At Norm’s Eatery & Alehouse in Fremont, dogs are not only
welcome, they’re practically required. While the place is famous
locally on a number of counts—for packed Thursday trivia nights,
for mind-controlling house-made potato chips, and for 40-ounce
PBRs (formerly served in paper bags, now in little insulated jackets
with the Norm’s insignia on them)—the raison d’être is
clearly canine. A statue of a dog wearing a scarf greets you at the
door. More 3-D dog renderings sit and stay above the bar. There are
photos of dogs, posters of dogs, dog-related inspirational placards
(“My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog thinks I am”),
dogs painted on the walls above the red vinyl booths, and a sculpture
of a metal dog playing golf. (One of the very few departures from dog
decor is a photograph of the couple from Twilight locked in an amorous embrace. The personable barkeep was unable
to explain this aberration.)
For those in need of the proverbial hair of the dog, Norm’s has a
noteworthy bonus weekend happy hour, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with $4
Bloody Marys, mimosas, and mango Bellinis. Last Sunday at brunch, the
place was, if not wall-to-wall, at least partially carpeted with
dogs, and no one seemed the slightest bit concerned about the
literal hair of the dog getting everywhere. (I found one clinging to my
cell phone, which had been stowed in a deep pocket, hours later.) A
small brown dog with a green-and-white neckerchief sat next to its
owner on the seat in a booth, behaving well but clearly wishing
desperately for opposable thumbs.
At the bar, two black pugs roosted next to each other on their
respective owners’ laps. If you do not want your bowl of clam chowder
18 inches from a pug, you should not eat it at the bar at Norm’s. (The
chowder: quite good, with a light, slightly winey broth instead of any
pasty thickness.) One of the pug owners gave a knowledgeable-sounding
soliloquy about the Bengals game showing on one of the above-bar
flat-screens; on another, the Sounders nullified themselves from the
MLS play-offs in overtime. (The Sounders FC special scramble was the
opposite of a letdown, with avocado and spinach for the green, then
tomatoes and bacon for good measure. The pug owners
expeditiously enjoyed a plateful of bacon-wrapped shrimp.)
Near the entrance, two Scotties looked poised to battle the
pugs, while a fluffy white giant 27 times their size (possibly a
bear-dog hybrid) refused to play dead. “BEAU! Sit, Beau!” his keeper
commanded serially. Then, that accomplished, “BANG!” he said,
shooting an imaginary gun at Beau as a cue. “BANG! Beau, BANG!”
The majestic beast was having none of such barroom tricks. 
Norm’s Eatery & Alehouse,
460 N 36th St,
547-1417
If Norm’s is the only bar you can walk to, you deserve everyone’s pity. And not only because of the dogs. But if the owner of some other neighborhood bar has told you they’d rather see you leave than the drunk with the dog, well, that’s beyond pathetic. Anyone who has lost a popularity contest with a dog is bound be bitter, and probably stay bitter for years to come. Maybe what the health department is really protecting us from is hurt feelings.
@48 “I can’t actually just walk to another nearby bar because there isn’t one.”
http://tr.im/normsbawww
Next thing you know anon will tell us he can’t actually walk because he has no legs.
george & dragon, nectar, 9 million in unmarked bills, the red door, the ballroom, sinners and saints and the high dive were the first seven establishments within stumbling distance of norm’s that popped into my head after reading 48.
maybe you’re too shitfaced to notice, but fremont is kind of a big nightlife spot.
#9: No investigation needed. They simply pay fines if there are any, but finally, the health department has better things to do, like worry about swine flu and people who call them because someone was smoking 24 1/2 feet from the entrance of a business.
#13: You cracked me up.
Datajunkie: Seriously? Have you been to Norm’s? The people that go in there usually live in the area, and if they walk by it with their dogs, their pooches make a beeline for the door because they love it and have other poochie friends there. l’ve never, EVER run into an unfriendly dog there, and l’ve been a regular there for almost nine years. Exactly how do you justify quoting a bunch of statistics and making such a judgment if you don’t frequent the place? The people are regulars, the dogs are regulars, and their owners are smart enough not to bring in animals that don’t play well with others.
#17: Say what? You don’t see dogs in there that often? Have you been in on a weekend brunch? You seem to be defending this issue, but l’m just sayin…the dogs at Norm’s is precisely why l love the place so much, since l don’t own one myself. l would HATE to be a server there, but fortunately, that’s not my problem.
#28: People aren’t likely to make plans to eat at a restaurant they haven’t researched to some degree first, especially if they think they might need reservations. lt’s quite clear that Norm’s is a dog bar even with the most minimal research. There’s no reason they should have to advertise it further. They have paws on the outside of the restaurant for Chrissakes. DOG BAR! lt’s a fucking dog bar, kids. Leave them be. Again, if it’s not for you, don’t go there.
#29: WORD!
Elenchos: Why do you hate Norm’s? Just curious, not contentious.
#43 and #48: Read my lips, hon: THE DOGS ARE NOT OFFLEASH AT NORM’S. Therefore, while valid, your annoyingly redundant point about letting dogs run around free is utterly moot. So is your ‘take your business elsewhere argument is lame’ one, since there are at least ten other places to drink in Fremont besides Norm’s, as two others have pointed out. You are a moron; please at least research the things you are discussing so you can actually participate in a discussion with some reasonable credibility. Thank you.
#47: THANK YOU! l was going to mention a bill that was up back in 2007 to allow dogs in bars, and leave it up to the owners to decide. l can’t seem to find anything to confirm it passed, but l did have a conversation a year or so back with someone who also goes to Norm’s, and they seemed pretty sure the law no longer prevented it.
#49: The dogs love being able to hang out with their owners, whether their owners are eating or not. Generally, dogs are trained not to beg for food; eating around them at a restaurant is no different than eating around them at home. lt beats the fuck out of being tied to the post outside in the middle of winter, which IS cruel.
It was horrible. We came in and asked the waitress if we could watch MotoGP on Speed TV in the back, about 15 minutes before the race was going to start. All the TVs in front had football on but nobody was sitting way in the back on the far side of the bar. The waitress consulted with the bartender, then they came back and told us we could.
So we sat down, ordered cocktails, and then ordered food, watching the pre-race BS. Then our drinks came. Then, 30 seconds before the start, the waitress came up and said somebody else asked for football on that TV too, as the other like 4 TVs were not enough, so we were SOL. Sorry. The place was only about 1/3 full, if that, by the way.
We should have walked out without paying right there, but we were hungry and there was no chance of seeing the race anywhere at that point, so we ate our bitter food and drank our bitter drinks. And that’s the real reason Norm’s sucks. I don’t recall seeing any dogs there that day.
Fuck Norm’s.
I don’t have a problem dining with Pugs. They are the Epicureans of the dog world.
@elenchos: That would piss me off, and it would piss off my Pug as well. Grandma used to race in Indonesia. Fuck football.