(Image: Blade and Timber)
Finally, Capitol Hill’s lumbersexuals will have a hangout to call their own.
Blade and Timber, the national chain of… checks notes… axe-throwing bars is coming to Broadway.
The Missouri-headquartered company has filed for permits for the ground level retail space at 206 Broadway E that has been empty since the Castle “sex megastore” chain moved its Capitol Hill location to Pike/Pine in 2014.
The first Blade and Timber opened in Kansas City in 2017. The company has plans for rapid expansion with a push to open a dozen more locations this year including a new bar planned for Portland on Vancouver Ave. The business operates like a bowling alley — you can book a private lane for $120 for 90 minutes or share a lane for $20. Given you’ll be throwing sharpened axes together while most likely consuming alcohol, choose your lane partners wisely. If something goes wrong, fortunately the new use for Charlie’s right across the street is ready to help.
UPDATE: We can’t decide which is more dangerous. An axe bar? Or the latest concept from the entrepreneurs behind Blade and Timber — Choir Bar:
“There’s no sheet music, no judgement, no solos, and no pressure,” he said of the “reverse karaoke”-style event wherein the masses — not an individual — belt out a popular tune. “We’re here to sing alongside the best people on Earth and share an evening of good, clean fun.”
UPDATE x2: Blade and Timber’s Ryan Henrich’s tells CHS they are planning a late October/early November opening if everything goes right in Seattle City Hall’s busy permitting processes. The opening will be part of a rapid expansion Henrich said is about “opportunities to be first to market” as well as population and tourism. Broadway’s centrality in the city and proximity to light rail were also important factors. But just important for the company is the strong flow of potential customers already coming to the area for food, drink, and entertainment.
“We are acutely focused on meaningful, shared experiences,” Henrich said, sharing a bit of the company’s special recipe. SwellSpark, Henrich and business partner Matthew Baysinger’s holding company focused on interactive entertainment experiences like escape rooms, wants to create experiences its customers off all types can quickly master but are also viscerally memorable.
“Remember that time we went to throw axes with grandma? The big thing is you’re a part of the experience,” Henrich said.
Henrich said they’ve looked at other lumberjack skills — Lumber and Blade TVs are set to show lumberjack competitions when there isn’t a big sportsball game on — but found axe-throwing to be the best for wanna be ‘jacks to start with.
These are busy times for SwellSpark and Lumber and Blade. Henrich says they have the two Kansas City locations open, are under construction with three more in other cities, and then the Seattle L&B will open this fall. The company is also wrapping up leases for four more spaces — including inside the Mall of America, naturally.
The look and feel of the bars is consistent with a clean but welded, industrial look mixed with an organic feel from the sports turf tossing surface. By the time it opens, Henrich expects the Seattle Lumber and Blade to be the “premier location” thanks to experience gathered during the previous buildouts.
You also should expect to see more from SwellSpark in Seattle once the Lumber and Blade beachhead has been established. Henrich said there are plenty more games to play and fun to be had taking “a really concentrated form of that experience” and turning it into a SwellSpark concept. Surely, a new Seattle fish tossing bar cannot be far behind.
The axe-tossing bar chain’s arrival on Broadway is part of a big investment in the commercial building just a block from Capitol Hill Station. CHS reported here earlier this year on real estate investor Dhruv Agarwal’s plans to overhaul the building in anticipation of even greater growth in activity around the light rail facility. “It’s an incredible part of the city with the new light rail station opening,” Agarwal told CHS in January. “As the light rail network expands and traffic gets worse in Seattle, the Capitol Hill Station is going to be a hub for entertainment and neighborhood shopping.”
Above the coming axe tossing bar, the vegan rockers at the Highline remain ensconced in the bar’s longtime second story home. Agarwal, meanwhile, is moving forward with another part of his project creating new office space behind the vegan bar and night spot.
Blade and Timber is planned to open at 206 Broadway E. You can learn more at bladeandtimber.com.
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Is this for real? For some reason I would think drunks throwing axes is not a good combination.
I blame Portland for starting this whole lumbersexual thing.
I’m so glad someone else said it
It’s totally true!
