#1837 - Cassidy's Pub, Tacoma, WA - 8/6/2011

Cassidy's Pub and Outdoor Mini-Golf! A dive bar and miniature golf! I love Tacoma!

9621 Portland Avenue East Tacoma, WA 98445 - (253) 531-2251
Previous bars at this location: Brouwer's Tavern (50s-80s), Mae West Pub (80s, 90s)
Reviews: yelp - insiderpages

#1836 - Frosty's, Napavine, WA - 8/6/2011

Frosty's is a big, bustling, barn-like place that has been in Napavine, Washington for a long, long time. The bartender told us that Frosty's has been a bar in its current location and with the name Frosty's since 1901.  I haven't seen any primary sources verifying this, but they have liquor licenses going back to at least 1903 framed right on the wall. The oak back bar itself is said to date to 1902.

The building is roughly split in two with a family restaurant side and a bar side. The food is American pub food, with burgers, salad bar, etc. The bar sometimes features a ghost, which is dressed like an old logger and is presumably an old customer who has found nothing in the afterlife to compare.

113 W Front Ave Napavine, WA 98565 - (360) 262-3980          
Est. 1901

Web site: frostysbarandgrill.com -
Reviews: chronline - yelp

#1835 - Merwin Tap, Woodland, WA - 8/6/2011

The Merwin Tap is one of those places that you assume is a tiny dive from outside, but more capacious -- with an area for live bands -- than expected. It seems like a fairly typical dive bar, although bartender Jen gave us a colorful illustration of some of her experiences with a ghost that frequents the place, and showed us a photo where mysterious faces show up in the window of empty building, over the shoulders of a group shot out front.  She believes the building was constructed in the 1930s.

Ghostly faces in background detail, Merwin Tap photo

134 Davidson Ave Woodland, WA 98674 - (360) 225-7339

#1834 - The Timber Room, Estacada, OR - 8/6/2011

The Timber Room folks do not appear to be big online types, so basically all I know about the place is what I heard from the folks there when we visited. We heard it is now the oldest building in Estacada -- exact age was unknown, but "18-somethin" (the town was founded as a camp for dam workers and incorporated in 1905, but it's possible some structures pre-date that). We heard it used to be the bank, with a whore house upstairs. We heard explanations of some of the history painted on the walls outside, including the naked bikers coming through, the naked horse rider, and one or two people shooting up the place. We heard the room next door used to be the Trails Cafe, but it was now just part of the Timber Room. And we heard that people sing karaoke in the cafe room, while everyone else sits in the room with the bar.

It seems like an interesting place.

397 South Broadway Street, Estacada, OR 97023 - (503) 630-3139
Portland Mercury - Best of Estacada

#1833 - The Safari Club, Estacada, OR - 8/6/2011

Before describing this weird and wonderful bar in a small town 30 miles southeast of Portland, I feel obliged to offer a personal note about, well... the future of mankind.

My personal view is that as of the late 20th and early 21st century, big game hunting for sport is an atavistic, and borderline neurotic activity. I don't seek to impose that view on others (beyond protecting endangered species), but it seems fairly clear to me that society is moving increasingly to embracing this view, and that at some point in the future the common view will be that such activities are aberrant symptoms of a possible sociopath, comparable to our view of someone who violently beats their dog.

That is while humans once felt that watching wild animals kill and eat humans in a coliseum was a delightful sort of entertainment for adult and child alike, as they once believed it was bemusing to hang a caged cat over a fire and listen to its howls as it fried, and as they once thought it unthinkable that society or neighbors should interfere with how a man might choose to beat his own animals, the general extension of human compassion to ever larger groups of humans and other sentient beings changes what we find acceptable over the generations.

That said, I don't think we should impose these values upon the past, and we certainly should not seek to avoid reality -- realities such as the natural role hunting has played in history of mankind, or that the fate awaiting many big game animals in the wild was much more savage and painful than a bullet from a hunter's gun. That savagery, along with simply the extraordinary range of wildlife around the world, is the major theme of the "Legendary Safari Club" in Estacada, Oregon. And while I might not support a newly created place like this, I am delighted that some new owners preserved and restored this one.

