Seattle’s 17 Essential Bars

"The thing about Sluggers isn’t that it’s a great sports bar, per se (although it subjectively is). It’s that everyone in Seattle eventually goes to it. Due to its prime location right next to Lumen Field, it’s where you go before or after sports happen, or it’s where you go to wait for your boyfriend (of any gender) to get out of sports. See also: concerts at the stadia, New Year’s Eve festivities in Pioneer Square, killing time before a train. If you’re a Seattleite, you’re just gonna end up here sometime. Formerly Sneakers in the 1980s, this long, skinny train car of a building was built in 1910 as a warehouse, and it retains that, ahem, unfussy charm. (It owes its svelte 17-and-a-half–foot width to the fact that it replaced a railroad pathway.) Plus they have these weirdly tall booths that are like eyeball height with the TV behind the bar, so you’re looking over the bartender to intimately lock eyes with J. P. Crawford instead. A required, inevitable Seattle Place. (Note that on days when there’s nothing going on at the stadiums, Sluggers is typically closed.)" - Meg van Huygen, Mark DeJoy, Eater Staff