Sauced

Four Bars for Playing Skee Ball

Phinney newcomer the Ridge is contemplating adding skee ball. Meanwhile, here’s where to go to drink and throw.

Posted by: Allie Oosta on Jan 13, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Skee ball at King’s Hardware. Photo: Risa R/Yelp.

This morning Chris Werner shared a First Look at Phinney’s newly opened pizza spot, The Ridge. The family-friendly pizzeria (which moonlights as a bar) is talking about adding skee ball in the future. We could be wrong—but isn’t it a little dangerous to drink and throw heavy objects?

Safety concerns be damned. With its minimal skill requirements, this childhood arcade classic is a natural fit as a bar game. Bonus: The process of heaving that heavy wooden ball up the inclined ramp requires only one hand, meaning you never have to put down your beer.

We’re keeping tabs on The Ridge’s skee ball plans, but if you’re curious about where else to potentially knock someone out, we’ve got the scoop on other bars featuring this trending game. If shuffleboard’s more your thing, we’ve got you covered there as well.

King’s Hardware
A Ballard classic with an impressive happy hour from 4 to 7, and two very popular skee ball machines in back. Grab some sweet potato fries and get in line.

The Rabbit Hole
The divey Belltown sibling to Bathtub Gin and Co has cool drinks like The Donnie Darko and Jessica Rabbit—we’re told they might not be the best, but they’re strong. Drink one slowly and check out the two machines in the back, at just 25 cents a game. Try the hush puppies with lavender honey, too.

The Zoo
Eastlake’s Zoo Tavern is kind of the every man’s bar—that is if every man only drinks beer or wine, pays with cash, doesn’t mind some dirt, and loves parlor games. Hit the ATM before hand (or use the one inside), and prepare for ping pong, shuffleboard, and an old-school skee ball machine from the 1962 world’s fair, which we’re told is somehow (as most ancient things are), way cool. It takes quarters, is much longer than most skee ball machines, and still has the original chrome and handsome little details.

Auto Battery
This Capitol Hill spot emits a fun car-repair-shop theme due to their space (an old garage). More shuffleboard here, as well as Wii games, one skee ball table, air hockey, foosball, and lots of flat screens for watching any and every game.

Fun fact: Skee ball tables used to be 36 feet long—they shortened them to 10 to 13 feet because the average person is too weak to throw that far.

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Tags: Dive Bars, Drinking Games, The Ridge, Zoo Tavern, Auto Battery, Rabbit Hole, King's Hardware

Outdoor Seating at The Five Point Café!

Dive-barring en plein aire at a favorite Seattle pitcher place.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 13, 2011 at 04:30PM 0 Comments

Five Points, now with outdoor seating.

Photo Courtesy: Five Points Cafe

Ah, this is something.

The Five Point Café now has two little corrals of tables out front, so that you can drink beer and eat greasy-delicious junk food in the sunshine and/or while being lightly drizzled with a relentless misty rain.

The image just arrived in an email from owner David Meinert, who adds: “Our full food and drink menu will be served from 9am to 10pm daily, along with a view of the historic Chief Seattle statue, the monorail, Space Needle and some of Seattle’s more interesting people.”

Outdoor seating was gained via a permit that, at the end of 2010, was appealed by Five Point neighbor Tilikum Place Cafe and some nearby condo dwellers. The move to end service at 10 was part of the compromise with the neighbors, according to an earlier email from Meinert.

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Tags: Dive Bars, Outdoor Dining, Outdoor Eating, Outdoor Drinking

Bars Open Christmas Day: The Map

If you want to go out for a drink on December 25, you need only look here.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Dec 16, 2010 at 01:06PM 1 Comments

Have a cognac in the Fireside Room on Christmas Day.

Here’s a handy little accessory to go with the ever-growing list of bars open on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day: It’s a map populated only by bars open on December 25.

I’ll keep adding open spots through Christmas Eve, then I’m going to open up the Yamazaki 12 Year I’m stashing in my suitcase this year.

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Tags: Cocktails, Hotel Bars, Wine Bars, Dive Bars, Maps, Holidays

Thanksgiving, Dive-Bar Style

Five Point serves up the full feast.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Nov 24, 2010 at 01:26PM 0 Comments

Nom, nom, nom. Thanksgiving comes to the Five Point Cafe.

