No collection of characteristics can be melded to truly define what makes a bar a dive. Some have vomit-caked toilet seats in the bathroom; others have cracked vinyl booths in the barroom. Some have nicotine-stained murals dating back to the Depression; others have drink prices that seemingly haven't wavered since then. Some are the most welcoming places you could ever hope to encounter; at others, if you're not homeless or an ex-con (or con-in-waiting), people will look at you as though the jukebox should stop immediately. Still others split the difference: Given the right amount of lubrication, two previously unacquainted patrons will be just as likely to embrace at the end of the night as to beat the snot out of one another.
Renee McMahon
Woe to the patron who mistakes Kelly’s for a friendly Irish pub.
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And for every barkeep who considers being lumped into this misunderstood category a slur, there'll be two others who consider such branding a gesture of affinity. To the overwhelming majority of bars in my soon-to-be-released book, Seattle's Best Dive Bars: Drinking & Diving in the Emerald City (due out in April, Ig Publishing, $12.95), the term "dive" is bestowed with a salty spoonful of love. By and large, these places are the most distinctive, preservation-worthy bars in a city where watering holes of their ilk are swiftly disappearing. What they have in common isn't so much attributes, but a state of mind—you just know one when you see one. And if I had to encapsulate precisely what this moment of recognition feels like, I'd do it through the eyes of an old soldier named Wayne, whom I encountered in a downtown Everett bar in the fall of 2008.
With a few hours to kill before a Saturday-night rock show down the street, I sidled up to the bar at the Doghouse Tavern on Colby Avenue. In the cooler were cans of Old Milwaukee and Schmidt (if there's a telltale sign you're in a dive bar, Schmidt's it). Behind me was seated a stoic gentleman, slowly nursing a beer and talking to nobody. The small TVs were tuned to nothing particularly important. Playing pool was a middle-aged Latino fellow who confessed to having no recollection of how he'd gotten home from the bar the prior night. He also said his head hurt, which couldn't have surprised anyone.
Bellied up in the far corner was a beefy, mustachioed tow-truck driver, downing vodka shots and bitching loudly about how retarded his customers were. As I ordered my second Schmidt, a weary fellow named Wayne sat down to my immediate left. He said he'd just returned home from a long trip. I asked him where he'd been. "Cabo," he responded. I said, "Well, that doesn't sound too rough." He looked at me like I'd just killed the Pope, and said, "Whaddya mean?"
Turns out I'd heard wrong: Wayne had been in Kabul, having just completed his next-to-last 18-month tour of Afghanistan. Feeling like shit on a shoe, I insisted upon buying Wayne a drink. He took me up and ordered a shot of Southern Comfort. I ordered one too.
Wayne is from Alaska, but lives on his boat near downtown Everett when he's not serving his country. (In his divorce, she got the house, he took the boat.) Before heading back to the Middle East, Wayne remarked, the one thing he most wanted to do while home was go kayaking, chilly weather notwithstanding. It's hard to imagine an activity further removed from engaging in combat in the smoldering desert, where Wayne had recently lost one of his best friends to a roadside bomb.
After ordering another round of SoCo, Wayne said that the reason he'd come to the Doghouse that Saturday afternoon was because he knew it would be exactly the way he remembered it the last time he'd been here some four years earlier. He'd chosen the bar because it was reliable, a reminder of home that he could look forward to visiting again once his final tour ended. I told him when that day came I'd meet him there, and buy us another round of shots.
Seattle's Best Dive Bars chronicles the nooks, crannies, and characters in over 100 bars within the Seattle city limits (including a few outside them—naturally, White Center has been annexed). Of those hundred-plus, the following excerpts account for the 10 most intimidating bars in the bunch, the sort of places that will put the average tippler way outside his or her comfort zone, for better or for worse—but mostly for better.
Kelly's
2236 Third Ave., 448-2338
It's an ominous sign when you approach a bar and there's a paddy wagon parked across the street. It's an even more ominous sign when such an occurrence isn't all that rare at said bar. Welcome to Kelly's, the most frightening drinking establishment in Seattle.
On the surface, what separates Kelly's from its main rivals for this dubious honor is its friendly Irish name and shamrock façade. Upon approach, this doesn't look to be the sort of bar that attracts mercurial street urchins, but that's exactly what it is. If you walk through Kelly's doors looking half-presentable, conversations are liable to come to an immediate halt.
