All Roads Lead to the Dog House

January 19, 2019 7:40 PM

Few agree when precisely "old Seattle" died, but wherever you place the period, The Dog House was in many ways emblematic of the old days. It stood for 60 years as a working-class gathering space, offering cheap food and beer in its smoke-filled booths, and camaraderie in nightly singalongs around the organ. Knute Berger recalls how The Dog House "challenged the myth of Seattle nice." Jean Godden and J.A. Jance reminisced during the Dog House's final months in 1993, and Dog House regular Floyd Waterson remembers its last day in 1994. But the soul of the place was really in its people: longtime owner Laurie Gulbransen was remembered in an obituary in 2000; organist Dick Dickerson died in 2006. The corner of 7th & Bell hosted a 24-hour restaurant for nearly a century, with the Dog House's tenure bookended by the Bohemian Continental before it and the Hurricane Cafe after. The Hurricane closed at the end of 2014 and that old building was razed. The site is now known as Amazon Block 21.
posted by duffell (33 comments total)

There's a great cartoon eulogy of the Dog House, in which everyone is drawn as a dog, in the book Seattle Laughs: Comic Stories About Seattle. If you're from Generation X, you probably have feelings about that city, even if you've never been there -- about grunge rock and hipness, of course, but that youth culture was set in a rainy working-class town epitomized by the Dog House.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:50 PM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

The bar at the Dog House in the 1980's started as a joke for me--the cheesy piano, the drunken singalongs--but I came to love that place. I saw magic there: old timers and punks, drunks and clove-smokers, song swelling in the room, the occasional violin player who stopped by to play along with Dick. All were welcome, no one was rich, and no one had a bad word for anyone. I'm pretty sure all the waitresses on the restaurant side called me "Hon." The end of the Dog House indeed has felt like the end of the Seattle I knew. By the end of the 90's I was ready to leave.
posted by baseballpajamas at 7:55 PM on January 19, 2019 [8 favorites]

The site is now known as Amazon Block 21.

That's in the league of "Airstrip One"
posted by thelonius at 8:06 PM on January 19, 2019 [5 favorites]

Grew up in (well technically Bothell, sigh) Seattle and totally missed out on the Dog House, and Shelly's Leg for that matter. Mixed feelings about the viaduct. Did have a drink in the Marine Room with the aquariums (ratpackish, uh, charm) Never sprung for Canlis, is it still there on scenic Aurora? Did bike down the middle of the Aurora bridge on a visit during a Critical Mass ride, that was a real kick!
posted by sammyo at 8:12 PM on January 19, 2019

That sounds wonderful. I'm truly sorry I missed it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:22 PM on January 19, 2019

Oh man, I can't believe I never went there! My family moved to what was then unincorporated Renton in '86, when I was going to college in Oregon, and I spent a few weeks here and there during break from school (and later work back east).

It was a different town back then, when Boeing was the 800 Pound Gorilla. I never felt the Seattle love, so I didn't really take the time to explore its nooks and crannies at the time. Saw a very few rock shows downtown, hung out with my best friend occasionally when she was living there, most memorably ate some mushrooms at her sister's, and quit my altogether occasional smoking habit at a bar.

Mom worked in the traffic department at KING-TV downtown, and whenever I was home, I'd meet her for sandwiches at some tiny joint a couple blocks from the station. She grew to loathe the commute, and eventually said "screw this" and quit. She got sick not too long after that, and any time I was there was spent almost entirely in Renton.

Anyway, it's kinda dusty in here...
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:35 PM on January 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

I toured another one of the Amazon buildings nearby while it was under construction, as part of a commercial real estate class I was taking. From the not-yet-installed window on the 19th floor, I could see the building where the Hurricane was - it was closed but hadn't yet been demolished. The construction company guy giving us the tour informed us that Amazon had saved the Hurricane sign and planned to put it up inside the building - apparently they often use pieces of the prior building inside the new one as decor.

All I could think about was big game hunters taking trophy heads.
posted by skycrashesdown at 9:25 PM on January 19, 2019 [22 favorites]

The old Dog House was amazing, a slice of 1950's americana frozen in time, beehived waitresses that would call you darlin' while refilling your coffee with a cigarette dangling from the corner of the mouth. I worked there when it was the Hurricane in the early 90's, an offshoot of Beth's Cafe further north on Aurora Avenue. I miss that era of 24 hour diners, and Amazon saving the Hurricane sign to put up on their new skyscraper is as ghoulish as the condos where Minnie's in lower Queen Anne used to be getting named Minnie Flats.
posted by drinkyclown at 9:36 PM on January 19, 2019 [7 favorites]

Aw, Beth's and Stella's and the Dog House, but I really miss the Last Exit.
posted by clew at 10:20 PM on January 19, 2019 [7 favorites]

A greasy breakfast with a chocolate shake at the Doghouse after playing a show. That was the life.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:24 PM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

All you nostalgiac, diner-loving Seattle folks need to go to Randy's while you still can. They've scaled back their hours in recent months, and I'm really worried about their future.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:13 PM on January 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

.

I can't say I ever got over the loss.
posted by mwhybark at 12:33 AM on January 20, 2019

a slice of 1950's americana frozen in time

I know it seemed like that, but it was actually a piece of 1930's Americana frozen in time. The decor, the mural above the counter, signage, the interior architectural layout - it was older than seemed even possible, and it is a crime that we let it slip away.

