Poggie Tavern

Iconic /​vintage /​family run /​dive bar in South West Seattle! Established in 1940 something.
The moment we sat down we were asked by a regular (equipped with raspy voice and mullett) to play electronic darts, which turned out to be a blast. We stayed for 5 hours and closed the place down. The people were super friendly and the beers… $ 3.75!
Because they are a ‘traditional’ tavern, they don’t serve hard alcohol, only wine, cider and brew. Regardless, if you love time travelling to the 1970’s and wacky regulars, this is a gold mine.

The music and atmosphere is amazing, I happen to see the Aliki All Starts they were so good. I couldn’t believe it live music in west Seattle … Really cool…

Classic bar amazingness! Classic music playing, old school décor, and pull tabs for days!!! About 40 different pull tabs from $.25 to $ 1. So many activities! One pool table, one dart board, Golden Tee, MegaTouch, four tvs, friendly staff, and a place to throw it back to the days of a good ‘olé simple no-​frills tavern :) Live music Fri and Sat nights!

Classic old school tavern with great people and outstanding bar tenders (especially Danielle). Come in for some pull tab fun and leave with a smile on your face.

Pull tabs! Pull tabs! Pull tabs! I know I lose but it’s so much fun! They have beer, cider, and wine. Live music, and on the 3^rd Sunday every month blue grass jams.
This is a t shirt and jeans kinda place just how I like them. :)

I have been there and think the people are awesome. The music is great and the regulars are very down to Earth. Simple and easy to talk with the crowd and service is pretty good. It’s just an all-​American kind of bar, very well oriented customer service is shown by the workers and you’ll want to come back again. The comraderie is addictive and it’s so convenient of travel, just minutes away from downtown and neighboring cities, strong recommendation to anyone who needs and/​or wants a cheerful atmosphere with good prices and tastes you’ll like.

Found this place by accident and I must say, this spot will be one that we’d talk about years from now when we reminisce about random stuff. We were looking for a sports bar with delicious food, beers, and TVs, but we found a super divey bar with interesting characters and a huge tv that is great for football games!
I didn’t mind the divey atmosphere but it would’ve been great if the food wasn’t so mediocre. If you don’t mind a small selection of toppings, bland pizza sauce, and chewy dough, you will find this place acceptable. Just don’t dare ask for ranch from the waitress because you will be disappointed.
Beer selection was okay. Nothing exciting on tap but as long as there’s at least one IPA, I’m not making any complaints.
I probably wouldn’t go back to Poggie Tavern but will most like say one day, «oh remember that one spot in West Seattle. The one that didn’t have ranch but had a huge tv?! Good times!»

If your drinking here then you’ve finally bottomed out. Last of the dive bars in West Seattle that the hipster doofus crowd hasn’t populated yet. A joint where the old men can stager up to the bar and order a pint of PBA or Rainer and milk it for 3hrs while they stare at the paint peeling off the walls. I’m sure they wish they could still order Olympia or Hams, however there shit outta luck.