The Safari Club is a restored wonderland of taxidermied animals from around the globe. Most of the animals were the property of famed hunter and Estacada resident Glen Park, who sold his lumber company and built the place in 1970 to display his trophies from 23 hunting trips in 6 different countries. The animals are arrayed in several very large displays, and with an emphasis on predation. Most the large exhibits include faux blood running from the gashes of some unfortunate beast become a meal. Full size polar bears (yes, plural), every kind of bear, lions, tigers, buffalo, big horn sheep, hyenas, a mountain goat, a  muskox, moutain lionso, elk, on and on -- they attack their prey in natural museum quality displays, leap out from over the stage, stalk each other around the bar. The club claims this is the only place of its kind in the world, and it is easy to believe.

"During the '70s and well into the '80s, the Safari Club boomed under the management of Park's son, Mike Park. Residents recall the packed dining room, the dancing and live music, and the lounge waitresses dressed in leopard print uniforms." (oregonlive)  But as the lumber industry in the area died out, business waned.  It became a Chinese Restaurant -- the Jen Jen Safari Club, and the Hong Kong Lounge.  The animals were increasingly damaged and gradually removed from view.

Finally, they were almost sold off just before the current owners had a chance to restore them:

"Negotiating the Purchase of the business in Aug., 2011 we learned that all of the animals had been sold & would be removed from the Safari Club. So, we made the Animals part of the negotiations in order to 'save' them & they will be staying where they belong...at the Legendary Safari Club." (legendarysafariclub.com)

In September 2011, business partners Cindy Smith and Betsy Clester purchased the club, and after preventing the animals from being sold out from under them, restored the taxidermy and displays, and reopened that October. The drinks and food are pretty average, but unless you live in Estacada, this is entirely beside the point. Despite many trips to the Portland area and friends in the area, I had never heard of the "legendary" club until I won a free dinner there in a tiki event in August 2012. It is basically out in the middle of nowhere but such an extraordinary stop that it is well worth the drive for anyone living or visiting in northwestern Oregon or southwestern WA.


116 Southeast 4th Avenue Estacada, OR 97023 - (503) 630-3208
Est. 1970

Web site: legendarysafariclub.com - facebook
Reviews: oregonlive - vintageroadtrip - ourtikilife - wweek - kristidoespdx - deuceofclubs - barfly - yelp - urbanspoon

#1832 - Rock Garden Tavern, Oregon City, OR - 8/6/2011

Like the Echo Inn just across the Clackamas River, the Rock Garden Tavern is a historic old place established by the Mumpower family in the 1920s. Current owner Sheila was kind enough to share with us a scrapbook of historical notes and photos. The building was apparently situated here by Joseph Grant Mumpower in order to prevent Steven Carver from building his railroad through -- but the railroad just went up and over the place. In 1936, it was sold to Mumpower's daughter Genievieve and her friend Marie Mollet, whereupon the women converted it to a tavern, which it has remained ever since. (Genevieve's sister-in-law Echo founded the Echo Inn.)

Owner's photo book on the history of the Rock Garden Tavern

Today, the tavern looks very much as it did in the past (at least as far back as the 1940s photos), and the interior feels homey despite the video lottery machines lining the backroom walls. It's the kind of bar that makes me long to come back and visit when there's a foot of snow outside.

Sheila, owner of the Rock Garden Tavern, Oregon City, OR

Genevieve Mumpower Miller, left, at the Rock Garden Tavern

17930 S Clackamas River Dr, Oregon City, OR 97045
Bar Est. 1936 (Est. as restaurant 1928) - Building constructed: 1928

Reviews: yelp

#1831 - Echo Inn, Carver, OR - 8/6/2011

For background on Shelley's Echo Inn, I quote the April 20, 2010 issue of the Clackamas Review:

'You will have to wait until September for the crawfish races, but chicken poop bingo is coming up on April 24, at Shelly’s Echo Inn in Carver.... There has been an eatery of some kind on the spot since 1924, when a woman named Echo Mumpower began serving food to loggers. "It started as a roadside stand like you’d find at a carnival; it always served beer and wine. And before the trailer park [down below] was built, people would walk up [from the river bank] to buy burgers," Weseman said. A man named Mac then owned the place for 29 years, before selling to Weseman’s father, who in turn owned it for three and a half years. After trying to sell the restaurant to her brothers, Weseman’s father talked her into buying it when she was 27 and a single mom.'

'When she took over the Echo Inn, Hamm’s and Budweiser were the only beers on tap, and chili dogs and bar snacks made up the bulk of the menu. That has changed dramatically. Weseman had a kitchen built, her husband built a smokehouse and she brought in a gas barbecue. She smokes hams, half chickens, prime rib roasts, roasts and jerky and barbecues steaks and pork chops, among other things. She also serves Icelandic cod, steamers and chicken strips.'

