Looking for a late-night bite or social scene? Good luck, Seattle
Kareem Saad is not a smoker. But on his quest to find the city’s nightlife, he landed in the saccharine-smelling haze of a hookah lounge, where he spends three or four nights a week.
“I love Seattle, but there aren’t many things open late,” Saad told me, his arm relaxed around his girlfriend, Jennifer, who is also not a smoker.
I met Saad during an all-night assignment with Seattle Times photographer Daniel Kim to document what life is like for the city’s night owls.
Spoiler alert: It is hard.
Just past 10 p.m. on a recent night, we found Saad relaxed against a large leather sectional, the remnants of an Eid holiday feast between him and his friends.
Under neon spotlights and poppy Arabic music, patrons of the Seattle Hookah Lounge puff as they play video games or dominoes until 2 a.m. The University District spot is the kind of nocturnal social space Saad had longed for after moving here from New York a year and a half ago — a place that wasn’t a bar, where he could show up unannounced and still find a familiar face to spend the evening with.
For the Sleepless in Seattle, times are tough between 2 and 5 in the morning. There’s not a single full-service 24 hour grocery store within city limits. Most public transportation grinds to a halt around 1 a.m. Drive-thrus at a surprising number of fast food chain locations close before midnight, and there is no late-night diner scene here to speak of.
Advertising
Past a certain hour, even food delivery apps dry up, leaving just gas station fare and ghost kitchens. Cafes, catering to a mostly daytime crowd, brew their last batch of coffee around 5 p.m. And most places that cater to a late-night crowd shut down around 2 a.m., when a state law restricting the hours of alcohol sales takes effect.
For newcomers, it comes as a bit of a surprise. For some partyers and night-shift workers, it’s an annoyance.
Since the pandemic began, many of the city’s celebrated all-hours establishments have closed or cut back hours. Sure, the vast majority of workers in the city are working day-side shifts, but there are plenty of forces pushing toward a more nocturnal future. In the city alone, there are several emergency rooms and universities, as well as an international airport 20 minutes away. Live performances often spill into the wee hours. The city even has its own nightlife advocate whose job it is to make things easier for the businesses that stay open late.
“We underserve our nighttime economy and the workers,” said Scott Plusquellec, the nightlife advocate. “Historically, we haven’t paid attention to it.”
Apart from documenting labor shortages and business closures, there’s not a great way to measure the success of a city’s nightlife. The city also doesn’t survey residents about whether they’re satisfied with business hours.
But within the span of a few hours of wandering the city’s nightlife epicenter, we found plenty of proof for demand.
Advertising
11:30 p.m.
After saying our goodbyes at the hookah lounge, we headed south to Capitol Hill’s Rhein Haus. On the weekends, this German-inspired bar and popular Seattle University watering hole has a line out the door and hundreds of people in their 20s inside.
A crowd of 100 was jumping to a mash-up of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).”
I found two recent Amazon hires hanging by the bar’s two indoor bocce ball courts.
Faraz Murshed and Urjeet Deshmukh were thrilled to talk about this subject. They love it here, they said, but the lack of late night spaces seems to be adding to the city’s “Seattle Freeze” reputation.
“I’m getting the suburban experience here,” said Murshed, who moved here from California.
Washington law restricts the sale and possession of alcohol on premises between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., which is generally the time other states cut off sales. Oregon’s law is slightly more lax, with a cutoff of 2:30 a.m. New York’s liquor curfew kicks in at 4 a.m.
Advertising
“If the primary revenue stream is alcohol,” Plusquellec said, “a lot of places don’t see a financial incentive” to stay open beyond that point.
12:30 a.m.
Alan Huang was sitting alone at the bar at Linda’s Tavern, his arms framing an amber-colored IPA. On days he’s not tired after clocking off from bartending at Tamari Bar, he’ll grab a nightcap at a nearby watering hole. This one is one of his favorites.
“Compared to other cities, Seattle is pretty tame,” he said. “We’re missing late-night food. You could make a lot of money, and it’d make things safer.”
This desire for more late-night food options was an almost universal sentiment among the people we spoke to. At most bars, the kitchens close a couple of hours before alcohol service halts. And except for a smattering of restaurants across the region, most places close long before the bars do.
There used to be more places to go for food late at night. Both Beth’s Cafe, across from Green Lake, and Lost Lake Cafe and Lounge on Capitol Hill used to be open 24 hours, but both cut back operating hours during the pandemic. Beth’s even closed for a while.
