Why Ballard dive bars thrive in changing Seattle

This piece is from our latest This City Block series, which highlights stories from Ballard.

SEATTLE IS FULL of ghosts of low-key, low-cost good times — the many classic dive bars lost to progress. On Capitol Hill’s Broadway alone, the former Ernie Steele’s now hosts drag brunch as Julia’s, what was Charlie’s has been a series of medical clinics, and the site of the bar at Jimmy Woo’s Jade Pagoda is a gym called TRIBE Fitness.

Across town, the center of Ballard has undergone even more rampant development in recent years — yet when it comes to dive bars, a crawl along historic Ballard Avenue is akin to time-traveling. This is the work of a “dive-bar savior.”

Witness the glory that abides in the form of Hattie’s Hat, the neon “COCKTAILS” above the aqua-tiled entryway. Open in various incarnations since 1904, the place is home to an antique Brunswick tiger oak back bar, carved with columns and curlicues, mirrored and magnificent. The bartop is desperately in need of refinishing, except that the scars of all the drinks served on it make it better; the underside is upholstered in a diamond pattern, a quiet and stylish friend to drinkers’ knees.

The lighting is perfectly dim. The soundtrack might move the mood from “Tiny Dancer” to Jackie Wilson to Simon & Garfunkel. The Bloody Marys are legendary. 

A block and a half away sits the Ballard Smoke Shop, its dropped ceiling and horseshoe bar monuments to its opening in 1971 — you could still smell the smoke here if the carpet hadn’t finally been replaced. The haze is gone, but the original cigarette machine remains.

Two doors down, since 1976, it’s the Sunset Tavern, with live music and a bar with walls of golden wood paneling and old photographs, its exposed-joist ceiling aglow with Christmas lights.

Why do some dives persist while so many others perish?

Brad Holden — co-host of the podcast “Dim Lights & Stiff Drinks: The Dive Bars of Seattle,” and author of “Seattle Prohibition: Bootleggers, Rumrunners and Graft in the Queen City” — has lived in Seattle since the 1990s. “I’ve seen a lot of places close, and it’s always sad to see that happen,” he says.

We meet at the Waterwheel Lounge, a soothingly dark vintage spot further north in Ballard. The property has been sold, and the bartender says he doesn’t know how long the place will stay open — they’re taking it one day at a time.

Holden’s theory about the dives that survive is simple: “It’s really the people.”

“A lot of these dive bars, at one time or another, have been on the brink of closing their doors for good,” he explains. “And then at the last minute, someone who appreciates the historical legacy of these places and why they’re important has stepped in, and basically rescues it by purchasing it and becoming the owner.”

The key then, Holden says, is that the new proprietor appreciates the “true, original character” of the place — someone who’s keen on preservation, not transformation to “a mojito bar, or an axe-throwing brewery, or whatever happens to be trendy at the time.”

In Old Ballard, that person is Max Genereaux, dive-bar devotee and majority owner of Hattie’s Hat, the Smoke Shop and the Sunset. 

“Max, of course …” Holden says. “They call them The Reviver.”

WHEN ASKED ABOUT his nickname, Genereaux laughs. He says it came from a PR person for the neighborhood association. He sees himself as “a sustainer” of these historic community gathering places in Ballard as gentrification sweeps onward, not as reviving anything. Nonetheless, he did literally revive the Smoke Shop. And “The Reviver” seems to be sticking.

His office in the low-ceilinged, labyrinthine basement of Hattie’s is cluttered and brightly lit, with the smell of onions being chopped in a nearby prep area wafting in. The atmosphere utterly lacks any dive-bar romance, but when asked why he loves such places, Genereaux lights up. He remembers the first time he walked into Hattie’s; he was going to the University of Washington in the 1990s and found his way north to Ballard. 

“Just that bar alone,” he says, meaning the antique Brunswick, “I just — I fell in love immediately when I walked into this place.”

After he became a dishwasher at Hattie’s, Genereaux recalls how he reverently touched the glossy wood when he was first allowed behind the bar to restock the glassware. Later, from 1996 through 1998, he tended that bar.

“Dive bars were always more fun to me,” Genereaux says. “I loved the way they smell.” He waxes nearly poetic about the quality of the dimness. “You weren’t surrounded by pretty people” — a plus in his book. When he first hung out at Hattie’s, the crowd still represented the seagoing Scandinavian one that built the Ballard bar industry: The crews of the fishing boats docked all around Fishermen’s Terminal and Salmon Bay, the longshoremen and boatbuilders and more. “Characters,” he calls them, “more interesting.” 

Drinks were cheaper, and the places weren’t too busy. “People were there to get drunk,” Genereaux notes. “And that’s what I wanted to get.”

He’s now been sober for 19 years. He bought the Sunset in 2000 and took a long break five years later to get sober, traveling and doing odd jobs.

After Genereaux returned to Seattle, his old bosses at Hattie’s told him they were selling. “I could not let it fall into the hands of someone that hadn’t previously worked there,” he says, so Genereaux took ownership in 2009. He bar-rescued the Smoke Shop in 2021, when it was sitting closed, its fate uncertain. He also owns The Pine Tavern, also in Ballard and long-lived as The Bit/The 2 Bit Saloon, and the archetypal Al’s Tavern in Wallingford.

“To end up doing what I’m doing — I just feel grateful,” he says. “It’s ironic that I don’t drink.”

NOTHING GOLD CAN stay completely the same, and Genereaux has made — and seen — changes.

At Hattie’s, he’s found historical photos and artwork in the basement, and restored them to the walls upstairs. He’s also added more specialty cocktails, a concession to contemporary tastes. And with those morphing over time, Hattie’s has become more known for its brunch than its bar; last year was the first one in which food sales outstripped beverage, Genereaux says. The patrons now include “people with kids … basically, people who just have more money and want to behave differently,” he says. “They want to eat and go through their day — they don’t want to sit around and drink all day long inside of a dark bar.” (How does that make him feel? “I’m so happy with it,” he says.)

When Genereaux purchased the Smoke Shop, he talked with the decadeslong owner, pledging to keep the bar the same but wanting to redo the adjoining dining room. Approval was granted, and now that’s the Ember Room, part seating, part arcade.

He ran the Sunset as it was for 14 years before undertaking a major interior overhaul, dividing the space into a separate front bar with the music venue in the rear. Genereaux realizes this betrays his sustainer ways, but “financially, we had to do it, because we needed people that could just come in and drink” — without paying the cover charge — “because we needed the income.” The crowds had changed from people who’d show up early to party and stay late drinking after the band — dramatically, as Ballard changed, and Seattle beyond. In 2000, Genereaux says, the average alcohol consumption was 2.75 drinks per person per visit; now, it’s 0.8.

“People used to get loaded,” he notes. “Shows were parties. Now shows are shows — people go to watch the music, and then they go home.”

He still loves all three of his bars along Ballard Avenue so much, he says, that he can’t pick a favorite. “There’s just something special about every one of them,” he says. “They all are my kids.”

He says he hasn’t had any offers over the years. “I think anyone who is smart enough to want to buy one of these places — or dumb enough, if you will — if they do a little research, they’ll know that there’s no way I’m selling,” Genereaux says. “I’m in for the long haul. I want to be 90 and coming down here.”