We walk into a dark bar on a dark night

Alchemy, Seattle, Washington (West Seattle)
“A place that’s quiet and dark; where you can drink whiskey in a cracked glass.” According to Scott, one of the bartenders at Alchemy, that’s something people look for in a bar. He’s right, of course. (It’s possible not everybody wants to drink out of a cracked glass. More research may be required.)

Dark is something many people appreciate in a bar. Alchemy keeps things dim, with artificial (and a few real) candles above and behind bottles behind the bar providing most of the light. When we ask people what they like in a bar, we have often hear “dark dives.” You’d think that in Seattle this time of year (with the sun up at half-past seven and down at half-past four) we’d have had enough of darkness, but it’s still appealing. Mindy said she liked the place just after we came in.

“Darkness” is fine when we’re talking literally. If someone says they’re “in a dark place,” you hope they’re talking literally rather than metaphorically. When the Bible talks about people “loving the darkness rather than the light,” I don’t think it’s condemning those who don’t have lots of lamps in the house. I talked with another of the bartenders, Dev, about how pleasant these rainy days are for those of us who need to sleep during the day, and I don’t think Scripture was condemning those of us who are vocationally nocturnal.

Both people we asked “What makes for a good bar” said “atmosphere.” And there does seem to be a strong correlation for many people between dim lighting and atmosphere. Alchemy has much more going for it than low wattage, though.

The hostess greeted us cheerily when we entered. She offered us a table but pointed the way to empty seats when we said we preferred the bar. Dev, the other bartender, poured us water before we even asked, which is a strong positive in our book. He gave us menus with a happy hour flyer on top, and he told us the food specials.

I ordered the “Death of the Hipster” cocktail, and Mindy chose “East of Eden.” We ordered the deviled eggs as well. Dev accidentally prepared “At Six and Sevens” for me and apologized that he was working a bit on autopilot. I was pleasantly surprised by the bits of bacon in the eggs (they were emphatically not Bac’n Bits).

The man sitting next to me at the bar asked about my drink, and I gave a favorable review. Mindy was soon chatting with the man sitting next to her. Even more than the proper aperture in a bar, we appreciate people feel free to talk to each other, often encouraged by bartenders. That was certainly true of Alchemy while we were there. We found it easy to ask our two questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what do you think would make for a good church?”

The guy next to Mindy asked to be referred to as “Travelin’ Man,” who said a good bar had atmosphere and a good bartender. He added that it should have a variety of choices for food and drink. When Mindy asked what he meant by atmosphere, he said, “distinctive character.” He said that sports bars are basically all the same, but “this bar, they have a theme going on.”

She asked him what he thought made for a good church. “Since I’m not a Christian anymore, I’d say a Buddhist church.” He added, “Religion is man-made in my opinion.” Organized religion has been “a mixed bag used for good and bad for centuries.”

Dev was able to take a moment for our questions, too. For the bar, he said, “Atmosphere is everything. If everyone is rushing and stressed, I’m not going to hang out there. Right when you go in, you can tell how the restaurant is ‘breathing.’” He noted that Scott has said, “How can everyone else (the guests) have a good time if you (the staff) aren’t having a good time?” As for what makes for a good church, he said, “Innovation, more embracing of modern times for a modern world, that would be an attractive church.”

We’d finished our eggs and our drinks, so it was time to go back home. As we left into dark Seattle, the hostess said, “See you again?”

Mindy said, “Hope so.”

She said, “That would be lovely!” And it would be.

We walk into Parliament

Parliament, Seattle (Admiral District of West Seattle), Washington

We planned to talk to people at Parliament, honest. We went in curious about a lot of things that we hoped to ask about. The bar has owl decor* throughout; they're a music venue; there's a very different bar next door and several others within a block or two.

But when we arrived, the Seahawks were battling the Packers on all the screens, and we couldn't find seats at the bar. The bartender was attentive and got our drinks quickly (a hopped apple cider for Dean and a sour cherry cider for me), and we sat down at a table to watch the game and the bar.

As we sipped our ciders and took stealthy photos, it was pretty clear that we weren't going to be able to talk to anybody else. By halftime, the first of the two bands who'd playing later in the evening were setting up, and we'd finished our ciders. We took our glasses back to the bar (noticing a few more owls along the way), thanked the bartender, and were on our way.

