We walk into the oldest bar (it was harder than expected)

The Central Saloon, Seattle, Washington
We thought it would be cool to go to the oldest bar in Seattle -- if we could just figure out where it was.

In other words, Mindy and I wound up at two different places when we tried to meet at Seattle’s oldest bar.

I’ve often passed a bar on First Avenue South with a neon sign reading “Seattle’s Oldest Saloon,” so when we agreed we’d meet at Seattle’s oldest bar when she got off work. Even though Mindy texted me to meet her at “Merchants,” which she’d seen listed as Seattle’s oldest bar, I figured that was the place with the neon. Turns out, that place is called “Central.” At the designated meeting time, Mindy and I texted each other to ask “Where are you?

Fortunately, Merchants and Central are only a couple of blocks apart, so Mindy walked over to meet me at Central. Eventually, we asked Zach, one of the bartenders at Central, about the discrepancy. “The history is murky,” he said. Google had already made that clear (or murky). He told us that Merchants opened in 1890, two years before Central. But in 1890, Merchants was a restaurant, not as a bar. Central opened in 1892 as a saloon, a place you could get a drink. In our book, that means Central qualifies as the oldest bar. (There is another bar in the Georgetown neighborhood, across the Duwamish Waterway from West Seattle, that claims to be the oldest. Georgetown wasn’t part of Seattle when the bar opened. So, no.)

Central does feel old. But good old. It feels like a dive. But good dive. There are photos on the wall that date back to the bar’s opening day. There are many band posters from the 1980s and 90s when grunge made the Emerald City the world’s musical hot spot. Central is still a music place with the slogan “Seattle’s best new music in its oldest saloon.” Three bands were going to play later that evening (after we planned to leave). The one that sounded the most tempting was an all-girl Weezer cover band. Which sounded awesome.

We talked a bit with Michael, Central’s music booker, who did the extra duty of fetching coffee for the bar staff. He also told us a great story about a bar trip in Scotland. The group of friends stood in front of a bar and flipped a coin to decide whether to go in or not. Once inside, they decided whether to have a beer or shots by a coin flip. They hit dozens of pubs this way, and in their final stop just before closing time, they ended up meeting the bar’s owners, who locked the door and all of them partied until 5:00 am.

The Saints and the Cowboys were playing on the TVs. Music was playing overhead, including Joan Osborne’s “What If God Was One Of Us?” You might remember the song, about meeting God on the bus.

We sat at the bar and ordered a few things from the happy hour menu (quesadillas for me and tots for Mindy, with cocktails for each of us). After we’d gotten our food and drinks, our server said, “We’re switching to the night bar, can we close you out and then you can start a new tab after that?” Zach the bartender was coming in then, and “Thank you, Zach, you’re the best!” said the departing bartender.

Zach told us that he’s usually a morning bartender. (There is something fascinating about the idea of a day bartender. It’s unexpected, like being a night lifeguard. Or, I guess, a night auditor.) He said he likes the day shift because then he has the rest of the day -- and the night -- to himself. Working the occasional night shift means recognizing a different set of regulars, and there plenty of regulars there. The bartenders greeted several people greeted by name (and one even got a hug).

Erin was also working behind the bar for the evening. We talked with her and asked her our two perpetual bar questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “What makes for a good church?” She said, “The staff makes or breaks a bar.” And she likes the staff she works with at Central. She likes other things about this bar, calling it, “timeless, with a lot of history. (It’s) not the Burger King of bars. It has the right amount of grit.” She talked about how, as Seattle continued to grow, this was a place where people still know each other’s first names.

Erin said she grew up on a reservation and had never been to church. But she thought a good church would have “a sense of community” as the most important thing. She said the strength of people is our tribal nature, our need to come together. That's something that can happen at churches and at bars.

As we left Central, I thought of that Joan Osborne song. If God was one of us, would He meet us at Central? (By the way, Christmas is coming. It’s the time of year when we can’t escape the reminder that God became one of us.)

We Walk into a Bar in South Dakota

The Old Style Saloon #10, Deadwood

“You have to read people,” Melody said, “You figure out if they want things straight or if they’re just looking for a good story.” Melody has a lot of opportunities to tell stories as a bartender at the Saloon #10 in Deadwood, South Dakota. The Western legend Wild Bill Hickok was famously assassinated while playing poker at Saloon #10. So is this the saloon where Wild Bill was killed? Well, what do you want: the truth or a fun tall tale?

Thousands of tourists come through the small town of Deadwood every year to see the streets where not only Wild Bill lived but also Bill’s killer Jack McCall and the woman who claimed to be Bill’s sweetheart, Calamity Jane. And because of the HBO TV series Deadwood, people are aware of other real life former residents such as Sol Star, Al Swearengen, and especially Seth Bullock (who was a good friend of Teddy Roosevelt).

Melody said that daytime at the No. 10 Saloon is tourist time. During high tourist season, the summer, there are numerous shows throughout the day in the bar featuring a “Wild Bill,” including shootouts. Even the day we were there, a Tuesday in October, there was one afternoon show in No. 10.

Summer tourists are often on the clock, trying to hit all the high points. They’ll spend just half an hour at the bar, so they can make it to the one o’clock gun fight, and then they’re off to Mount Rushmore. Melody said that evenings were the time for more casual tourists, serious drinkers, and locals.

