I want this to happen. Could someone with more willpower and money make this happen for me?

Absolutely spot on. Thanks, Paul. In the past few years, there have been so many micro-movements and marginal scenes, but no one place that many writers meet that one could write an entire book about (ironically). Instead, the thrill of events like Bumbershoot and smaller ones (like the ones you host at Bumbershoot and rock clubs), is where we catch that energy -- but events aren't hanging out and regularly encouraging creative work. You've defined what the bar needs quite well -- my only clarification would be to keep the jukebox low enough so people can talk (the bars that cater to the music scene has a lot of writers in it, but everyone has to shout over the "background" tunes).

UW's Creative Writing program alumni are a big community that's missing on your list. Alumni regularly hang out, read each other's work, start magazines, and curate reading and arts series in the city. And we are friends and collaborators with other writers and artists, too. :-)

@3: Thanks! It's by no means intended to be a definitive list, no slights intended.

@2: Agreed on the jukebox, and thanks for the kind words.

It already exists. It's called The Pub at Third Place. It's situated below Third Place books in Ravenna. Handsome bookshelves are cluttered with titles ranging from Coover's masterpiece "The Public Burning" to Shakespeare's Complete Works to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. Two of the bartenders are editors at The Monarch Review, a new literary, arts and culture magazine, and the conversations around the bar frequently turn to the merits of Bukowski over the beats, or wether Bukowski was a beat, or whether Bukowski was a misogynist, among other un-Bukowski related topics. (Hint: one of the bartenders might be a Bukowski freak) I've seen the editors from Poetry Northwest doing their literary thing in the Pub many times. Granted, no hard liquor, but the Rav Tav is just two blocks down the street. You want a literary bar? You got it.

@5: I like that bar a lot. I've written about it a couple of times. I didn't get into it in the final draft of the piece, but there are a few places in Seattle (like Ravenna Third Place and the Library Bar, downtown) that could claim the literary bar title, if everyone actually went to them.

So how do those places open up to the broader literary community? The scene you describe at RTP sounds like one great piece of a literary scene, but it is just a piece. How do we make a place—pre-existing or new—into a common ground, where everyone goes?

This sounds amazing, but one might argue that a huge underlying factor in Seattle's less-than-cohesive literary scene is the fact that there are so many disparate neighborhoods that comprise Seattle in the first place. People like to go the neighborhood bar, I know I do. I'm not sure I'd want to go to some bar halfway across town just because people go there to write.

Seattle needs to Salon.

Great idea, Paul! I can almost smell this bar. Of course, in my fantasies, we would have our own small castle, somewhat akin to the Harvard Lampoon building. In the absence of a castle, maybe I'll just start skulking around Third Place Books more.

@11: Writers are poor, jackass. I figured I wouldn't have to explain that part.

@7: It's true that Seattle's neighborhoods sometimes make it hard to get a bunch of people together. That's why I suggested having a solid schedule of official and unofficial events. If you bring authors that writers care about and snare the writing groups that already meet all around town with drink specials, people can be trained to come out to a destination. We've done this with bars in the past—Hidmo and The Blue Moon are a couple examples of local destination bars that hosted a scene. (I would recommend this to Robertson @5; the Pub at Third Place already has a few great events, but they're not writer-centric; if they encouraged writers to gather there, it's a perfect location, and bus-friendly, too.)

SPLAB is actually in Columbia City.

I think this is a good idea, but sort of wonder whether a place declaring itself the "literary bar" would actually work or whether it would simply become it's own micro-scene.

"Literary bars" are made by their patrons, not by any specific decisions made by the bar owners. It's up to the literary types -- the for-real literary types, not a bunch of kooks with backpacks full of bad poetry -- to start getting together at them. If Alexie and Raban and so on don't want to go, and establish a salon there, then it's not going to happen. It doesn't have to be them, but it's got to be somebody. You're a candidate, Paul, but you can't do it alone; you need to have five or six regulars at a minimum.

I would actually vote for "no jukebox at all", but since I'm not likely to be there, it doesn't really matter. Or if you have to have and Edith, make it Edith Piaf! Hmm, I know Greenwood isn't what you had in mind, but Gainsbourg could fit the bill.

Make it "an Edith" not "and Edith". Christ, I'm disqualified just on the grounds of that.

