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Exploring the U-District’s historic Blue Moon Tavern

Blue Moon Tavern Logo

A closer view of the Blue Moon Tavern's iconic logo.

While driving through the U-District to tour campus, my mother pointed to a neon sign depicting a scantily clad woman balanced on a crescent moon. The sign hung in front of a run-down dive bar just off Interstate 5 called the Blue Moon Tavern.

This was where the poets used to drink, she told me. Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, and Carolyn Kizer were all regular patrons. Even Allen Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas made an appearance when they were in town. Immediately, I longed for a peek inside.

Built in 1934, there are nearly nine decades worth of stories living within the Blue Moon Tavern. I couldn’t help but run a finger over every surface, enchanted by the texture.

Tacked to the walls are poems and comics protesting everything from the Vietnam to the Iraq war. Despite the tavern’s waning popularity, the bar is smooth and well polished. There’s a portrait of a group of regular customers who used to patronize the tavern nestled in a corner.

The back half of the room is taken up by a stage, though live music is, by the tavern’s standards, a relatively new addition. Since 2002, the Blue Moon has hosted all sorts of musicians, from country bands to opera singers, four to five nights a week. According to longtime bartender Tim Dooley, who bought the tavern in 2022, they added the music as a way to attract more crowds after the area began to gentrify.

“The neighborhood started changing,” Dooley said. “They just took down the houses and put up all the new apartments … Now, it's like transitional housing.”

Because of the transient nature of the neighborhood's residents, it’s difficult for Dooley to maintain the tight-knit community that has made the tavern a second home to so many previous generations. According to Dooley, most nights, if there is no band, the tavern is empty. Despite these setbacks, the community spirit of the Blue Moon is alive.

“[There are] still generations of what we call ‘Blue Mooners’ that are a family,” Dooley said. “We get together every year for a campout, and we just had a little potluck … It’s definitely a family affair.”

This campout tradition has deep roots, happening annually since 1972.  

Though never fully shedding its old skins, the Blue Moon has lived many lives. According to the tavern’s website, It’s been “a beatnik speakeasy, a biker bar, hippie hive, and a grunge era dive.” But it’s perhaps most notorious for housing Seattle’s counterculture in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.   

At the Blue Moon, alcohol blurs memory into myth. Love stories, epic bar fights, and the occasional streaker haunt the tavern. Well-known Seattle painter Alfredo Arreguin, who was a constant presence at the Blue Moon, met his wife Susan Lytle, another talented artist, at the tavern in 1973. Arreguin said it was in the summer, but Lytle insists it was mid-winter.

“I was playing pool, and the door opened and Susie walked in, and I jumped over to her and addressed her as my sweetheart,” Arreguin said. “She sat down next to me, and [everyone] said, ‘She's not going to go with you tonight,’ and I said, ‘Yes she will.’ And she went out with me that night. I remember that she was on LSD, and I was drunker than hell.”

They ended up going back to Arreguin’s house, because Lytle had a cold. He offered her some medicine, but alas, it was for earaches instead. Almost 50 years later, they are still married.  

Arreguin immigrated to the United States from Mexico. After serving in Korea, he returned to Seattle to study art at UW. He would attract crowds to the tavern, dancing on the tabletops and giving impassioned polemics against the Vietnam war. Once, he even swung from the light fixture.

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According to Arreguin, it took a lot to get “86ed” —  thrown out — from the Blue Moon Tavern, but he managed it quite a few times.

“One time, I walked into the Blue Moon, and [this guy] was naked, and the police were arresting him,” Arreguin said. “So, I said to him, ‘Hey, I’ll see you in jail tonight.’ And then I started peeing on the police car … so there I was, with him, in jail.”   

Lytle and Arreguin eventually stopped going to the Blue Moon. They even stopped drinking entirely; it started to feel unsafe.

“All the people we hung out with … they’re gone,” Lytle said. “They’re dead, because they didn’t quit drinking.”

I’ve always had a tendency to romanticize the beatnik and bohemian cultures of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Sometimes I wonder if my admiration is misplaced, if I’m nostalgic for something that was as insubstantial as an acid trip. But despite being aware of its problems, Lytle offered permission to keep daydreaming about the epoch she’d helped create.

“It was like a renaissance,” Lytle said.

Blue Moon Tavern Door

With the opening of the Blue Moon Tavern in 1934, the door is representative of its longevity. The door handle is also in the shape of a crescent moon.

Pub culture has changed a lot in the last couple decades. According to Dooley, there isn’t nearly as much human connection as there used to be. These days, people come into the tavern and pull out a laptop. The rare disputes that arise are settled with smartphones instead of the encyclopedias that used to line the wall.

“​​You used to come in here, you’d sit down in the bar, somebody had racked up a conversation, and you just talked for hours,” Dooley said.

Now, customers hardly talk at all.

It might not be possible to imitate the frenetic energy of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and being under 21, I can’t vouch for the drinks, but I encourage you to check out this piece of our city's history. Maybe we can reanimate this storied tavern with our own stories. Maybe we can start a new scene. 

Reach contributing writer Zinnia Hansen at arts@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @HansenZinnia

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