What the Heck is a Poggie?
I don’t believe I’ve ever been into this tavern before. I know once I went to the Corner Pocket, another dive bar just North a block.
I was «earning» my Unilocal Soused stamp, and Poggies seemed an appropriate locale to add to the resumé. There was nobody hanging around the outside door when I got there, made me think they might have closed down like the Terrible Beauty (actually an Irish restaurant I’d had two forgettable meals in) I just noticed.
Well, I get to the door and sit down on a barstool between two locals and glance at the taps directly in front of me. I ask the friendly barkeep what an Elysian Immortal tastes like and she says a hoppy IPA. OK, so is it like the Ninkasi Total Domination Tongue Peeler? Why don’t you just try a taste and she offers a shot glass sample. Nah, I’m not feeling the bitter Chinook tonight, I’ll take a smooth Manny’s with its Cascade and Summit hops, a little bit less big or bitter. This one is much enjoyed by the locals in and around Seattle.
So, what are you drinking? I ask the guy to my right — PBR he says. I say I have a case of PBR in my garage and now have a friend at the Poggie. The three patrons to my left are discussing Three Dog Night and whether I’m old enough to remember them. I shout over that I wasn’t even born when they were popular, they called BS on that. I share a story about how the band got it’s name (think Aborigines and Dingos on a really cold evening). We continue to share stories for half an hour before I bail out for more WS adventure.
Didn’t do a dang for checking the place out. Sat at the bar, behind the taps. Behind those were a ton of money sucking pull tabs. I saw two dart boards over my shoulder. They may have a bathroom and a pool table, but I can’t confirm it. I was there for the experience not to note the amenities, features, smells or flooring details.
So what is a Poggie anyways? There is a group in Lynnwood called the Seattle Poggie Club who «originated for the purpose of practicing and teaching respect and conservation of our precious resources». A couple months ago they had a general meeting where the special guest covered knife sharpening. Then, Google photos show a bunch of fish, presumably a bait fish being called a pogie with one ‘g’. That seems in fitting with the signage here.
I like the Urban Dictionary’s definitions:
1. Poggy — «A mute alcoholic concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself» yep; or,
2. Poggies — «Close companion or friend.
Term of endearment. May be shortened to pogs or pogsels at your own discretion.»
Shout Out to all my Unilocal Poggies liking my photos and check-​ins! You Pogs and Pogsels rock.

If you want a place that smells bad, has horrible service and where you can listen to the bartender curse all the customers, then this would be your place. It’s not my place.

So there hasn’t been smoking in Seattle bars in how long? But the place still smells of smoke. Talk about old time Seattle tavern, man this the place, right of the’70’s. If your under 40 you won’t have a F’ing clue about the the place.
This the type of place you come to drink your minimum wage pay check away.
With all that said its clean, neat, folks are nice (IE DRUNK), there are far worst places to spend your money.

In my entire life I have spent two days and one night in the city of Seattle. The only bar that I stepped foot in was Poggie Tavern, but I was there for a few hours and went from buzzed to wasted.
We picked Poggie by luck — we made random turns and ended up on California — and because it looked the least douchey of any of the place on the block. My first impression was apprehension because of the shady looking clientele and just the overall feel of the place. However, after a brief conversation with Jim (in which he told me a couple corny but funny jokes, neither of which I remember) I was sold. Six beers and $ 25 on pull tabs later, I had a favorite place.
I’ve come to realize over the years that even though I feel a bit of fear when I walk into a true dive bar, I would much rather be around working class, trailer park inhabitants, than dudes with popped collars and women who’s faces are hidden under 14 inches of makeup.

Went there last Friday night and enjoyed a few beers while chatting it up with Jim the oober friendly bartender… We ate some popcorn and enjoyed that an older gent had bought everyone in the bar a round. A dive bar with old fashioned manners, sounds good to me. :)

Three strikes:
1. They were out of any good beers… we orders a pitcher of Coor’s.
2. The bartender constantly make comments to my husband on the physique of every woman (including myself) who entered, regardless of age, even though he was older than my father.
3. More than ½ the clientele was there to piss away their paychecks on pull-​tabs.
I don’t think a dive bar gets more depressing.

A truly epic experience in the loins of the Alaska Junction in West Seattle.
This is a dive bar. It’s murky and dank (although they recently renovated the bathrooms, which are now quite nice). This is not the place to go if you want some swanky hipster-​soaked experience. This is the place to go to meet real people, and drink cheap beer.
The people sitting at the bar are always friendly, and the bartenders are great people.
The wall behind the bar has one of the best selection of the pull tabs in the area. There’s a pool table, and jukebox. And there’s live music on the weekends which can jack the loudness factor, but only adds to the interesting atmosphere. Also, as the name implies, it’s a tavern, so only beer and wine.

