Driving down Lake City Way, there’s a warm light in the distance — a beacon calling you to a bar room full of beers and bands. The soft, yellow light that’s been glowing decades is the sign for the Shanty Tavern, though it’s known by another name to its owner.
“She is called Miss Shanty,” John Spaccarotelli tells KUOW. He’s owned the place and poured drinks for “umpteen years.”
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More precisely, John Spaccarotelli has spent 64 years at this spot on the edge of the road in Lake City, running what’s referred to as the “last roadhouse” in Seattle.
This style of a neighborhood bar, equipped with a dance floor, used to be more common decades ago. John Spaccarotelli’s patrons and family see it as a vanishing piece of Seattle culture.
“There’s just something special about this place,” says Lisa Casal, who comes in for music regularly and enjoys a front row seat at the bar. “These places are disappearing — and it’s sad.”
For the last few years, John Spaccarotelli has only been opening the Shanty Tavern on Friday nights for beer and live music. His three daughters and his grandkids are here to help him out through the busy closing night.
Many of the business’s regulars live in Lake City and walk to the bar from their homes. Now they’re figuring what they’ll do with their Friday nights once the tavern’s doors close.
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One regular, Eric Beam, has a “reserved” barstool at the far end of the bar, where he can always be found reading a thick book.
“I come here at the end of the week, sit here, and talk stories with John,” Beam says. “And I leave with a big smile on my face, feeling better. I’m really going to miss that.”
John Spaccarotelli doesn’t plan to sell the land or building, but the 94-year-old said retirement is calling.
“I’m just going to take it easy for a while,” he says.
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The Shanty Tavern has been home to longtime regulars like Michael Wansley, better known around here as Wanz, who’s been coming since the 1990s.
“[I] come down here every Friday with a whole bunch of the neighborhood cats,” he says. “We hang out here, play pool, drink beer.”
On its last Friday night open, the Shanty Tavern is much busier than usual, Wansley says, because this is one of the last nights The Shanty Tavern is pouring beers.
People have come to pay their respects and give one last toast.
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“I would toast the fact that the beer is always cold, the jokes are almost always dirty, and the asses are always smart,” Wansley says with a raised glass.
In the low, crowded barroom, the Rat City Brass Band wails in one corner. The dance floor is so packed, the floorboards bounce up and down.
John Noe books the bands here. And since the place is so busy on closing night, he’s helping pick up empty bottles, too.
“Twelve years doing this, so it’s the end of an era,” Noe says. “Kind of bittersweet tonight. You know, they’ve become a part of my family.”
It’s an emotional night for the entire Spaccarotelli family. John Spaccarotelli’s daughter, Dayna, has been working with him here for the past 18 years.
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“Lot of tears will come later, [I’m] trying to hold it together right now,” Dayna Spaccarotelli says. “My whole life has been here.”
She grew up here with her two sisters. The three used to come in to “help” their dad.
“We’d dance to the jukebox. We’d play shuffleboard and pool. We’d throw darts,” Dayna Spaccarotelli says.
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A lot of old regulars made the trip on Friday to say goodbye to the Spaccarotellis. The hardest part, Dayna Spaccarotelli says, is seeing all these old faces and sharing memories.
“I just keep telling myself to just get through tonight. Just get through tonight. It’ll be okay,” Dayna says. “It’s not going to be okay.”
John Spaccarotelli says he plans to spend more time with his family after his retirement. He also wants more time to do what he loves: dancing. He even met a potential new dance partner at the bar’s last call.
“She says she likes to dance,” he said. “Ao I’ll find out if she likes to dance that much with me.”
By around 1:15 a.m., the Shanty Tavern crowd has slimmed down, but the bar’s regulars, who don’t want the place to close yet, have stuck around.
Fulvio Longo, who has a favorite corner barstool, brought in some champagne and is singing goodbye songs with John Spaccarotelli.
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Then comes the moment everyone’s been dreading:
“Last call! Last call!” John Spaccarotelli shouts out above the noise. “That’s it, everybody. Last call.”
John Spaccarotelli insists this isn’t goodbye, though.
He says he’ll host one more open house in January and then maybe rent the place out.
But no matter what, the glowing sign isn’t coming down, he says.
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“Thank you for the good times with the people that I’ve met,” he says. “And hopefully I’ll meet someone on the street saying, ‘Hi, John.’”
SEATTLE — From my first visit as an adult, I was absolutely smitten with this city with snow-capped mountains and glistening bodies of water visible on all sides.
