We don't walk into a sports bar

Arthur’s, Seattle, Washington (West Seattle)
They say baseball’s where you can become a star by failing only two out of three times. Some of us fail much more than that, but it’s appropriate that this bar night started with a fail.

The Oakland A’s were playing the New York Yankees in the American League Wild Card game. This wasn’t a series. It was a one game elimination. I’ve wanted to see this game ever since my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Knauf, brought a TV into class to watch the World Series. Back in the Charlie Finley days, the Green and Yellow won three world championships in a row.

I thought it only made sense to go to a sports bar to watch the game this week. One place, in far west (and north) West Seattle, near Alki Beach, sounded good, so we drove over after Mindy got home from work, listening to the beginning of the game on the radio. And the place was closed. The bar’s website said it would be open, the sign on the door of the place said it would be open, but it was not.*

We needed to find another place to watch the game. On the drive over, Mindy had noticed Arthur’s and mentioned they’d “liked” a couple of her Instagram posts. Not a very profound connection, but enough reason to stop by, with the stipulation that if they didn’t have the A’s on TV we’d go somewhere else. As we walked up, I could see that the bar TV was showing Stomper’s team, so all was right with the world -- except the A’s were trailing 2-0.

As we sat down at the bar, Megan, the bartender, gave us menus and we noticed that happy hour lasted until 7:00 pm. Megan noted we had a few minutes (ten to be precise) left to order. So Mindy ordered an open-faced lamb sammie with the house red wine. I ordered rum and Coke (even though Craig, one of the servers, noted, “You know, it’s Whiskey Wednesday.”)

Mindy sipped the wine and said, “This is very good.” She asked Megan about it, and Megan brought over the bottle -- a Spanish wine, but we noticed it was aged in American oak barrels.

Then the sixth inning came, and the Bronx Bombers scored four more runs. It’s good my burger was tasty because the game wasn’t making my stomach happy. (Mindy liked her lamb as well -- Craig had said it was his favorite.) As Craig took my empty plate away, he suggested the chocolate cake for dessert. It was a wise suggestion.

We asked Megan if we could ask her our questions. She said she hadn’t been at Arthur’s long (though she'd been a bartender for years), and that we should talk to Craig, since he’d been there since Arthur’s opened more than two years ago. So we did.

Craig’s from North Carolina. He visited Seattle on vacation, and decided he wanted to live here. As in, immediately. He was working for a national steakhouse chain and learned he could transfer to the Seattle location, so he did. His friends took care of his stuff, so he didn’t even need to go back to move. That job ended when the steakhouse closed -- a day before Arthur’s opened on April 1st.

We asked Craig our two questions, “What makes for a good church?” and “What makes for a good bar?” He answered, “Both the same, it’s all about the atmosphere… It’s about the feeling you have coming in and going out. Do you feel welcome? Like you’re among friends? It’s the difference between an uncomfortable lawn chair and a cushy booth.”

We asked him what he liked about working at Arthur’s, and he told us, “I love this place. It’s back to the atmosphere. I haven’t had a day when I didn’t want to come back here.”

When she had a few minutes between customers, we asked Megan our two questions as well. “Honestly,” she said, “Both are about the ambiance and the people.” She made some distinctions, though. Bars should have good recipes, and churches should have good sermons. Growing up, her family went to a church where the pastor didn’t really connect with them, but when they found a place that made that connection, it made all the difference.

We saw the A’s attempt a bit of a comeback, two runs in the eighth inning, but it wasn’t enough. After we left Arthur’s, we looked in the window of a sports bar across the street just in time to see the Yankees score again. That was the final score: Yankees 7 and A’s 2. But there’s always next year.

For us, there’s always next week, but I’m marking Arthur’s as a win.

*The next day, Mindy contacted the sports bar via Facebook. They said they had just switched to their “winter hours” and that Wednesday was one of the days they’d be closed. Google hadn’t caught up with the change yet.