ROSLYN WASHINGTON SATURDAY EVENING OASIS IN THE WOODS

 

 

Quick reaction: What’s the first thing that comes to mind walking past a bar like this in Seattle, or Chicago, or Milwaukee?

Cross the street?

Hogs at the curb, chunky guys in black SECURITY shirts.

It’s a scene ready for action. If you’re a stranger to such parts, you’d walk past in other cities.

Not Roslyn Washington.

Bikers and door managers are part of the local color, not menace. Not in a town of 900.

Especially not in a place with a downtown honored as a National Historic Landmark and bar listed as the oldest continuously operating tavern in Washington.

Sure you could go into The Brick, run your mouth and get in to it, and have a new story to tell. Just leave out the part about getting bitch slapped in a biker bar by a stink-eyed Seattle banker.

Or stop in and behave yourself you big badass, then cross the street and turn left on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Keep going.

Don’t stop.

Not far to go.

Almost there.

 

Growing up in what’s called a small town I’ve had a lifelong interest in what makes some small towns glow and others fade.

At 8000 people my small town of North Bend Oregon was ten times bigger than Roslyn. I don’t remember anyone calling it a tourist destination, even though it was and still is.

Roslyn, like so many places you drive through when you hit the two lane highways of America, tells a story behind the story.

The one time coal mining company town is a breath of fresh air in the Washington Cascades.

 

The last time I saw as much weather beaten wood on a public street building was in New Orleans.

I figured too many hurricanes scrubbed Louisiana for paint to stick.

Roslyn shows wood to set the oasis mood.

Keep walking toward the Frida Kahlo blue mural.

I found a booth inside, or Elaine found a seat while I looked outside for the public restroom I saw on a sign.

Public restrooms show up at the beach, in malls, parks, and Roslyn? It’s a public status, even if I didn’t find it.

The Roslyn Cafe turned into the oasis I hoped for from the start. Like all great nights out, it was about the people.

If you watch enough Food Channel you see so many different approaches to food. And the talk.

“What I have prepared for you today.”

This interpretation of a reuben sandwich came with a warning. “It’s a knife and fork sandwich.”

It’s also a three meal sandwich for we who watch our figure.

While I’m carving around the pastrami and swiss and thousand island between two sauerkraut latkes, two people sit at a table near by, a Washington couple via New Jersey.

The food talkers talk about the lamb burger.

I got the inside story on a Seattle cheesesteak.

About this same time last year I was in North Carolina with their bathroom news.

No such thing in Roslyn Washington. It seems so easy.

After dinner, pack up and head into the stream of humanity.

Stop for a movie?

Get a room? Cue Roy Orbison.