The decision to move here when my wife was accepted to Seattle University was probably one of the easiest and most fortuitous choices I’ve ever made. I loved the city’s topography, how people went outside no matter the weather and even the weather itself. I would often feel as if I was living someplace I would have chosen to vacation.
But it was soccer that made me feel like part of the city myself, like I had found my new home. I’ve often talked about how watching the Sounders win their first U.S. Open Cup at the George & Dragon was my first real introduction to the team. A few months later, I started working at Sounder at Heart. That summer, I experienced my first World Cup in Seattle. We showed up to a bar at 6 AM to get a spot for the USA-England match, and barely even got in. Bars all over town were packed, even when the USA wasn’t playing.
It was then that I started imagining what it would be like for the World Cup to actually come here.
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Although the United States’ 4–1 loss to Belgium on Monday wasn’t exactly the way I wanted it to end, I can safely say the Seattle World Cup experience exceeded even my lofty dreams.
Picking one highlight from the six games is almost impossible as every game surprised me in different ways. In the immediate buildup to this tournament, the shine had seemingly started to wear off. Actually getting the World Cup was feeling like a pyrrhic victory, one of those “careful what you wish for” achievements. All anyone could talk about was ticket prices and corruption. Empty seats and unsold hotel rooms felt inevitable. I believed the mood and narratives would change once the soccer actually started being played, but my expectations had been massively re-set.
Once the games began, I immediately realized just how powerful the World Cup can be, especially in a setting like this. The crowd for Egypt-Belgium – Seattle’s first-ever World Cup match – was a near sellout, and it was then that I appreciated the power of the diaspora. I saw Egypt fans with tears in their eyes as they saw their compatriots gathered by the Great Wheel. Their march to the match was pure joy, filled with chants, giant flags and pharoah costumes. The match, itself, was a bit underwhelming – a 1–1 tie – but everyone seemed so happy. That set a standard that was probably exceeded in each game.
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The Bosnia & Herzegovina fan march was genuinely awe-inspiring, as it seemed to go on forever. I swear there were 40,000 people wearing BiH’s blue, yellow and white and they were all singing ‘Ljiljani’ once it was over. The atmosphere for Iran-Egypt was absolutely electric, and I honestly felt like the stadium might explode when Iran scored what seemed to be a late game-winner only for VAR to overturn it.
My favorite memories from this tournament, though, will likely be tied to the way Seattle really came alive for the two USA matches. To see an American downtown flooded with soccer fans is not something I ever thought I’d see, and for it to happen twice in my hometown only made it more special.
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For the Australia match, I came into downtown from my home in Wallingford on a rental bike, traveling along the newly refurbished waterfront before 8 AM. There were already massive crowds gathered.
For this match, I chose to arrive on the Link Light Rail. It was the first time I used it to get to one of the World Cup games, but I wanted to experience what it was like to emerge from Pioneer Square station with hundreds of thousands of others.
Three hours before kickoff, Occidental Square was already packed as thousands of people watched the final moments of Spain-Portugal on the Brick Park big screen. Virtually every bar was already at capacity, with lines snaking out the doors. Inside the stadium, the north pavilion was already teaming with activity and lines to get into the various pro shops snaking through the concourse.
A short while later, I caught up to the USA march to the match. Led by horse-riding Civil War re-enactors, the march took 20 minutes to pass through the intersection of 1st and Main. As it passed, sections of fans broke out into impromptu “U-S-A” chants, sang other American Outlaw standards, played instruments and held a wide variety of signs. My favorite was probably Captain America punching out a Smurf (which were created in Belgium). There were others with Clint Dempsey, Grant Wahl, Weston McKennie and John Denver. They wore eagle costumes, dressed as Founding Fathers, and flag-inspired soccer shirts … so many stripes. I swear I didn’t see a single frown.
Joe Towner / PNWMF
Given the size of the crowd inside, I have to assume that the vast majority of those in the march weren’t planning to attend the game in person. They just wanted to be part of this intoxicating energy, equal parts hope, anticipation and FOMO. City officials said 25,000 fans participated in the march, 10,000 more than took part in the one before USA-Australia. Some estimates have suggested there were as many people downtown as there were for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl prade that pushed into seven digits. Hard as that is to believe – that a soccer match could attract a crowd like that – my eyes told me it was at least possible.
The Overlook Walk’s Salish Steps were packed, just as they were many other times during these magical few weeks. Otherwise vacant storefronts were suddenly impromptu soccer bars. The Historic Triangle Pub was revived, featuring a massive screen and overflowing beer garden just around the corner from the stadium. In the Chinatown/International District — which is one of the downtown neighborhoods that hasn’t benefited as much from the World Cup crowds — hundreds crowded into Hing Hay Park to watch the game. The demand for viewing spots was seemingly insatiable.