In spite of only talking to each other, we were glad we'd finally gotten into Parliament.

*A group of owls has been called a parliament since the Middle Ages. But you already knew that, of course.

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.

We walk into drama

ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery, Seattle, Washington (West Seattle)
It was International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), so I think it’s understandable that I expected Skeleton Crew to be a play about Ghost Buccaneers. (My favorite Disneyland ride as a kid was Pirates of the Caribbean.) Turns out it was about something else. Things are not always what you expect, and that isn’t a bad thing.

I also didn’t expect that the first thing we’d see as we entered ArtWest Playhouse and Gallery would be a bar. But if only for this blog, we’re always happy to find a bar.

It was the preview night for the show, and we’d gotten free tickets when we were at a street fair this summer -- so we had to head to will call to pick up our tickets before we could check out the bar.

The lobby was well populated with people waiting to enter the theater, and some of them were ordering drinks from the bar. I heard a couple of people ask for bourbon because they saw signs for Motor City, a drink using Four Roses Bourbon, which fit with the actual theme of Skeleton Crew. It’s a play about auto workers in Detroit. Sadly, the bourbon wouldn’t be available until opening night. I guess that’s the penalty for going to a preview performance.

We did have options, though, and we had a choice about when we could have our drinks. Some people were getting something before the show started and taking their drinks into the theater. We chose to order a couple of ciders to be ready for us at intermission. (when we went to pick them up, we decided to get a large chocolate chip cookie, too. Gotta support the arts).

It’s important, at this point, to mention how a theater bar differs from a regular bar. Most drinks aren’t consumed in the bar area, but rather taken into the theater or the art gallery or even in the lobby. There weren’t any bar stools; there was just enough counter space for ordering. Still, people were chatting with each other in the area near the bar, just as they do in a bar. It makes sense -- the motto of the theater is: “ArtsWest produces artistic events that provoke conversation, incite imagination and use live theater as a powerful agent of change.” They have that in common with a good bar, the provoking of conversation.

I overheard some nice bits of those conversations. One man was talking about his great aunt, a bootlegger who used to cross the Detroit River with her goods. The woman he was talking with mentioned her woman her uncle, who made moonshine and shared it with anybody who was thirteen or older.

But in keeping with this blog’s tradition, we needed to ask our two questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what makes for a good bar?” So we talked to Mariam, the bartender for the evening. (Obviously, this is not a “real bar” and as far as we know, Mariam isn’t a paid bartender. Much of the work at ArtsWest is done by volunteers, and it’s a non-profit institution.) Mariam likes crafting cocktails, and she was our server for the evening, so we think that counts.

She said a good bar should have “a little bit of everything or one thing done really well.” If they have a little bit of everything, they shouldn’t stock every beer, wine, and liquor, but they should have a couple of things to choose from in each category.

Mariam said she hadn’t gone to church for a long time and didn’t plan to go again soon. “But I can tell you what doesn’t make for a good church…contemporary folk music with guitars. They do it to bring in young people, but it doesn’t bring in young people.”

We enjoyed the play. The story moved along with clever writing, and the actors were very good. My favorite line from the show was, “If ‘IF’ was a fifth, we’d all be drunk.” And if there was a more pleasant way to spend International Talk Like a Pirate Day (other than going on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride again and again), I can’t think of it.


You wanted to read about our experiences in the Detroit area, right? The bar post is our second most popular, and the churches and ministries we visited were fascinating (though all were very different from the culture depicted in the play. The movies we saw on the big and small screens depicted a different world, too. 

We walk into a diner

The Great American Diner & Bar, Seattle, Washington (West Seattle neighborhood)
“I’ve been accused of only writing melancholy songs, which isn’t true. I just don’t usually do them. This is one of my happier songs. It’s a drinking song called ‘Pour Me Some Jack.’”

We just happened to be waiting for some Jack Daniels right then. We were at The Great American Diner & Bar in the Junction neighborhood of West Seattle, but we weren’t drinking the whiskey. We’d ordered the Whiskey Bread Pudding with caramel sauce made with Jack Daniels. (The ciders we were drinking -- Mindy’s Seattle Cider and my Angry Orchard -- went well with the pudding. Sometime I’ll write about why I often order Angry Orchard, but -- spoiler -- it’s mainly because it’s cheap.)