A little quick to step up to the plate and declare Seattle the runner up here, don't you think? Sorry, but a city with a bookstore and some readings can be found anywhere with a literacy rate above 25%.

Fucking brilliant idea, Paul, but why not bars in a couple of neighborhoods around the city? The local scene is certainly big enough to support several locations.

Start with something for Capital Hill/Downtown, one in the U-District/Wallingford where the hipsters and poseurs can achieve solipsistic bliss, another in Columbia City, Georgetown (of course), and finally one in West Seattle.

What a lovely fantasy bar. I hope this happens.

I like this idea very much. I write, and on the pretentiousness part I resent grown up crust punks cum hipsters who look down on any intellectual activity as class treason, and who instead prefer to huff scotchguard and shoot up as their contribution to the cause.

Oh boy, would I like this. It would be nice to go to a place where you could discuss authors like Philip K. Dick without having to ask "Have you seen Minority Report? He wrote that..."

Sounds lovely...and like a labor of love, from a business standpoint. Putting butts in seats is one thing...putting enough drinks, er, in front of those butts to turn a profit (or even just break even) is another. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find investors anxious to throw in on a vision that is rather limited in terms of potential customer base. (Though I would love to be proven wrong about this.)

My impression of most neighborhood bars is that there are distinct sets of regulars. Some come for trivia nights, some come for happy hour, some come for open mic, some come to watch sports (if applicable), etc...and others make an effort to avoid one or more of those things, specifically. I was actually at open mic (which I usually avoid) at my local recently and the bartender was complaining to me that half the people that show up for it don't buy much, or anything, and drive other paying customers away.

So...maybe a good start would be to find an underutilized night (Sunday or Monday, perhaps?) at a bar that's amenable to these sorts of events, and start there. Perhaps most importantly...throw the bar some serious business in the process. This way, you make catering to literary events (instead of say, just another one of dozens of open mic nights or trivia games) appealing to the bar. Do a good job and maybe the crowd you're looking for gravitates there.

My $0.02. (And no, I don't own a bar...just have lots of friends in the business.)

Sort of like what the McLeod Residence was, only with a literary focus? That was a great space with a pretty similar aim.

I think a unique place with kind of an underground feel would appeal to writers. A club more like the Josephine or McLeod.

Love this idea. I think we need at least some kind of north side location - Greenwood or Ballard? And can we have silent reading & writing parties there?

I've wanted to go to the Hugo house happy hour and the silent reading parties at the Sorrento but it's hard for me to get there at the times they're at.

The only people more insufferable than amateur writers are amateur musicians. Barely.

Paul, your argument applies to pretty much everyone in Seattle, whatever their profession. We all need to get our more and be less lonely.

Wonder if Seattle's lack of actual bars is a factor? (No offense intended, Seattle has many lovely establishment—pubs, taverns, etc., but they've basically got to double as a restaurant to serve booze—poses more of a challenge to the environment you describe.)

A Barroom of Their Own, Or: Would Bauhaus be any less awful with a liquor model?

@15:

Spouting logorrhea all day long on Slog doesn't make you literary. Or literate. Or literature-prone.

"Seattle is the biggest literary city in the United States aside from New York City"

{{CITATION NEEDED}}

BOY OH BOY did I ever see a claim made that deserved that more? Nope.

Depends on what you mean by 'literary', of course, and certainly there are lots of smart and curious readers in Seattle. But what makes you think we're better at than, say, Dubuque Iowa, or Charleston?

Anyway, if claims like that are really necessary to get a LITERARY BAR here in Seattle, then I'll GLADLY overlook the missing citation. Because I want to find a please where I can vis-a-vis and tet-a-tet and voile-vous and noone blinks, but merely, in a debauched and jadedly amused way, calls for another round of the green genie.

Can't people just start bringing books to all the bars we already have up here? Do we really need MORE bars?

35 yes, yes we do.

This approach is too big to get off the ground and too fragile to succeed. I think a better model is to propagate "writer nights" at bars around town with a unified name and event schedule. It could even offer mini-tours where the same reading happens at four bars over four weeks, for example, hitting different neighborhoods every time.

@37 and @22: That might be a good start. Who wants to go first? Maybe Ravenna Third Place?