Along with the troubles that come with staffing round the clock, noise concerns are a major hurdle for late-night businesses, said Plusquellec, the city’s nightlife czar. He said he’s currently working on a policy that would require new residential buildings to be responsible for buffering against noise, rather than holding a venue accountable.
Sponsored
“My feeling is that if you live in a dense urban area, there’s an element to that you should just expect,” he said.
On Linda’s back porch, we found a group of flight attendants sitting together at a picnic bench. Joel Hebert seemed relieved someone has finally asked him about this.
“I’m from Nashville, and I’ve been saying this! Everyone here works 9 to 5. They live for the weekend,” he said, his colleagues nodding.
Flight attendants and airport workers might be some of the people most inconvenienced by the lack of late-night fare. One can even be stranded for something to eat or drink at the airport — Sea-Tac itself doesn’t have many businesses open past midnight.
As we spoke, the bar staff was stacking chairs on the back patio and inside the bar.
1:30 a.m.
After Linda’s, we rushed to a convenience store for a bottle of water 10 minutes before closing. Yes, even some convenience stores don’t stay open all night long.
Advertising
When we reached Hula Hula, the tropical-themed karaoke bar drenched in red light, owner Joe Zara told us we’d missed the peak. Sound Transit’s last light-rail train of the evening usually takes most of the bar’s clientele with it. Even so, someone is belting out “My Heart Will Go On” to a chorus of cheers.
At the back of the bar, I found Jessica Hill and Chenice Tallabas sitting at a booth together, friends catching up over the roaring of the crowd closer to the stage.
They remember a time when Seattle nightlife was more diverse. But over the years, between the ballooning costs to live here and the pandemic’s shuttering of bars, “it’s become a bit of a monoculture,” said Hill, who works as an art director for a skin care company.
“Even the price of drinks has gone up — a vodka soda should cost $5,” said Tallabas.
By 1:50, bartenders are cleaning up shop, and people start spilling out onto the street.
2 a.m.
Across from Cal Anderson Park, long queues start forming by unpermitted hot dog stands that pop up every weekend.
Advertising
Between bites of his first Seattle dog, lined thick with cream cheese, New Yorker John Rickenbacker said he’s relieved to see the city has a nightlife at all. He thought Issaquah, the city he moved to for a three-month acting gig, was representative of the area’s after-hours offerings.
Monster Dogs used to be among the nightly crew of hot dog vendors until recently. Shawna Morrison, the owner, said the city’s permitting standards got so strict she and her husband switched to catering.
“They told me my umbrella base cannot be on the sidewalk. The cooler cannot be on the sidewalk. They’d say you can’t have your patrons down the sidewalk,” said Morrison. “They try to make your life miserable as a street vendor.”
It still seems alive to me for a random Friday in April. People are huddled in circles on the Cal Anderson baseball field, peeling back soggy hot dog wrappers. Someone is twerking in the middle of a crowd outside the 76 gas station convenience store. And the Neighbours nightclub, which stays open until 4, is still playing music. But photographer Kim, who used to live in this area, says this is a fairly tame night. And he was right — just two weekends after we strolled the area, two people died in a shooting at Cal Anderson.
As we walked along 12th Avenue East toward my car at 3 a.m., we passed a man rubbing another man’s back as he retched on a dirt sidewalk strip. Our backs are turned to a chorus of Ubers descending on the area, their hazard lights in a silent harmony. It grows quieter with every block we pass, the shrieks and laughter of the bars replaced by the hum of construction vehicles.
3 a.m.
Dear reader, when we first set out on this adventure, I thought we’d finish the assignment at 6 a.m. We are both childless and in our 20s. We slept late to prepare for this. But by the time we escaped Capitol Hill for the 24-hour Denny’s in Sodo, we were already complaining of exhaustion.
Advertising
Nearly every spot was taken in the parking lot at 3:15 a.m., where we were not able to get advance permission to photograph. Our server had the cheer and speed of someone working at a far more normal time.
“It gets even crazier than this,” she replied when I asked if it was usually busy at this hour. The restaurant peaks at around 5 or 6 a.m., filling with the “drunk crowd” coming from all over the city, and a crew of regular diners who work at the Dream Girls strip club around the corner.
Except for a handful of nearby clubs, this place is far from what’s considered the partying core in Seattle, and many barriers stand in your way to get there. At this hour, neither the bus nor the light rail will take you. It’s criminally expensive for an Uber. It’s in an industrial area, so you’re not likely to be walking from a friend’s house. And while a Grand Slam is nothing to frown at when you’re in need, the food is not the draw here.
Yet the spot continued to fill up, a line forming for a table as we departed at 4. If you build it, people will come.
Source: The Seattle Times
