Growing up, we used to spend all of the daylight hours we had when we weren’t in school, exploring the world around us. Bellevue Washington in the 1950s and 1960s was mostly old growth woods, with old abandoned cabins and farm houses that looked like someone had left in a hurry — forty years earlier. We LOVED to explore these old homes and buildings broken down by years of bad roofs and neglect.
The stuff we would find! Once we found an almost new 1934 Plymouth Coupe in a shed buried by decades of blackberry bushes. The story behind that was that a son had gone off to WWII, leaving his car in his father’s shed. The son never returned, and the shed was eventually forgotten.
The musty smells of these old building stir some real exciting memories in me, and whenever I have a chance, I am gung-ho for exploring a new place.
Well, we have one right next to the hotel When we purchased the parking lot next door, we also bought up several buildings on the same block. One of these buildings used to be The Hawks Nest, a sports bar and grill within a block of both stadiums, and a place that used to be frequented by several of the local players.
The pandemic not only closed the bar, but it killed the owner of the property. We bought up the entire kit and caboodle from the kids who were in a real hurry to unload it and move on with their lives.
The Hawks Nest was just the latest of a long list of dives that have been in that spot since the building was built in 1918. Just my kind of building to explore.
I’ve been meaning to go check it out, but I’ve always been busy doing other things. But the other day, someone tried to break in, and it was then I decided to go check it out.
Ah, the “Curb Appeal”
You can see where someone tried to pry, so we installed cameras and alarm and fixed the door.
The bar is solid and in great condition.
When it was opened, the place was jammed packed on game days
It smells as musty as it looks
As you can see, it’s a fairly large place.
The games are full of quarters
There are dozens of these posters, some mounted some in the back — all signed
I found six of these keg coolers. They were for the patio
The kitchen is a health department nightmare
From the back corner
What it looked like back in the day
They did quite the business on game days.
If you are interested, their FaceCrack page is still up. The food looks GREAT, for what the kitchen looks like now.
What are we going to do with it? Not exactly sure yet. There are still a couple more acquisitions to be made before we own the whole block of buildings. There are two parking lots currently on the market for $44 million. Location location location…
And this was something different for y’all today.
OKAY, the purpose of this post was not only to give you something cool to look at, but to check out how it is to post here.
Not so good, really. It still takes FOREVER to upload any kind of photo or media. It was faster to post it to my back-up site and share the photos here.
I suspect that I will probably be mirroring this site in the next few days.
Discover more from The Anti-Idiotarian Rottwiler
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Your family business is indeed interesting. Am rather surprised you did not decide to make it your home for a while. What guy would not like to brag he lives in a bar, not above but in!
Sure, if I were still a twenty-something. I’ve lived in much stranger places. Like the Pistol Pete’s Steak House on Las Vegas Blvd South back in the early 1970s. A mile south of Blue Diamond Road. Back then, it was the middle of the desert, and there was the old steak house, and a couple of rounded houses that had been made out of concrete with 2 foot thick concrete walls.
I don’t think I’d live in The Hawks Nest. It needs a lot of work to legally occupy it for any reason at the moment. The old flooring is starting to buckle in places, there are water leaks in the kitchen, and the power is sketchy at best. The roof top units haven’t been serviced in five years, and they were already old to begin with. They would have to be replaced to get heat.
Also, Seattle is where the term “skid row” came from, referring to the skidding of timber to be run through the saw mills on the Sound. Literally, the street in front of this place was the original “skid row”. After the timber industry moved on, it still retained it’s name, but became the area where all the bums and hobos hung out. Just south of this was what was once the tide flats, but during the depression became one of the “Hoovervilles”.
Lots of history here.
Worry not. We now have Joebama villes. the spiral of history continues. Agree the place is not economicaly salvageable but if it has a bar and backshelves from the 1800’s please salvage them, good money in the repurposing or re use business.