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“And make sure you check out our Halloween experience, which is coming in October! Now, do you want blue or green for your shot?” the bartender trumpets.
I’m on the ground floor of what the bartender informs me is the 18,000 square foot home to LIT Immersive, an entertainment company focused on “immersive” experiences. He’s referencing Pumpkin Sutra, a holiday event featuring the world’s largest display of “pornkins” (which are exactly what you think they are), erotic performances, cocktails, and fresh pasta. There are 10 other patrons spread throughout the cavernous space, sedately sipping their drinks ($12 for a Bodhi and a shot) in the air conditioning. Apparently, this is a sports bar.
The only clue I can spot is the bartender’s City Connect Robbie Ray jersey, which inspires a horrific immersive memory experience of its own (for those less immersed in the lore: Ray was a starting pitcher for the Mariners, known for wearing very tight pants, not being vaccinated, and giving up a massive, soul-crushing walk-off home run in the first game of the 2022 American League Division Series). We’re surrounded by televisions, and there’s one hauntingly elongated projector screen, playing music videos intercut with and promotional videos advertising said holiday show. It’s as hallucinatory as Jay Bruce’s stint with the Mariners.
On a recent Friday night, LIT Bar was my first stop on a tour of saloons, beer gardens, and cocktails around T-Mobile Park, a roving attempt to figure out why Seattle’s baseball bar scene sucks. It’s not the Mariners’ fault. Despite nearly 50 years of dedicated ineptitude, on Wednesday they secured the AL West division title and T-Mobile Park was rocking. But I would go so far as to say that their historic ineptitude has cultivated their community, not held it back. There is no greatness to cling to in Mariners fandom, just a fierce, fervent pride in the small, magical gifts we’ve been granted in the face of rampant despair. You don’t become a Mariners fan because you love to win. The camaraderie and the connections sustain the fandom.
But while the ballpark feels like home, replete with memories both good and bad, once you disperse outside the gates at the corner of Edgar and Dave, that shared communion disappears into the marine layer. Many take to X, or Reddit, but the endorphin rush of posting can only take you so far.
The why is complicated, but a few factors are clear. Let’s start with location.
Chicagoans choose to live in Wrigleyville, the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field, because there’s energy, places to go and things to do.
“There are many places in the neighborhood that stay busy even on non-game days, it’s a vibrant part of the city,” says Al Yellon, Managing Editor of Bleed Cubbie Blue, a Chicago Cubs blog.
Petco Park in San Diego sits flush alongside the Gaslamp District, a neighborhood with an abundance of restaurants, shops, ballpark-view condos, and a beautiful, grassy park. Even in Atlanta, though technically (and controversially) Cobb County, the Braves have the Battery, a massive, mixed-use development surrounding Truist Park.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile Park sits at the northern edge of SODO, a largely industrial neighborhood. Its most prominent neighbor is Lumen Field, and most commerce comes from Pioneer Square and the Chinatown-International District, which flank SODO to the north and east respectively. Most of this region isn’t zoned for housing; according to the City of Seattle, which designates it as a Community Reporting Area of Duwamish/SODO, just 3,364 people live in the area.
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The next factor is the economics of it all. Like any self-respecting Seattle sports fan, my formative drinking experiences took place in the seven or eight square blocks between Occidental Square and the Krispy Kreme on 1st Avenue. I’ve drowned my sorrows at long-gone institutions like FX McRory’s, Altstadt, and Triangle, and will forever miss the elite pregame that was two beef empanadas and a potent hibiscus cocktail at Manu’s Bodega under the highway overpass.
But greedy landlords, a global pandemic, and the general agony of owning a business has forced many of the old stalwarts to disappear. “It’s challenging to run a business close to the stadiums, because they tend to keep people there, so they can’t venture out”, explains Sara Upshaw, owner of OHSUN Banchan Deli & Cafe, on the corner of 1st Avenue and Main Street. “Then because everything is expensive in the stadiums, when they do leave either for or after a game, they’re not able to spend more of their funds in the neighborhood.”
