$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 🖤
By Matt Dowell
“Some fat ass cats show up here,” said Ronnie on a recent Wednesday night at the Summit Public House. He’s a regular at the pool table there and he’s been shooting pool on Capitol Hill since the ’90s.
Summit’s free-to-play table attracts good players on any night of the week. But for the last few years, a weekly Wednesday night tournament has become a center of the scene.
Show up around 7 PM on a Wednesday and you will see players warming up. A stack of cylindrical cue cases abuts the long bench at one end of the table. Competitors chalk up with focus, break racks with a whip crack heard around the bar. As Katy, the organizer, takes $10 buy-ins, she adds names to the bracket on a nearby TV screen.
It might look serious to an outsider, especially one who doesn’t play pool. But chat up a few people gathered around and you’ll quickly see there’s more to it than the game.
“They’re fat, but friendly cats,” Ronnie revised. “I like the competitiveness here, and the chill. Everybody’s friendly. Everybody polices themselves. You can come out here [to the patio between games] and smoke your cig, your doobie, your spliff.”
“It’s a good way to spend some time on a Wednesday night.”
Continue reading →
London-based global cycling sportswear brand Rapha is closing its Seattle “clubhouse,” a mixed retail and cafe concept it introduced nearly ten years ago on this E Pine block of Capitol Hill after its redevelopment
