5 every week for shows,” Varela says. Because of that, five dollars is the expected donation, but no one is barred entry.
Sometimes the venue gets handed a crisp twenty, sometimes they get a linty pile of quarters.
Either way, all the money goes to the bands that play that evening.
If you can’t catch a show at Mosh, Varela recommends checking out Karate Church. It’s a venue on High Street run through the alternative library. They recently hosted Tetrachromat’s EP release show on the 19th and Squelchfest over the Halloween Weekend.
If you can, try to attend an event at Mosh Eisley. They have an upcoming show on January 6 that’ll blow your socks off.