I will always remember driving to New York City from Pennsylvania, the first thing you would see was the twin towers of The World Trade Center. Those towers were tall! I wonder if it was just me, but there was always this weird optical illusion with the twin towers, the further away you were from them, the larger they appeared!
But when you were Downtown, near the WTC, they didn’t seem nearly so big.
The McMenamins Elks Temple in Tacoma Washington doesn’t look that big from the outside, but you have no idea just how huge this place is until you step inside …
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you know about McMenamins.
McMenamins restores old, classic, historical buildings and turns them into brewpubs, movie theaters, restaurants, and music venues. They do a really great job of maintaining the integrity of the buildings and the food and drinks are great! But what you may not know is that they also build Tiki bars…
There are many reasons why people don’t drink alcohol. Some people can’t drink because of health reasons. Others don’t because they feel it’s just not a good idea anymore. But one of the most important reasons not to drink is pregnancy.
Bobby is a good buddy of mine. We are heavily into Vespa scooters and have spent many hours riding (and probably even more hours wrenching just to make our scooters run!). Bobby had never been to a Tiki bar and was interested in checking one out. When Bobby’s wife Birgitta heard we were going to the North Shore Lagoon, she was bummed. She’s pregnant, which meant no drinking for her. It was all good for Brigitta, though! We were going to do some drinking, but we were going to do it the Straight Edge Tiki way: no alcohol!
I don’t think anyone loves McMenamins more than my good buddy Rob, well except maybe his wife Laura! Laura and Rob live in Portland and every time I go to visit them, we end up at a McMenamins somewhere. Rob was coming up to Seattle for a concert, so he wanted to check out McMenamins Anderson School.
The North Shore Lagoon is part of McMenamins Anderson School in Bothell, WA. McMenamins converted an entire school campus into a hotel, a movie theater, a convention center, a fine dining restaurant, a pub, and of course, a Tiki bar. The entire place is pretty awesome. The North Shore Lagoon is in the building where the swimming pool was (or should I say, still is). The bar sits above the pool. You can enjoy a Zombie and look down and watch people swim. This is my review of the North Shore Lagoon if you want to learn about the bar itself.
North Shore Lagoon Tables
After Rob’s flight into Seattle, I picked him up and we headed up to Bothell. It was during rush hour, so it took some time to get up there. However, good things come to those who wait. We arrived at Anderson School. I gave Rob the tour of the grounds and then we got down to business at the North Shore Lagoon…
This is the first of what I hope to be many Tiki Field Reports. What is a Tiki Field Report you might ask? A Tiki Field Report is going to be a review of a particular day visiting a Tiki bar. It will include pictures and information on who came along, what did they drank, what they thought, who was bartending, etc. I would like to get my friends involved with this blog and I think this is a good way of doing that. A Tiki Field Report is not going to be the same as an official Tiki bar review. A Tiki bar review will be just about the bar, giving an overview of what the place is like, how the drinks are, what kind of music they play, the bar’s history, and so on.
First Field Report, The North Shore Lagoon in Bothell, WA.
Hey gang! This is my first Tiki bar review and I figured I wanted to keep it sort of local. I live in Seattle. Bothell is about 25 minutes away (with no traffic). In Bothell is a Tiki bar called North Shore Lagoon. Before I begin with the review of the Tiki bar itself, I need to give a little background about the North Shore Lagoon.
The North Shore Lagoon is part of the McMenamins Anderson School. If you’re not familiar with McMenamins, they are a bar and restaurant chain that buys and restores old, classic, historical buildings and turns them into pubs, restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels. The cool thing is they maintain the integrity the of the buildings they acquire. They have places all over the Pacific Northest including Portland, Centraila, McMinnville, Mill Creek, and now Bothell.
What McMenamins did with the Anderson School is completely turn the entire school—which is several buildings—into a large entertainment complex. There’s a fine dinning restaurant, a pub, a movie theater, a convention center, a hotel, and last but not least, a Tiki bar, which of course is the North Shore Lagoon.
