Anna Davies in the Gold Bar takeout window (Image: Gold Bar)
To the CHS reader playing with spray paint along E Olive Way, for one, cut it out. For two, Jeff Bezos isn’t eating anybody’s private parts. He pays people for that type of thing.
“It was something like, ‘Jeff Bezos eat my balls,’” Zach Huntting says of the graffiti tag that greeted everybody on the wall of the new Capitol Hill home for Gold Bar the day after CHS first reported on the South Lake Union transplant in June.
As Gold Bar debuts this week as a 2 PM to 2 AM hangout on the curves of E Olive Way, Huntting and business partner and nearby resident Anna Davies are taking the mistargeted welcome to the neighborhood in stride.
“Every single location you walk into is somebody’s baby as opposed to some giant machine,” Huntting says of venues like Gold Bar and its new E Olive Way neighbors including The Crescent, Hula Hula, Montana, Revolver, Hillside, and Dino’s.
“We don’t think about seats per square foot. We think about how do we make a comfortable place.”
Born five years ago in SLU, Gold Bar had to grow a community of its own over the years as it felt tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft change the way their workers spent their workdays amid the pandemic. Gold Bar survived and managed to create a solid reputation for its DJ music and events, along with elevated bar food and cocktails.
Gold Bar now opens Thursday on Capitol Hill in the building most recently home to Dacha Diner, continuing a run at this wedge along E Olive Way that has also included longtime favorite The Saint.
“We love DJs,” Huntting said. “We love to have the vibe curated.”
The events and performances help give a venue a “level of interaction you wouldn’t get otherwise,” Huntting says. Plus, having lost his shirt a few times in pay to play promotions, it’s nice to pay DJs. “They deserve to get paid,” Huntting said.
The DJ bar and hangout will keep ambitious day and night hours — yes, Huntting says, there are DJs who want to work by daylight — with a cocktail culture that remains “bright and bold” along with treats like a Frosé Rosé Slushy.
There’s a new street-barricaded outdoor patio in front of the joint adding to E Olive Way’s run of great decks up and down this turn of the street and Huntting says Gold Bar would love to add more patio space on the streets around the triangle wedge building. Unlike a certain former E Olive Way business, Huntting says Gold Bar wants to be part of the streets around it with hopes that patios and decks help keep the area active, safe, and fun.
It will also be cool. There’s air conditioning, yes, but the patio also has an excellent summertime mister.
(Image: Gold Bar)
For food, behind the walk-up counter you’ll find former Sorrento Hotel and Saint Johns chef Delwyn Brooks continuing the work he’s been doing since Gold Bar first opened with “nosh from light to substantial that make good companions for cocktails including the beloved Gold Nugs (chicken nuggets + slaw + spicy aioli).” There are also burgers and fried chicken or “pulled jackfruit” sandwiches. A new Smash Burger has been added with the new kitchen on Capitol Hill.
Huntting’s joint calls its chow “Sandos” and the social media and technology entrepreneur says things like Gold Bar is “a way to build community in a 3D world” but, seriously, Bezos balls graffiti person, lay off. Post-Kingdome Seattle has always been a geek town. Skid road is gone. Some of the best artists and musicians in the city have worked at Microsoft.
And, when it comes to artists and performances and nightlife venues and daytime patios, “A lot of the tech people were the people who came out,” Huntting says of his own experience as an artist in Seattle.
In the meantime, the original Gold Bar lives on but is also going through a final chapter that is familiar on Capitol Hill. “This isn’t even our first eviction,” Huntting says of the situation around the original 9th Ave N location. This time, though, he thinks it is for real. The first Gold Bar probably only has a couple more months now that a big-time Real Estate Investment Trust owns the property and is ready to finally move ahead with a long-planned redevelopment.
Gold Bar is set to open Thursday in its new Capitol Hill location at 1416 E Olive Way. Learn more at goldbarseattle.com.
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As a publisher, I am just here to applaud the copy on this headline. That is all.
Very disappointed that you didn’t cover the closing on Mother’s Place. On the hill for 41 years
Thanks for reading!
Mother’s Place is closing after 41 years leaving Capitol Hill parents even fewer choices for childcare
Bahahaha! BOOM!