Pioneer Square has the standalone venues. Establishments that benefit from the uptick in patrons on gamedays, but where you’re just as likely to see business suits as you are jerseys. Your Damn the Weathers and Dead Lines and Underbellys, with a tasteful cocktail menu and beer that seems a bit steep until you journey closer to the stadiums. They’re lovely, but a dissonant vibe alongside a Seattle dog from Al’s and $9 bleacher tickets. As you cross King Street, you enter the Sports Zone, replete with middling variations on sports bars.
My quest for Seattle’s baseball bar scene began as many pregames do: At Sluggers.
Sluggers is a gnarly classic, with its carpeting, urinal cake smell, and inexplicably narrow layout. A handful of box fans circulate tepid air, and the floor dips and creaks worryingly as I walk along its open-air upper floor.
Michael, who’s manning the fraternity basement-inspired upstairs bar setup, has been working there “off and on” for six years. He says business picks up about an hour before gametime, empties out at the start of first pitch or kickoff at Lumen Field, and refills to some degree after the game ends. He’s noticed an uptick in out-of-towners—or, at least, representatives of the opposing team, which tracks with Seattle’s growing population of transplants.
“What’s it like on non game days?” I ask Michael during a lull in cracking cans and pouring foamy beer into plastic cups.
“If there isn’t a home game, I think people just stick to their local dives,” he said. “You know, where the drinks are cheaper,” he added with a wry grin. Sluggers charges $10 for a large plastic cup of Bodhizafa, but the credit card minimum is $15.
Next door, a bouncer half-heartedly checks my ID before allowing me into Elysian Fields. The bland mix of chrome, wood, and standard brewery issue barrel tables calls into question that age-old struggle between personality (by way of ancient carpet and eau de urinal cake) or looks. Everything about EF is aggressively, insistently fine; a Soulless Haunt, albeit far afield from its contemporaries in South Lake Union. It bears the marks of a classic Seattle sellout: $10 for 20 oz. beers, uninspired gastropub fare and ample, if uncomfortable, seating. It’s all quite egregiously benign.
Not craving $15 cheese curds, I continued on down to “The Hall on Occidental,” both the newest addition to the scene and the latest venture of the inspiringly-named Hall Group which brought us Queen Anne Beer Hall.When I stopped by, would-be patrons in the slow-moving line were being serenaded by a lonely DJ, whose strobe lights aggressively pulsed outside. It wasn’t worth the wait, plus their Bodhis are also $10.
Amid the hot dog stands and street vendors farther south on Occidental, I found a series of increasingly baffling, half-hearted bars. There’s LIT Immersive (of “pornkin” infamy), along with Pioneer Tacos and Tequila ($10 Bodhis) and Gantry Public House. Gantry employs a broad outdoor space and beers by the bucket to draw people in, while maintaining the half-hearted aesthetic of a pop-up bar that could close at any moment.
Outside at a broad picnic bench, I met Gantry first-timers Alexis and Felipe, who say they chose the bar for their first home game of the year for two reasons: proximity to the ballpark and because “it looked like it was hoppin.” They had no plan for where to go after the game. “Probably somewhere back in Queen Anne?” Bodhis are still $10, though most people are sucking at Capri-Sun-like pouches.
“Did you see that DJ down the way?” Felipe asks, unprompted. “We were going to stop there but the whole thing seemed kinda intense.”
My next stop is the beer garden across 1st Avenue from T-Mobile Park. It’s part of the yawning, Mariners-owned behemoth The Boxyard, which includes Hatback Bar and Grille, Steelheads Alley and Victory Hall. These spaces offer proximity and a sanitized homage to baseball history in Seattle, but suffer somehow simultaneously from long wait times (inside seating at Hatback) and an excess of space (no matter how many City Connect jersey-bedecked fans flock to the beer garden and open-air indoor space, it always feels semi-empty).
