#805 - Golden City, Seattle (Ballard) - 4/19/2009

Update: Golden City closed in 2022

Now this is a fine dive bar! This has more of what I was hoping to find in the Ballard Smoke Shop. It's dark, it's intimate, it has backlit "Chinese" art, a huge, old, and terribly executed painting of an antebellum riverside scene, and it has a slightly creepy history to match. (I was informed by a regular that in the old days this place was named "The Plantation.")

And indeed The Plantation was located here from at least the 1940s into the 1980s.

5518 20th Ave NW 
Est. 1988 - Closed Aug 27, 2022 - Building constructed 1946
Previous bars at this location: Bayou Room (The Plantation Restaurant)   
seattlest - yelp

#804 - Ballard Smoke Shop, Seattle - 4/19/2009

This is a decent, old, dive bar, but it's too light, too open, and too big to have the sort of intimacy you want in a great dive. I recommend walking a few blocks to Golden City.

5439 Ballard Ave NW    
the stranger - ballardgossipgirl - yelp

#803 - Volterra, Seattle - 2008 (OOO)

5411 Ballard Ave NW
Est. 2005 - Building constructed: 1945
Previous bars in this location: The Suds (1934, not current building), Disalvo's Tavern, Freddy's Tavern, Burk's Cafe

volterrarestaurant.com - the stranger - yelp - fodors - seattletimes