Nothing makes me feel more at home than my mother’s arms, a home cooked meal or a festering geriatric dive bar with more trucker hats than you can swing a CV radio at.
How wrong can you go with a live band, pool, darts, PBR on tap and old gramps gracefully C-​Walking to Gin and Juice on the jukebox.
I rave about this place and some of my friends don’t understand, but I think it’s more of a cultural experience that keeps me coming back ’cause you’re guaranteed to leave with a great story every time.

Heard some friends were checking out a band there Saturday night and dropped by. Whereas several Unilocalers have described it as a dive bar, I’m thinking a more accurate description would be seedy. Believe Stephen W.‘s review. I certainly wish I had.
And if the shitfaced old-​timers aren’t bad enough, the constant flow of drugged-​up 20 something year olds and older gentlemen in and out the bar’s back door might spark you a clue that this isn’t the most law abiding crowd.
With all that said, I did give it 1 star because they actually had a pretty good variety of microbrews on tap including Moose Drool, Manny’s and Mack and Jacks (which they were out of).
Enjoying a beer there however is a whole other matter.
Some highlights from my geriatric nightmare:
The average age here after some rowdy pub crawl attendees evacuated was +60. And 90% of them were smashed by 8pm. Not a pretty sight.
And the Barfly of the Night Award goes to … a 70 some-​odd guy in the yellow rubber raincoat who felt compelled to upstage the band throughout their entire first set with his version of hula dancing. And of course all his buddies egged on his shenanigans.
I had a Moose Drool and headed straight for the door at 10pm.
You know how after the holidays you sometimes feel like you need a vacation to get over the holidays? Well, I left feeling like I needed to unwind after enduring this hell hole, and went straight to Naked City.
Note to self: I must be a pub snob. Oh well.

Oh Poggie! You know how some days you just feel like skipping a shower, wearing sweat pants and slumming on the couch? That’s usually how I feel when I decide to stop in the ol’ Poggie. It’s truly is a dive, which is simultaneously strange and bad ass to find it right next door to places like Mashiko and Bakery Nouveau. Poggie don’t give a shit!
There’s lots usual dive finds here. Wood paneling, pull tabs, dart boards, pool table, etc. They often have live music playing in the back. You’ll also find a line up of working stiffs and older skewing regulars sitting at the bar. The beer is always cheap and cold. Service has always been good. If you’re looking to mix it up a little on your next trip to West Seattle or want to feel like you’re in Enumclaw, stop on by!

Poggie’s must be judged on its own terms: it is a true dive bar, a place where you’ll encounter a familiar set of West Seattle’s die-​hard drunks every single night of the week. For many, it’s a crucial stop along the path to the potter’s field. Here, I once saw two men, nearly seventy years old, seem about to come to blows over a shudder-​inducing woman who was missing a fair percentage of her teeth. Turns out it was all play-​acting. They’d been squabbling over her for years. Even people who are drunk every waking hour get bored. Poggie’s is the establishment of choice for such people.
That said, there are darts, the regulars are usually friendly, the beer is cheap, and the young bartender always remembers what I like, even if I don’t stop in for six months (which I usually don’t). The bathrooms are often clean, there are pool tables, there’s live music, and I’ve never been vomited on here. And if you’re looking for that one bar where it’d be impossible — I mean, absolutely fucking impossible — for you to embarrass yourself, well, you’ve found it.

Last August, when it was some sort of Grateful Dead anniversary, I decided to come out to the Poggie Tavern and see what the Grateful Dead were all about (or at least what one of their cover bands was all about).
I was newly 21 and this was my first time at a bar that only served wine and beer (as well as the first bar frequented by individuals that mostly looked old enough to have kids my age). The bartender was very nice, however, and let me try about three different beers until I finally settled on one. I came to the conclusion that having an older (40+) bartender was kind of a good thing.
Over-​all it was an alright experience but nothing to get excited about. The man and I ended up leaving the «dead head» friend to enjoy the music while we wandered off and had some wonderful sushi at Mashiko.