Captain's Grog

I don’t get the appeal of pirates. After all, if you want to wear ragged clothing and a tricornered hat, why not re-enact the French and Indian War? And if you want to act like a murderous homosexual who likes to sing, I’m sure casting for the role of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs: the Musical will begin any day now.

If you were going to open a really authentic pirate bar, you’d need to hire some Somali teenagers with AK-47s to work there. And modern-day pirates, being predominantly Muslims, don’t drink alcohol at all. So in theory, pirate bars shouldn’t even exist! Yet somehow they do.

Here are six of them:

The Baranof 8549 Greenwood Ave. N., 782-9260, Greenwood. The Baranof is hardly a pirate bar: There are a few fishing nets stapled to the ceiling; a crude painting of Popeye adorns the men’s-room door; Olive Oyl, naturally, graces the women’s restroom. People will stare at you when you walk inside. A pint of PBR sets you back $3, and gargantuan shots of Wild Turkey are $6.50. An Absolut Citron and soda—and before you start impugning my manliness, you should know that I wasn’t drinking it—cost a surprisingly affordable $3.50. The food sucks. A “bottomless” order of fish and chips is $9; the chips were undercooked frozen French fries and the cod tasted like they’d breaded and fried a ball of wet toilet paper. The reuben ($8) had the tinny metallic aftertaste you get when going down on a robot. Popeye was a law-abiding merchant marine, not a pirate.

The Viking 6404 24th Ave. N.W., 784-3662, Ballard. The Viking, like the Baranof, isn’t a paragon of piracy. After all, it is called The Viking, and while I admit that Vikings were the first pirates, the bar just doesn’t have very much seafaring crap on the walls. In fact, with all the baseball trophies on the wall, you’d think it was a bar dedicated to the collection of old trophies, and not a watering hole committed to the preservation of terror on the high seas. PBR tallboys are $2.50; the aforementioned Citron & soda is an almost Belltownian $6.50. The food, while OK, gets extra points for being prepared in the TINIEST KITCHEN IN THE UNIVERSE. They’ve got a microwave, some plastic wrap, and those red-and-white paper hot-dog baskets you can buy in packs of 2,000 from Costco. And that’s it. It’s as if they’re trying to pack in as much flavor using as few utensils as possible. “Fuck you, Williams & Sonoma”—that’s what the kitchen at The Viking would say, if we came up with enough technology to imbue rooms with the ability to speak. You can get a single rib, smoked offsite then lovingly microwaved by the bartender, for $2.50. The ribs lose a lot of the crusty charm of a freshly smoked baby back, but even reheated they’re still pretty good. While microwaved ribs might make Steven
Raichlen punch the air and slam doors with rage, they are, after all, only $2.50. You’re at The Viking. You’re drunk. Eat some ribs.

Captain Blacks 129 Belmont Ave., 327-9549, Capitol Hill. Captain Blacks might be a relative newcomer to the pirate-bar scene, but it’s clearly the most deeply steeped in piracy. Nautical maps grace the walls. There’s a ship’s wheel. Things are wrapped in rope. I keep expecting the First Mate to come out and batten down the hatches, or whatever the fuck it is that practicing pirates do. Happy hour here is pretty good: pints of Manny’s, Peroni, or Blue Moon are $3.50 (they stupidly don’t have PBR on draft). A shrimp po’ boy ($10) tragically has only six shrimp on it, and for some reason they leave the tails on the fried shrimp, so that you get slippery flakes of chitin stuck in the back of your throat every time you swallow. The mac and cheese is $4 during happy hour, and it’s so motherfucking cheesy it’s like a bowl of cheddar fondue that happens to have elbow macaroni floating in it. Best of all is Captain Blacks’ famous waffle ($3). You get a sweet, crusty waffle, folded upon itself like an Eastern Bloc contortionist, hiding a half-melted puddle of butter within its luscious creases. Plus they give you a shitload of syrup to drench it in. My only complaint is that the indentations in the waffle are too shallow.

The Knarr 5633 University Way N.E., 525-3323, U District. “Knarr” at least sounds like a noise a pirate might make, but that doesn’t make it a pirate bar. In fact, aside from the Viking-ship logo on Knarr’s sign, there’s absolutely nothing about legal maritime trade, much less piracy, inside this bar. It looks more like a regular sports bar, with pool tables, plastic MGD banners, and plasma screens perpetually tuned to ESPN. The drinks are cheap: a pint of PBR is $2, which I consider practically a Depression-era price. A Citron & soda won’t break your wallet either: They’re $4.50. As for the food, you could get the $4 chicken fingers or a hamburger or whatever, but the whole place smells so much like microwaved gravy that I didn’t really want to eat there.