Dome Stadium Tavern’s Gone Clean

Apparently the Dome Stadium Tavern has cleaned itself up quite a bit. Fresh off a 180-day time-out from the State Liquor Control board, the tavern reopened its doors in February, and it looks as though new owners Chul Sup Sim and Soo Young Sim have put a substantial amount of elbow grease into the place. There's a groovy new brick wall, a fresh paint job, and a remarkably clean façade both inside and out. The darts are electronic, the pool table is lined with bright green felt, and a jukebox in the corner plays Bob Marley, then Sarah McLachlan. The latter may be a somewhat counterintuitive choice in an establishment where the only female is the bartender, but no one seems to mind. And the beer's still cheap. The clientele, however, still harkens to the days when one blogger described the Dome as "the dirtiest of the dirty and the seediest of the seedy." No matter—they're all friendly and quick to laugh, and the bartender says they rarely give her any trouble. The Dome seems to have recovered nicely from its crack-house days; in February 2007, the state moved to revoke the liquor license permanently after detectives from the Seattle Police Department found crack dealers operating openly and a patron smoking rocks in the bathroom. New owner Sim says that despite the place's history, getting a new license wasn't a problem. "We just applied and we got it," he says.