The roads are dicey and the supermarket aisles are picked as clean as a turkey carcass, so I’m guessing some Thanksgiving plans are getting snowed out this year.

Here’s one thing you can do if you find yourself stranded and feastless: You can head to the 5 Point Cafe.

From 10am to 10pm tomorrow the bar is serving the full Thanksgiving hurrah (turkey, ham, stuffing, pumpkin pie, all the other stuff) for the bargain price of $25. That’s cheaper than the gas it takes to get to Aunt Edna’s, and you don’ t have to sneak out to the garage whenever you need a shot of whiskey—that’s what the bar is for!

Happy holidays!

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Tags: Dive Bars, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Dinner 2010

Monday Night Bingo at Calamity Jane’s

If the novelty of parlor games won’t get your friends out to the bar, perhaps all-you-can-eat spaghetti will do the trick?

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Aug 23, 2010 at 07:58AM 0 Comments

Bingo begins every Monday at 8pm at Calamity Jane’s.

Monday nights at the neighborhood bar are some of the best ones. On weekends all the bartenders are in a bad mood because people are forgetting to tip them and throwing toilet paper around the bathroom. Conversations tend towards the loud and the disproportionately passionate, and there is always a smoky cluster around the entrance.

It’s okay if that’s what you’re into, but it’s not terribly relaxing.

Early week, however, is when a neighborhood bar wipes its brow and smiles. Industry folks pop by for a few drinks on their nights off; neighborhood regulars check in to make sure the weekend warriors haven’t done any permanent damage. You can sink in with a beer and really soak up what a bar has to offer.

But it can take a little coaxing to get your fellow officey friends to come with you on a Monday. They’ve likely spent the weekend having disproportionately passionate conversations and now they’ve made all sorts of resolutions about the week to come. How to break them down?

Maybe bingo? I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot. They’ve got it at Calamity Jane’s in Georgetown every Monday from 8 to 10pm. Sometimes there is a theme. “You know,” said the employee with whom I spoke about bingo night, “themes like lesbian, hula, pirate.”

Past prizes have included Georgetown Brewing t-shirts, sex toys, and “whatever we can scrounge up,” per the aforementioned employee. He said about 20 to 40 people usually come.

Oh and if the bingo doesn’t tempt your buddies, go with all-you-can-eat spaghetti. It’s $8.18 from 6pm onwards, meatballs are $1.14 each.

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Tags: Cheap Eats, Dive Bars, Georgetown, Bingo, Drinking Games

Dive Bar Happy Hours

Five Points announces new HH, Owl and Thistle’s old HH is still good stuff.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 10, 2010 at 10:01AM 0 Comments

The Five Points Cafe recently announced a new happy hour. It’s 4 to 6pm on weekdays and begins Friday, March 12. Deals include a cheeseburger and fries for $2.50, $3 deep-fried Beecher’s cheese curds (hmmm, at that price, I wonder how they compare to Steelhead’s), and calamari for $3.50. Well drinks are also $3.50 while domestic draft beers are $2 and microbrews cost $3.

Another good dive-bar happy hour is that at Owl N Thistle. I’d always thought of the out-of-the-way basement bar on Post Ave as a sleepy lunch spot, but it comes alive at HH. Bud and Bud light are $2 a pint, micros and well drinks are $3. You can get fries or soup for $2.25, a burger, beef stew, hummus platter, or spinach and artichoke dip for $2.95. Fish and chips are $3.50.

But what really recommends Owl N Thistle is that the staff is generally welcoming to everyone and the customers tend to be pretty mellow. I’ve been in dive bars in Seattle where juiced-up bartenders wielded insane accusations at customers for no reason, and others where customers drank too much and put the staff in the unfortunate position of giving them the boot. I’ve also been at dive bars where the bartender would only serve his friends and/or was obnoxious to everyone whose clothing didn’t reflect die-hard death metal fandom. There seems to be a minimum of such bad energy at ONT, and the service is always friendly, casual, and slightly inattentive. (This isn’t Canlis after all, no one needs to put your napkin on your lap.) That’s the way it should be at a proper dive, and the reason I suggest it to you.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Beer, Pioneer Square, Dive Bars