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The good vibes flowed seamlessly into the stadium. The buzz was overwhelmingly positive, talk of a serious run was on lips all over the park. “Why not US?” wasn’t just an empty platitude spoken by Argentinian head coach Mauricio Pochettino, it was a mantra that turned otherwise uninterested Americans into believers.
Photos by Max Aquino / Sounder at Heart
Seattle, long overlooked on U.S. Soccer’s list of preferred sites, has been dubbed “The Cathedral of Cascadia” by none other than the USMNT’s Twitter account and fans did everything possible to live up to that lofty praise. I’m not one to get emotional about the National Anthem, but when 67,000 people are collectively singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” it’s hard not to get lost in the moment. Somehow, I didn’t even notice the four fighter jets that buzzed the stadium to punctuate the song. At Minute 1, fans broke out the classic “Boom-Boom-Clap”-style “U-S-A.” You’d have thought the USMNT players would have been ready to run through walls.
Instead, they were utterly incapable of channeling that into their play against Belgium. After four matches in which they played with energy and spirit, they came out utterly flat against their most talented opponents to date. At no point did they have control of the match. They were down 1–0 before the match was even 10 minutes old, and were a bit lucky not to be down 3–0 by that time.
The one moment the USMNT had a chance – following Malik Tillman’s wonderful free kick that brought the match level – was almost immediately spoiled when they allowed Belgium to re-take the lead immediately off the ensuing kickoff.
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Still, there was hope coming out of halftime. It didn’t take long for that to be spoiled, either. In the 57th minute, goalkeeper Matt Freese came way out of his box and badly misplayed a seemingly innocuous ball over the top, allowing Hans Vanaken to loft an uncontested shot from 35 yards into a virtually undefended net.
There were more “U-S-A” chants and Eddie Vedder even tried to inspire the Yanks by chugging a beer while on the jumbotron during a hydration break.
If there was a shred of belief left in the building, it was slowly and achingly asphyxiated until Romelu Lukaku struck the final blow with a powerful strike off another sloppy turnover in stoppage time. Fittingly, he and the Belgium bench celebrated with a mocking “Trump dance,” acknowledging the role the president insisted on playing after potentially getting FIFA to declare Folarin Balogun eligible for the match despite getting a red card against Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The mood in the streets after was obviously a far cry from how the day started. Players spoke about letting themselves and the fans down. There’s an undeniable sense that an opportunity has been missed, that a confluence of events quite like this may never arrive again. That may be true for the USMNT and the greater American soccer scene.
But I’m not sure it’s true for Seattle. Our status as “Best Soccer City in America” is not new, even if it’s not a moniker we’ve tried to trademark. We reguarly brought 30,000 to Lumen Field when most of the MLS was lucky to draw half of that. Although the buzz around the Sounders has diminished a bit over the years, the World Cup crowds were actually smaller than the club’s most popular games.
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Updated Seattle/PNW attendance records show World Cup matches occupying slots 6-10 (66,925 for each of final 5). Sounders own top 5. Among those bumped out of top 10: Sounders-Barcelona, DC United-Real Madrid, Man United-Celtic.
— Frank MacDonald (@frankmsounders.bsky.social) July 7, 2026 at 1:12 PM
It’s not that our city has discovered a love for soccer, but maybe this was the catalyst for its reawakening. Sounders leadership has a chance to embrace this moment and make sure it has legs long after the FIFA circus leaves town.
Our local leaders have a similar responsibility. We’ve always known that Seattle is a world-class city and now the world does, too. Our public transit is very good by American standards, but it can be world-class if we will it into existence. We showed how much energy can be harnessed when public space is given back to the people, and not handed to cars. Local businesses showed what they can do when unnecessary and burdensome paperwork doesn’t get in their way.
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The World Cup was an event that I think exceeded all expectations, but the aftermath can be even better.
Thanks to Susan for the photo. She called to tell us about a dog stuck on the rocks off Beach Drive near Harbor West (the condos on pilings), and a crowd gathering to figure out how to rescue it from the rising tide. We were away from the desk at the time but after returning a little while later, we heard the situation mentioned on police radio, with word the dog had been rescued, so we didn’t head that way. Then late tonight Susan sent photos, explaining that the dog apparently is known to swim to those rocks and back, but for some reason got stuck this time, “until a paddle boarder and kayaker paddled out to it to coax it off the rocks and back to the shore.”
