Sorry, The Blue Moon Is Open

The Blue Moon isn't closing - the guy who owns it is just considering selling it because he doesn't want to sign a Good Neighbor agreement in order to get a hard alcohol license. But, hey, let's eulogize it anyway! A bunch of famouns literary types used to drink there and it's a cozy little dive and blah blah blah. We always order the swill from the Blue Moon for some reason and you've just read the most half-assed eulogy of all time. The Moon would have wanted it that way.

HistoryLink mentioned the place in their weekly email and we stopped by there to check out what they've got. It's a lot, of course. Their essay, "Blue Moon Tavern, An Unofficial Cultural Landmark" is particularly cool and informative (our favorite combination):

Shortly after the repeal state and federal laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, Henry J. Reverman took his college trust fund and invested to create a new tavern in the shell of a former garage near the corner of 8th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street. Reverman and his partner, Monty Fairchild, dubbed it the "Blue Moon" after purchasing a large neon sign from the nearby Blue Moon Cafe. They opened for business in mid-April 1934.
State law then banned alcohol sales within one mile of the University of Washington Campus, and the Blue Moon lay just over the line. It was an instant success with students, particularly members of the UW football team. Reverman hired local boxers Freddy Steele (1907-1990), Cecil Payne (1906-1959), and "Doc" Snell to keep order.

Looks like they even have a book on the Blue Moon for sale which we're going to stare at until we buy.

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By Dan in Food, News on May 19, 2006 10:42 AM

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Seth

My Dad grew up in Wallingford--my whole dad's side of the family lived in the neighborhood. This is pre-freeway, so Blue Moon was surrounded by houses--it was a neighborhood bar, not a last chance depot on the edge of those stupid 45th street strip malls.

Anyway, he says the Blue Moon, in the 40s and 50s, was a hangout for pre-hippie intellectual types. Beatniks, I guess you'd say. They had poetry readings and talk ed about socialism and such. I'd imagine it was a refuge from the Red Fever mania that gripped the country at that time--especially when the UW was actively persecuting supposedly communist professors like Melvin Rader.