No. 10 is like many of the other bars in town; there are also card tables and slot machines (including a Sex in the City slot machine, just like Wild Bill Hickok used to play.)

Melody told us some of the stories she likes to tell tourists. “Wild Bill used to sit in that chair by the fireplace. I’m not making any promises, but some people have taken pictures of that spot and had unexplainable ghostly images appear in their photos.” One day, an elderly woman entered the bar and pointed at Melody and screamed, “Liar! Liar! The stories you told me not true!”

Of course they weren’t true. It doesn’t take much effort to walk around town and read the historical markers that state that Hickok was killed in 1876 and the original No. 10 Saloon was burned down in a fire in 1879. And it was across the street. But as the reporter explains in the great John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

We looked inside the saloon in the afternoon while the Wild Bill show was going, but we came back later in the evening. We sat at the bar next to a man who told us he was a local, even though he was wearing a Giants cap (the National League playoffs were on the TV, and he was quite obviously rooting for the Cubs against the Dodgers). Mindy ordered an Apple Ale and  I asked for Rum and Coke and an order of onion rings.

We introduced ourselves, and he told us his name was Jake. He used to live in California, in Orangevale near Sacramento, but while still young he and his mom moved back to her hometown of Deadwood. When we asked what he looked for in a bar, he said he likes this place, “This is my hometown bar.” He said people know him here, and that when he comes in, they know  he’ll be ordering a Morgan’s and Coke. He told us he works at a bar down the street, but that it’s not where he hangs out. He likes the bands that No. 10 brings in about four nights a week, though not the night we were there. He said that we’d come on movie night. (The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was going to be the evening’s feature. Children are allowed in the bar in the daytime, but it is exclusively for those over 21 after 8:30 pm.)

We asked, as we usually do, what would make for a good church and Jake said he had no opinion; it wasn’t his thing. But he did say that when they’d returned to the area, his mother began to attend the Catholic Church again. The main reason for her return to church, he said, was so when she died, she could be buried in the local Catholic graveyard with her relatives.

We were also able to ask Melody, our bartender, what she thought made for a good bar. She said that friendliness is good. Good drink prices per pour. She said staff is important to set the mood, and that the bartender should be a “feisty person who can do some back and forth with the customers; a little sassy.”

Another bartender, Lia, joined the conversation and agreed about the importance of sassiness. Lia and Melody talked a bit about how that attitude was helpful in dealing with people who had a bit too much to drink. Both bartenders discussed having to deal with customers who made advances. There is a delicate balance between turning down those advances without being mean or losing business.

All three, Jake, Melody, and Lia, prefer their bars to be a little darker, a little closer to a dive bar. (Jake said that the bar he worked at was a little too well lit.) They said that a dive bar allowed people to be themselves. At a stuffy, well-lit place, people might well be judging you.

Lia said a good bartender knows when customers want attention and when they want to be left alone. She said years of bartending should earn a person a degree in therapy, and Melody agreed.

I asked what made for a good church. Melody said, “Nonjudgemental is a big one for me.” People shouldn’t go into a place and feel out of place for being a sinner. She said it helps “to at least have a buddy to go with.” She said that she doesn’t make it to church because she and her boyfriend sleep too late on Sundays.

Lia does go to church, and in fact teaches Sunday School. She goes to a small church that she describes as nonjudgmental. “It took me a long time to find a church that was okay with tattoos.” She also appreciates that her church has a good time of socializing before the service begins, and then everyone goes in at once. The service is only an hour, which she appreciates, and she said that worship services are supplemented by “life groups” that meet during the week. “I’ve got people to go to church with me because I work at a bar, that might not have gone otherwise.”

On our way out we stopped to chat with Nathan, who was keeping an eye on the door. He only recently began doing security -- usually he bartends as well. (During the summer, between the kitchen, the card tables, the bar, the restaurant, and more, about 130 people are on staff at No. 10. During the off season, it’s closer to 80.)

We asked Nathan what he thought made for a good bar. “Good bartenders. Do you need three things? No? Just good bartenders; nice, but don’t take any crap. Oh, and clean restrooms.” We haven’t had anyone mention clean restrooms before, but we’ve been to places that have reminded us how important that feature is.

We asked Nathan what would make for a good church, and he said, “I don’t know, I’m not really religious. I guess an enthusiastic and entertaining pastor. It’s all about the people.” When I pointed out the similarity between that answer and his response about bartenders and bars he said, “The experience is all about the people you meet.”

I asked Nathan whether there were an times that were especially difficult for security at the bar. He said that there were a number of weekends where the town allowed people to carry open containers in town (one of those weekends, Deadweird, a Halloween celebration, is coming up). Those times tend to bring out the worst in some people. He was okay with that though, “Deadwood knows how to have a good time.”

He had more good things to say about No. 10. He noted that most of the employees had worked there for over 5 years, so they must be doing something right. The bar also raised a lot of money for charity, over $100,000 the previous year. One of those charity projects was for a local police officer’s daughter who has cancer. The bar raised $22,000 in one day to help pay for her treatment.

To quote from the writer Thomas Sowell, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” As is probably true for most tourist destinations, the staff at No. 10 Saloon does a little of both. We enjoyed both the tall tales and the truth they had to share.