Happy hour returns to Seattle

Naomi Tomky, Special about the Seattle PI

July 22, 2021Updated July 22, 2021 8:57 AM

Bartender prepares a drink.

Viktor Fj / EyeEm / Getty Images / EyeEm

Seattle residents have a reputation for canceling plans, never heeding invitations, and generally being poor at leading a social life. But there is one thing that Seattle residents are generally very good at: going out for happy hour.

Sure, the concept exists everywhere, but nowhere else in the country do people love happy hour like Seattle – and they don’t do it nearly as well. Maybe the spontaneity of just reaching for someone nearby takes away the anticipation, maybe we just love a discounted drink or – most likely – we live in a city that has always done an extraordinary job of getting everyone to do it to drop what they are doing and stop by for afternoon appetizers and a frosé at 5am.

While indoor dining has been open for more than a year, Seattle’s popular happy hour traditions trickled slower than the rest of the dining scene. Happy hour here means more than cheap cocktails and affordable oysters – it embodies Seattle’s commitment not to stay at work all hours and the joy of hanging out with friends for casual snacks, not just complicated meals.

Getting out of a pandemic is hardly a time to ask for discount drinks as the venues are short on staff and suffer from everything that summer does to them – heat waves, smoke, grumpy customers, and who knows what else. But the parade of Instagram posts from popular bars like Fremont’s Dreamland, Belltown’s Rob Roy, Greenwood’s Flint Creek Cattle Co, Wallingford’s Octopus Bar, and White Center’s Bizzarro Italian Café is a reminder of what makes Seattle’s special social scene.

Naomi Tomky is a freelance food writer for the Seattle PI.