Portland started LumberSexual now you fuckers are callin it your own
Make no mistake Portland has WAYYYY cooler hipsters & lumberSexuals than Seattle could dream .. . but it’s dead anyway
and um I think I’ll bring my friend here to have a few drinx then go out back for some axe tossin.. I mean if their head is accidentally chop’d off “we were just playing” “I cant believe this happened”
seeks next victim cough cough friend to bring to the bar
*this shit sux
bring back american apparel
ahahahahaaaaaaa
I did it in New York, it’s kind of fun. If run well, it’s pretty safe and a good party activity.
Only person throws at a time, and no one is anywhere near the target or the person throwing. The rules were pretty strict.
So I saw this article, instinctively looked at the date, thought “Oh, it’s obviously an April Fool’s joke,” thought a second more, realized it was actually August 1, not April 1, and then thought: “wow, this is actually for real?”
Yeah, when does it actually open in Seattle? The article seems to omit that key info, unless I can’t read. The website doesn’t have the info either. If I were running it, I’d want everyone to know the opening date.
With luck, to learn the opening date, all you’ll need to do is … axe.
Just when you think you have hear it all. For once, I am lost for words…………
I’m just happy axes aren’t being sold to customers in to go containers. And that actual deforestation isn’t occurring. Except the wood used in the axes themselves. My other emotions are Capitol Hill is dead. But I’ve already thought that and you can’t kill the dead. It is going to become a tie as to which side of the street I would rather not walk on the most. And I would suggest the old American Apparel space become a tear in the space time continuum so I have somewhere I actually want to hang out. I mean hung out. I mean will hang out. I mean have already hung out. All of that.
I hope they put a big white Porsche on the roof
+1
Sounds like a stupid place to put it
Seems like Kent or Maple Valley would be more suitable
So classy.
The definition of “hipster bar.” Yuck.
no
it’s not
obvi no clue ov thee dead scene
that’s okay tho
cant blame you
what you’ve seen around your parts is your only reference so..
;)
Total definition of hipster: replying on a blog post with hipsterspeak texting abbreviations.
Bob and Jim, I order you to go to this bar.
When pigs fly.
I usually wish new small businesses all success, but in this case I hope it fails miserably and quickly.
Ok, meet me there.
Be patient.
Boy, it’s so weird for the Pacific Northwest, of all places, to have something logging-themed. Why next, someone might pick a fishing and/or salmon theme, and then we’ll officially have seen everything!
Seems gimmicky and actually stupid. Oh well. It would be more interesting to have the highline expand and actually have a open study/drink/vegan place. We are in need of good places to have a beer and work/study. We have a few and they are all packed!
If the highline turned the lights on and didn’t blast debatable music most of the time, they could already be a place people could more comfortable hang out and read. I understand they’re also a performance venue and they can play whatever music they want but I personally find the environment challenging. There is a vegan coffee shop coming at some point (per an earlier post here). Management marketing abilities and location success tbd. But they wouldn’t serve beer. If I could pick what would go in this spot for real it would be an indoor market full of a variety of small businesses/stalls, like a more accessible, less pretentious chophouse row. Oh well.
honestly thank goodness for the highline
pretty much the only place i go to on broadway – it’s obviously not for you :)
The music keeps out yuppie fucks and obnoxious tourists. Highline is a safe haven for us weirdos and freaks. Normies can have the rest of the city.
Surely it could be a *combined* axe-throwing and choir bar? Because I think that re-creates another Seattle fave: opera.
Oh dear lord. I am from Missouri, and their other locations are in (wait for it) Kansas City, Lawrence KS and Wichita … I am by turns confused, mildly amused, and more than a little concerned that somehow the owners think Capitol Hill in Seattle is the next logical expansion location … because Capitol Hill has so-o-o-o much in common with their previous locations ?!?!?
I looked on their website for a food menu, but I gather that the axe-throwing is the MAIN activity at these establishments, and they serve like beer and peanuts as a side business (but no food, or at least no food menu or even beer menu posted on their website for their other locations).
I really have to wonder how much pent-up demand for (I can’t believe I am typing this) recreational axe-throwing there is in Capitol Hill … or even in all of Seattle …