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Derrick King

This "Center of the Galaxy" screenprint is one of the venue's Indiegogo campaign perks.

Since new owners launched a $50,000 crowdfunding campaign a week and a half ago, plans to revitalize the Big Dipper have been catching the attention of both local and national media, including Rolling Stone.

The write-up posted this morning on the music magazine's website focused largely on Big Dipper owner Dan Hoerner's connection as a former member of the popular Seattle rock group Sunny Day Real Estate.

Sunny Day was one of the major influential bands of the "emo" music movement of the '90s, but the group broke up in 2001 when two of its members left to join the Foo Fighters. Coincidentally, Sunny Day has also announced it's releasing a new song — the group's first since 2000 — called Lipton Witch, as part of a split-release record with Circa Survive, on April 19th's Record Store Day.

Hoerner has said he hopes his ties to the music community can help influence donations to the Dipper's Indiegogo campaign. As of this posting, the campaign has raised $3,215.

It should be noted that even if the ambitious $50,000 goal (intended to fund the installation of fire sprinklers, which will increase the venue's maximum capacity) isn't reached in the next 50 days, the Dipper campaign will still get to keep most of the final pot. Under Indiegogo's flexible funding model, if a campaign goal is reached the site takes a 4 percent cut. If not, the fundraiser gets what they've raised minus a 9 percent cut to the site.

Donor perks for contributing to the Dipper's fund include free passes to future shows, T-shirts, limited-run screenprinted posters by local artists (one is by Inlander graphic designer Derrick King) and combinations of these items. For more generous backers, $750 gets a private movie-watching party at the venue, $5,000 is a lifetime pass to the venue and a whopping $25,000 donation means the venue's stage will be named after that donor.