After they finish playing, they duck outside for a smoke—along with what seems like half the bar, including the bartender. Again, this being Aurora, it would be easy to assume that wherever they've gone, they're up to no good. But old guys in khakis? It doesn't add up.
The Locker Room
9633 16th Ave. S.W., 762-9805
Renee McMahon
Woe to the patron who mistakes Kelly’s for a friendly Irish pub.
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One magical night at the Locker Room, when the bartender ran out of proper glasses to pour draft beer into, she decided to charge me half-price. That's right: a mere 65 cents for a pint of Busch, which she shrewdly rounded up from 62.5 (capitalism, baby). I felt like I was drinking during the Depression with an aristocrat's wallet, so I drank a lot. When I called back to confirm that this hadn't, in fact, been a dream, I asked the employee who picked up the phone if hers was the place that served the super-cheap Busch. "No, not really," she replied. "So what's the price?" I inquired. "A dollar twenty-five," she said. I then asked what it would cost to rent the utility closet, so I would never have to leave.
A gloriously divey watering hole on White Center's main drag, the Locker Room is full of colorful drinkers from 6 a.m. to close, with no real lull in the action. In White Center, this can be a curse as well as a blessing. While the neighborhood has gotten considerably safer in the past couple decades, becoming a destination for Seattle diners in search of delicious ethnic food (especially Mexican and Vietnamese), it's still looked upon fretfully as a DMZ by most city residents. While a small part of White Center rests on the Seattle side of Roxbury Street, its main commercial strip, where the Locker Room sits, is technically in unincorporated King County. The City of Seattle has tried in recent years to annex the whole of White Center, but has been met with opposition from Burien to the south. The net result is a neighborhood that sits right on the edge of two police departments' jurisdictions, creating an ideal atmosphere for drugs, prostitution, and gang violence to flare up, as it still does at times, usually within fairly close proximity of the Locker Room's front entrance.
The daytime regulars don't so much talk as cackle. The crowd is a fabulously diverse cast of characters, ranging from an old-timer in suspenders playing solitaire alone at a table to an antsy younger couple guzzling mixed whiskey drinks who feel as though they have to plot their escape from the bar. There's also a mustachioed alpha male who gets real grabby and loud with the women who stroll in, an elderly couple who appear to be spending their lives' savings on pull tabs and Milwaukee's Best, and a gaunt, silent, bearded man drinking those cheap glasses of Busch by himself at the corner of the bar. These people all know each other, and know that at the Locker Room, they're not going to be judged.
mseely@seattleweekly.com
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