It was open mic night, and as you might have guessed, the above quote was from one of the performers. One person who helps to run the activity actually asked us, “Do you want to perform sometime?” We assured him it would be best for him, the diners, and the world as a whole if we didn’t sing. Nobody wants a repeat of our karaoke night.

Before we came inside, we could hear a woman singing “Ex’s & Oh’s”, which seemed to be her final song for the evening. We heard a couple of other singers that evening, but they performed their own songs rather than performing covers. Some of the evening’s crowd had come to perform, and others came to listen. Everybody was enthusiastic about the opportunity.

The restaurant isn’t decorated in a blatant red, white, and blue bunting, but there are subtle notes of Americana. Six large screen TVs were on around the room, and three of those weren’t playing American-based programs. One had African nature videos from the BBC (America), another had The Great British Bake Off, and a third had a tennis tournament in France. The other three screens had college football (a replay of Arizona State vs. UTSA) and two screens were playing the Mariners/Orioles game -- and there’s not much that’s more American than that. (Even better, the baseball TVs showed the A’s/Yankees scores, and the A’s won. That automatically brightens my night).

I asked our bartender, Jeff, what he liked about the place. He mentioned the great breakfasts, and said he enjoys working on open mic nights and found them fun. We asked him our two questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what would make for a good church?”

He said for a bar, “definitely being welcoming. That’s the most important thing.” As for what makes for a good church, he said he hadn’t gone for twenty years, since growing up in Pennsylvania. “But it would be the same thing.” Being welcoming.

As we talked, a man came up to pay his bill. He told Jeff, “It’s a school night. I have to get used to that again.” The place seems to be family-friendly by intention. One shelf had a lot of children’s books, and Glen, the owner, said more were on order.

We started talking to Glen after he asked, “Enjoying the music?” We assured him we were, but told him we had no inclination to perform. He told us he and his business partner had made a thoughtful choice to go with open mic rather than karaoke. As we found out at another bar, some people have no idea how they sound, and (especially after a couple of drinks) it can lead to some really bad singing. “I heard one woman singing that put a ring on it song who didn’t get a single note right.”

He answered our two questions but also told us about opening the diner and bar. He said, “There are two types of bars. One has pull tabs, barflies, massive kegs, and people looking to hook up. Folks who drink themselves silly. We’re not that type of place. That’s a bar-bar which is only to make money.”

He indicated the sign behind the bar, the one that said, HOME. “This is my motto, it runs through my operation. It’s not all business, it’s not all about money. I have to go back a bit. Whatever I am is because of my dad.” Glen’s dad grew up in an orphanage (in India), which provided him with an education. He was super fond of America, and especially loved Westerns. “I’m named for Glen Ford.” (Ford starred in over two dozen westerns. My personal favorite of his is 3:10 to Yuma.) “We had LPs, listened to Bing Crosby.” Most importantly for Glen, Americans provided the medical technology and care that had prolonged his father's life by 20 years.

After his father passed away, Glen wanted to do something new. He wanted to make a family gathering place with an uncomplicated menu, a place where nice, decent people could have a drink. One thing that decided him on the location was the proximity to the senior center a block or two away. Seniors regularly come to the diner now, and Glen says, “We know our people. Some come twice a day.” He talked about an older woman who often brings her grandson the diner as a treat, and he said the diner generally plays Sinatra and Dean Martin in the background, not “head banging music.” It’s not that kind of bar.

They strive to serve quality products, angus beef and liquor from glass bottles rather than plastic. He noted that the restaurant business is a hard one with a narrow profit margin for food -- though the bar does a little better.

We asked what made a good church, and Glen said, “I am Catholic. I go to Queen Mary of Peace in Sammamish.” He can’t make it very often because the diner is open seven days a week, 8:00 am to 11:00 pm, but he tries to get there once a month. “You sit, and it sorts your head out.”

I think a church can offer much more than that, but with The Great American Diner & Bar, Glen and his partner have made a place where people might also be able to sort their thoughts. Or sing. Or listen. Or enjoy some really good food and drinks. America is full of such places. That might be another reason that Glen loves this country.