Lily is out with her coworkers from The Polyclinic. She’s been to Hatback before, because it’s close to the stadium and an easy choice. “Sometimes I’ll go to Monkey Loft,” another Lily chimes in. “Or Cowgirls,” adds coworker Veronica, eliciting laughs and groans from the others.
My journey continued—and promptly ended— the south of the ballpark. Based on zoning restrictions and entanglements between the City of Seattle and the Port of Seattle, there is relatively little to be found this way.. Hooverville, the platonic ideal of a sports dive, is the lone beacon. It’s decades old and beloved, even though the peanuts are no longer free or allowed on the floor.
“Seattle’s got nothing on San Diego’s bar scene,” says Hooverville bartender Jason, who used to live in San Diego.
“It’s 100 times bigger than ours,” he says. “They block off, like, five square blocks around the park and there are bars and people everywhere.” He thinks more people would come, and stay, if the city made the area more pedestrian-friendly on game days.
I was curious how fans with a favorite bar found their mainstay, but there was little thought, just chaos.
“If we have the time, we’ll sometimes go to Hooverville,” Nick tells me while waiting for someone at Hatback. “It’s kinda out of the way though, takes a little extra time coming from the north. This was close and easy.”
Isabel, a member of the Polyclinic party, echoed the influence of geography. “Honestly, I don’t usually come down here,” she said. “I live further north, and usually we’ll pregame elsewhere and work our way down south.”
Connor, a 20-something guy pregaming at Hatback said the neighborhood held little draw beyond the park. “We don’t really spend a lot of time down here, other than for games,” he told me.
I suspect there’s some very Pacific Northwest-style apathy at play, which is abnormal for the Mariners’ fervent fandom. But then again, Seattle is not a late-night locale. Bars and restaurants close early all over the city.
“There’s the whole safety thing too,” notes Jason. “You know, there are a lot of homeless folks around this area, and I know there’s a lot of talk about people–especially from out of town–not really feeling comfortable around here.”
A sense, real or perceived, that the neighborhoods around the stadium aren’t safe, is common and not surprising. It comes up repeatedly among the revelers and barstaff in the area.
Hatback bartender Ryan says out-of-town visitors tend to stick the block around T-Mobile Park, because they’ve heard it’s an otherwise dangerous area. It was that type of sentiment that fueled the City of Seattle to sweep homeless encampments in SODO ahead of the MLB All-Star Game in 2023. Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office denied that it was specific to the event (but c’mon, man). Zoning plays some part in this lame ass bar scene, too. Earlier this year, Seattle City Council voted to advance a bill that would amend existing zoning laws and allow approximately 990 new apartment units to be built in the area around T-Mobile and Lumen Field and further south, but the Port of Seattle remains in direct opposition, citing issues with transportation and infrastructure. As of July the proposal is held up in court, and the area remains a place for fleeting visits, rather than prolonged stays.
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I cherish the community that baseball creates. Sports have always been one of those great unifiers, but there is something unique about Mariners fandom, a particular kinship in this upper left corner of the country, borne out of agony and frustration and scavenging brief, shining moments into memories like a frantic little magpie. And SODO plays host to it all. It’s why it stinks that people only parachute in for the first pitch, and why it’s so deflating that people leave immediately after—or sometimes before—the game has run its course. Fans might be dedicated to the M’s, but beyond the ballpark they’re not staying.
I remember seeing the mayhem outside Fenway Park in 2004, after the Red Sox ended the Curse of the Bambino; I remember watching in 2016 as Chicagoans flooded the streets in Wrigleyville after the Cubs finally ended the drought. At the time of writing, the Mariners have sole possession of the AL West division title with single digit games left to play.
Someday, perhaps someday soon, it will be our turn to celebrate, but will we have that same centralized celebration space? I yearn for that as much as I do the banners that will hang from T-Mobile Park’s rafters. I want my yells to be lost amidst collective jubilation, to slosh $10 Bodhis on the ground, and hug strangers, and stay until they kick us out to soak up every last drop of joy – and perhaps a few shots of blue, too.