The dive king
And Seely, a native of Seattle, a mossback raised in Wedgwood where he began his legal drinking, high-schooled at Blanchet (Bishop Blanchet to you respectful Catholics), has both a strong sympathy for the common and a sharp radar for poseurs. Let's grant for a minute the irony of this: Will most dive patrons buy a guide to dive bars, even though priced, as Seely says, the same as a pitcher of beer? Not likely. Many denizen's of Seely's world are too bleary-eyed and too rooted to their particular dive to take to wandering the city seeking the advice of Mike Seely as if he were a debauched Rick Steves.
Nevertheless he's produced a book that will be useful for both recreational drinkers who will spread the word of obscure finds to friends, and for those who rarely go to bars or dives but want to see a less-polished Emerald City. His book is a sympathetic cultural study of the Seattle many never see or hang out in. His dive bars are often like a bad ride on a Metro bus, only they're serving alcohol.
Seely's been around long enough that he's able to track some neighborhood changes through the evolution of dives, which ones have gentrified, which ones remain resistant to fad or change. His description of the grungy Comet Tavern allows him to add a little social commentary:
[A]t times, the Comet unwittingly serves as a clubhouse for the worst Capitol Hill has to offer. I'm not talking about purposefully emaciated, ironically tattooed, skinny jeans-wearing, trust fund-drawing, coke-snorting, faux impoverished, ultra-cynical Nightlife Nazis who make the Pike-Pine corridor virtually unbearable for people who don't subscribe to their signature look and 'tude. Specifically, I'm talking about the guy with the pierced eyebrows, mascara, pageboy hat, and v-neck t-shirt who pretended not to know which friend's couch he was going to crash on that night. Dude, I saw the purebred puppy in your designer backpack. You're crashing on the couch in the $500,000 condo your parents just bought you, brother. Give it up.
With company like that, Seely'd much rather be hanging with the folks at West Seattle's Tug Inn, enjoying air-drum solos, listening to a bleach-blonde drunken Indian woman hold forth, and swigging $3.50 pitcher of Pabst. And who can blame him?
Like what you just read? Support high quality local journalism by becoming a member of Crosscut.com today!
Comments:
Posted Fri, May 8, 12:24 p.m. inappropriate
How does a thinking man's frat boy know how big Jimi Hendrix's erect penis was?
Posted Fri, May 8, 1:59 p.m. inappropriate
I grew up near Gig Harbor, and the town in my youth had three dives: The Hi-Iu-Hee-Hee (which burned down when I was still in grade school), Three Fingered Jack's (which had live music) and the Harbor Inn (which still had an off-colored square of linoleum in one corner where Charlie's Barber Shop once leased space). A few miles north in Purdy was the B&H; Tavern. By the time I and my friends reached drinking age (that's high school to you mainlanders) Jack's had become the granola/tourist Tides Tavern, and the Harbor Inn remained Gig Harbor's only dive, its bright red Lucky Lager neon sign glowing out the front window. The same window bikers once threw a hapless patron through, one year at "Harbor Holidays." We made occasional visits to the Harbor Inn (which never carded) until it, too, got yuppified into a restaurant around 1980. Now there's a new Hy-Iu-Hee-Hee, a couple miles south of the original venue. It's the closest thing to a dive in my area. It has pull tabs. But it also has a restaurant license. Purdy's B&H; is now the Floatation Device, also with a restaurant license. Also a little divey, but neither the Float nor the new Hi-Iu capture the glory days of 1970s Peninsula underage drinking. I wish Seattle better luck than Gig Harbor had.
Posted Fri, May 8, 7:21 p.m. inappropriate
Will he run for mayor?
Posted Sat, May 9, 1:59 p.m. inappropriate
No dive in Seattle can match the sleaze standard set by the China Doll in Everett. Just sayin'.
Posted Mon, Sep 21, 10:55 a.m. inappropriate
This review has put me in mind of the tavern scene on First Avenue in the early seventies. My friends and I had just graduated from high school, and were more than eager to be initiated into the mysteries of under-class night-life. From Pioneer Square to Denny Way one could count dozens of dive bars with names often recalling the city's earlier, pre-'vibrant', years: the Anchor Inn at Seneca Street ( now a vacant lot ), referred to as an 'Indian bar'; the Yukon, and, kitty-cornered from the Anchor Inn, the hallowed Thunderbird Tavern, which welcomed anyone with a quarter for a schooner. The police officers who came into the T-bird apparently were satisfied that the owner's screening of his patrons was reasonable by area standards and left us to our beer and billiards; what is less apparent is whether the cops were unaware of the rough trade being initiated in a back room. Mr. Seely is surely right to include in his encomium Joe's in Chinatown, the only downtown dive bar from that beer-soaked Golden Age still standing ( though the picture windows here evoke the fern bar more than the dive bar , and its patrons can be seen squinting in the glare of daylight ).