I love Randy's, and yes, I believe they are headed off into the sunset too. The big XB model near the entry fell from the ceiling a few years ago and when I asked about it staff told me that the loss of the model seemed to have led the owner to lose interest in continuing to add to the collection. The building and facility is also notable as one of the few surviving unremodeled specimens of Denny's "googy" era, something that can be hard toseebeneath the encrustations of avaiation memorabilia.
posted by mwhybark at 12:51 AM on January 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

Amazon saving the Hurricane sign

I did not know this, and I literally recoiled from the screen in horror on reading it. That’s...ghoulish, yes, completely gross, so tone deaf of them yet totally aware. Ugh.
And the explicit naming of condos where real businesses were razed—Minnie’s is the worst one so far, but Capitol Hill has halfway inured me to it in the past 10-15 years.
posted by zinful at 1:33 AM on January 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Very few things make me nostalgic for Seattle, which these days I look upon like an abusive ex I’m grateful to have escaped, but this brought back some good feelings and memories and I never even went to the Dog House! Wonderful post and wonderful comments, thank you all around for sharing.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 1:52 AM on January 20, 2019

I'm too young to have been "of" the Dog House's time--but when my mom learned that they'd be closing for good, she made sure to take me there for a meal. I must've been 9 at the time. My parents' formative adult years were in Seattle of the 1970s, and they wanted to make sure their kids knew Seattle-that-was, before it wasn't.
posted by duffell at 5:17 AM on January 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I miss that era of 24 hour diners

I never really understood the lack of 24-hour diners in the PNW. There are literally 17,000 of them on the East Coast.
posted by Automocar at 8:50 AM on January 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

Beth's was local to me, and I remember stumbling in after an abnormally sudden snowfall and finding them open.

"Uh, of course, dude." said the fry cook, who seemed to be the only staff there, "Nobody's seen the key to those doors in like fifty years."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:03 AM on January 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

ghoulish [...] the explicit naming of condos where real businesses were razed

The city is named Seattle.
posted by clew at 10:37 AM on January 20, 2019 [10 favorites]

Canlis is still there. They were also significant opponents to the rise in the minimum wage. This implies there are employees at Canlis who make no more than their counterparts at Denny's, despite the final tab for the customers. Yikes.
posted by aurelian at 1:03 PM on January 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

I remember when there was an arms race on omelette sizes. "Try our 12-egg omelette!" "Home of the 24-egg omelette!" "52-egg omelette!" etc.

A group once ordered the one at (I think) the Doghouse. They proudly made it on the grill (warning customers they'd stop all other orders in the meantime) and then realised they didn't have a plate large enough to serve it.

They ended up improvising by washing some serving trays and using those, I'm told!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:03 PM on January 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I also remember the Last Exit always had a peanut butter sandwich on its menu, priced so that even the poorest folk could spend a couple hours indoors and have a meal.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:06 PM on January 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

indeed they did, and that thing was huge, the size of a mission burrito. although I recall it as maybe a PBJ? Anyway, yes, a two-day meal when you needed it. One wonders if the portion size varied by perceived need.
posted by mwhybark at 11:14 PM on January 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

When I said I thought the omelette was at the Doghouse, I of course meant the Hurricane.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:58 PM on January 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Sorry about that, hades! I moved out of Seattle in the mid-90s, and out of the US in the mid-2000s. Without the local BBS scene (Citadel 4EVA, just check the Eskimo North Port BBS List, sucka!) I'm at sea as to what's left over there.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:38 AM on January 21, 2019

Regarding the locks, I remember having conversations with friends around pots of coffee and Beth's's onion rings about it. Why did we always see locks on 7-11s? Those never closed either! Turns out it's because they close when they're burgled, which happens a lot.

As fate would have it, there was some sort of police action that spring. I remember seeing police tape on the outside of the doors and a padlock and chains on the inside. Mystery solved!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:40 AM on January 21, 2019

I remember the cheap peanut butter sandwich -- it was on a doorstop of wholemeal bread, very filling, and came with a wedge of orange and a big sprig of parsley and the advice to eat the parsley too, for vitamins.
posted by clew at 12:24 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

It was jarring when I chaperoned a preschool field trip to MOHAI and saw the Dog House sign on display there. A restaurant I had eaten at was now history.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:50 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Should we have a meetup at Beth's or the Allegro, or are the nostalgic no longer here?
posted by clew at 12:08 PM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Not familiar with the Dog House, but the description reminds me of Benito's in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, which closed down a dozen or so years ago. They had a big band that played swing and dixieland on Friday and Saturday nights and the youngest person in there was at least in their 70s -- except me and my high school friends. We used to go there for some underage drinking since they never carded us, because why would a bunch of high school kids want to hang out with all those old fogies? The beers where cheap, the music fantastic and everyone was so friendly. There was an old man who would tap dance to the band all night long wearing suspenders and a straw hat. I miss that place. There will probably never be another like it.
posted by slogger at 1:03 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Beth’s Cafe listed for sale as vacant land. This city is dying by the tax parcel.
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:48 PM on February 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

mooooooooooooootherfucker
posted by duffell at 12:49 PM on February 8, 2019

Beth's Cafe is one of those places I haven't eaten in in... uh... a decade? But I liked knowing it was there. I need to do a better job about supporting businesses like that.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:10 PM on February 8, 2019