When you're running an underground music and arts venue - especially a successful (relatively speaking) underground music and arts venue in a town like Tacoma - there are no clear-cut guidelines. No instruction booklet is provided, and the task at hand is, essentially, to walk a tightrope - getting the word out and building the scene and a house show culture, while maintaining that all-important and freeing "underground" status.

For the Warehouse in Tacoma - an expansive and somewhat romanticized space in the heart of typically desolate and quiet downtown Tacoma - the tightrope just snapped.

In early February Tacoma's Warehouse - with its long and storied history of being at the center of Tacoma's young arts movement - graced the cover of City Arts. Writer Mark Thomas Deming (also of Volcano fame, and a close personal friend) drew comparisons to Oakland and Brooklyn, and asked the question: Could the next great warehouse music scene come from Tacoma?

While the answer to that question may still be yes, the chances of that future including the Warehouse as we know it took a substantial hit only a few weeks later, when - whether influenced by the City Arts cover story or not - the Warehouse's owner began the eviction process of current residents and Warehouse brain trust Adam Ydstie, Doug Stoeckicht, Emily Nollmeyer and Julie Rex. Originally claiming they'd broken their lease by operating an "illegal" business - a notion that Ydstie says was rebuffed by city provided legal counsel - the landlord's stance was later softened, but the end result was the same.

Ydstie, Stoeckicht, Nollmeyer and Rex are moving out of the Warehouse and moving on - and Tacoma's music and arts scene is left with a substantial void.

Though he believes the decision to, in essence, shut down the Warehouse as an underground music and arts venue by the space's owner was in the works prior to the City Arts article hitting the streets, Ydstie readily admits the decision to promote the Warehouse in such a manner was a calculated risk - and one that fully exemplifies the difficult positions those that orchestrate underground music venues often find themselves in.

"We decided it was worthwhile," says Ydstie - noting that the article also, "featured the fact there are people in Tacoma that care about art and music and the burgeoning scene."

That was the point. Tacoma has to seem welcoming and intriguing to outside artists to become the music and arts hub we all hope for, and people from Tacoma and beyond (outside of the regulars) need to know what's going on here for anything substantial to take root.

That takes promotion - which, unfortunately, can also spell disaster for an underground music and arts venue.

It's a catch 22 - and it may have caught the Warehouse.

That said, Ydstie - who with his partners from the Warehouse are currently weighing options and looking to create a new venue, whether it be in a legitimate business mold or an underground venture similar to the Warehouse - doesn't have many regrets. The brief five months he helped preside over the Warehouse were fruitful, he says, and he hopes the momentum created can only continue - and carry on to future underground ventures, not to mention current ventures like the 808 House.

But that's not to say Ydstie doesn't feel a little bit guilty - for trying to do right by Tacoma and promote an emerging aspect of artistic life in this town that, in his mind, has the potential to lift us all up - and maybe aiding in the Warehouse's demise.

"I feel a little like I let the city down. We intentionally pushed the line, and maybe it got a little too public," says Ydstie. "There's a vacuum now.

"But from death comes new life."

If history is any indication, Ydstie has a point. Let's keep our fingers crossed.