(For another bar built by the Mumpowers in the 1920s, swing across the Clackamas river to the Rock Garden Tavern.)

16150 SE Hwy 224 Damascus, OR 97015 - (503) 658-5226          
Web site: shellysechoinn.com
Reviews: yelp

#1830 - Trader Vic's, Portland, OR - 8/5/2011

Update: The Portland Trader Vics closed in March 2016.

You will excuse, I hope, a little bitter envy from up north. Seattle may retain a little tiki vibe in HulaHula (and let us politely ignore the ghastly sham called  "Tiki Bob's"). But with the return of Trader Vic's in 2011, Portland has the trifecta: the fine, vintage tiki dive (The Alibi), the modern, classy tiki (Thatch/Hale Pele), and the old classic.

Trader Vic's, of course, started it all. Not just the tiki bar, but the tiki movement, resurgent now after a couple decades of decline.  Starting as "Hinky Dink's, across from his parents' Oakland grocery store, Victor Bergeron spread his vision of exotic, idealized Polynesian escape across the country and eventually the world. Of course many others contributed (and some contend Vic's claim on the invention of the Mai Tai), but Don the Beachcomber et. al. were never as expansive and iconic.

 In Seattle we had the very first franchised Trader Vic's (long called "The Outrigger"), from 1948 to 1991, in the Benjamin Franklin / Westin Hotel, then recently had a brief, abortive attempt across Lake Washington in Bellevue. The large thatch lamps from the old Seattle place hung for years in the Crocodile Cafe, before disappearing altogether with the recent change in ownership. I never made it to the old Portland TV's (in the Benson Hotel from 1959 to 1996). But the new one feels just as right and enduring as the Bellevue one felt out of place and fragile. It is large (250 seats) but feels intimate, it looks terrific, and has drinks good enough to make you almost forget all the horrific attempts at tiki drinks you get almost anyplace else.

1203 NW Glisan St (at NW 12th Ave), Portland, OR 97209 - (503) 467-2277
Est. July 28, 2011

Web site: tradervicspdx.com - facebook
Ranked Reviews: oregonlive - portlandmonthlymag - critiki - flickr - eater - tikicentral - portlandmonthlymag - oregonlive - rumconnection - barfly - urbanspoon

#1829 - Jantzen Beach Bar & Grill, Portland, OR - 8/4/2011

A fairly typical hotel lounge in a Red Lion, but with a very nice view of the Columbia River.

909 N Hayden Island Dr, Portland, OR - (503) 283-4466


Web site: redlionontheriver.com - facebook
Reviews: link - urbanspoon - yelp

#1828 - Bullseye Bar, Lakewood - 8/3/2012

The Lakewood, WA instance of the fairly large bars in the 28-restaurant Black Angus Steakhouse chain.

9905 Bridgeport Way SW, Lakewood, WA 98499 - (253) 582-6900
Web site: blackangus.com

#1827 #S1048 - China Gourmet, Seattle - 7/29/2012

Update: China Gourmet closed in Nov 2014

Counting this restaurant in north Seattle as a bar is somewhat dubious, but they do have a physical bar where they serve wine and beer. (If it does count as a bar, it is the northernmost bar in the Seattle city limits.) They also serve reasonably good Chinese (Taiwanese to Northern Chinese) food for very reasonable prices. And their Superpages entry reads charmingly "We have been here for three years to service the wonderfully neighborhoods of north Seattle ..."

14411 Greenwood Ave N, Seattle, WA - (206) 363-3866
Est. 2009 - Closed Nov 2014 - Building constructed: 1928
Previous bars in this location: Ha Roo Japanese Restaurant and Bar
Web site: chinagourmetwa.com
Reviews: yelp - tripadvisor

#1826 #S1047 - Gaspare, Seattle - 7/26/2012

Gaspare and Dianne Trani decided to retire for the full-time restaurant business just three months after this visit to their charming Italian place in a Greenwood bungalow. They operated here for eight years, previously running Gaspare's Ristorante Italiano in Maple Leaf for fourteen, and then Il Gambero in Belltown from 1999 to 2003. They now offer catering services.

Langostino from Gaspare, Seattle

6705 Greenwood Avenue North Seattle, WA 98103 - (206) 297-3600
Est. 2004 - Closed Oct 27, 2012 - Building constructed: 1924
Previous bars in this location: None known
Web site: gasparesrestaurant.com
Reviews: seattletimes - phinneywood - urbanspoon - thestranger - yelp