Season two of Field Notes kicks off at the legendary Twede's Cafe in North Bend, where our host and special guest dive into the lore of some of Washington State’s iconic diners. Pull up a chair as we journey through time, highlighting the stories and cultural moments from diners of yore; a love letter to diner culture and the places and spaces that feel like a home away from home.

This episode is hosted by Tony Williams and features guest Cynthia Brothers.

Curated HistoryLink article set for this episode includes:

• First Twin Peaks Festival commences in North Bend on August 14, 1992. by Antonia Kelleher
• Dog House: The Last Call: A Reminiscence by Floyd Waterson
• The Igloo — Lost Landmark of Seattle's Auto-Tecture by Alan J. Stein

Additional HistoryLink resources for this episode:

• The Igloo Restaurant, a Vancouver diner famed for its burgers and shakes, opens on August 1, 1948. by Rita Cipalla
• Twin T-Ps Restaurant, early roadside attraction, opens on March 13, 1937. by Walt Crowley

For more from Cynthia Brothers and Vanishing Seattle, check out:

• www.vanishingseattle.org

For more Field Notes episodes and other HistoryLink podcasts, visit the:

• HistoryLink.org Podcast Page

Voice-over: I bet you can already tell where I am. I'm sitting in a beige vinyl booth, right next to the window to a kitchen. In the back of a diner. Well, not A diner. In many ways, it's THE diner. Twede's Cafe, in North Bend.

Voice-over: That's Cynthia Brothers. She's the founder, owner, operator, and sole employee of Vanishing Seattle.

Tony: What is Vanishing Seattle for uninitiated and, uh, and why did you start it?

Cynthia: Thank you so much. Oh, wow, this is pretty large. Yeah. Please, please have.

Tony: Those pancakes are the size of your head. That’s incredible.

Cynthia: Yes. Please help me with any and all of this.

Tony: Yes, same.

Cynthia: It just feels like a place where people like to gather and hang out. It has like a comforting, familiar community vibe and something that is, uh, not that common anymore. Probably, you know, I think there used to be a lot more diners and now they're a bit more few and far between. Um, so yeah, I think it's a mix of things that makes a place like Twede’s really, uh, stand out.

Tony: Oh, with the Showtime, like kind of a reintroduction?

Cynthia: Yes. Yeah. They redid some of the interior to make it match its previous iteration.

Cynthia: I think you really get like a flavor for, um, the dynamics there, the people that were there. It's hilarious as well.

Voice-over: Cynthia's talking about our second article for the week - "Dog House: The Last Call: A Reminiscence by Floyd Waterson". It’s a really beautiful piece. Waterson talks about his experience being at the Dog House on its final night. And it’s super poetic. Funny, and interesting, and a little sad.

Voice-over: Cynthia DID go to the Dog House as a kid, though. So she remembers some of what made it so special.

Tony: [00:9:00] So tell me, I mean this place, why was it called The Dog House?

Tony: What?!

Cynthia: Yeah, apparently it didn't happen because the bulls refused to come out of their cages.

Tony: Good for them. Labor strike.

Cynthia: Yeah. They were on strike. Yeah. Um, yeah, and apparently he was known as a philanthropist, and he donated to a lot of, uh, children's charities. One year he was an honorary Davy Jones Seafair Pirate in the early sixties. And so apparently he, like, fell off of a float and then broke three ribs outside of the, um, Washington Athletic Club. And legend has it that it was Bob Murray's ashes that was kept in the urn that was placed above the corner of the bar in The Dog House.

Tony: Sounds like he and his bar were very similar, in a lot of ways

Cynthia: Yeah, sounds like he really set the tone.

Tony: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Tony: Sick!

Cynthia: ...would call you hun, smoke a cigarette, have a cigarette dangling outta their lips. And yeah, I feel like you just don't really see that anymore.

Voice-over: One of those waitresses, Lori Goldson, eventually bought The

Dog House. And her son, David, became a manager.

Cynthia: And The Dog House, through David, had an inroad into the early Seattle punk scene because David was a member of this group called Ze Whiz Kidz. And they were this early, um, very subversive, kind of hippie, drag, proto-punk, guerilla street theater cabaret troupe. And they would...

Tony: That's a lot of adjectives.

Cynthia: It is. Yeah. You know, they were a lot of things.

Tony: Apparently. Oh my God.

Tony: Sick.

Tony: Oh wow.

Tony: Wow.

Cynthia: I thought that was just kind of an interesting connection. You know, kind of showing like, let your freak flag fly, like all are welcome at The Dog House.

Tony: And like that, that kind of just like, again, place where everybody can come in and hang out can be really fertile ground for really influential and important artistic stuff to happening to.

Cynthia: Yeah. Anyone who is on the fringe in any way, it’s like, you can hang out at a place like The Dog House and cook up some real interesting schemes and art and performances.

Yeah. But it became known for a place where a lot of, uh, locals would eat, and a lot of workers would go, [00:16:00] uh, to eat on their lunch break. So. Yeah, forties and fifties, you know, the local economy had been really shaped by, um, shipbuilding and aeroplane industry. Um, that was kind of on the outskirts of the downtown area, so there were a lot of workers that would go and like sometimes every day just to hang out at The Igloo. Um, and that was around, um, I think through maybe like the mid-fifties, and then by 1960 it had been, um, torn down. But they were so close to each other that it's like, I, I think, the article was saying that, um, one of the owners of The Igloo eventually left to go work at the dog house. And, um, there's friends of mine who I think their parents or grandparents worked at, like both of those establishments.

Tony: Oh yeah. Like they were just like a revolving door?

Cynthia: Yeah, apparently.

Voice-over: But everything in a city eventually changes. And diners are no exception.

Tony: Mm-hmm.

Tony: And you like, I don't know, you seem sad about that. What do you think is lost when that, when stuff like happens, when spaces like this go away?

Tony: Yeah.

And I do think as a city, we kind of are, that's something we lose out on when we don't have these spaces where we can interact with or sit next to, or like break bread, with someone who is different from us or to be in the same room with people who are just this cross section of like everyone in the city or from like all different walks of life. I think as we kind of get more stratified in our bubbles, um, and just more tied to like what type of work we do or just trying to like pay the bills, and there's less places to just gather with a bunch of different type of people, I think it's kind of a reflection of like, well, how like healthy and, um, cohesive is a city?

Tony: If you buy a coffee at, let's say a Starbucks. Show up, you buy your coffee, you know, they put it in a, in a go cup with a lid on it.

Cynthia: Mm.

Tony: And then sit down at a table, maybe do a little bit of work, right? Maybe you have like a short meeting with somebody, and then you are expected to leave.

Cynthia: Mm.

Tony: You sit down at a diner, they hand you a mug, and they keep refilling it.

Cynthia: Yeah. We've had like five people come by and like ask if you want a refill.

Voice-over: That simple act has a lot of effect on how welcome you feel in the space. And I think that welcoming mentality is at the core of why diners become crossroads for so many different kinds of people.

It’s like, otherwise, like, what are we doing here? Just like all, know, separated from each other, slotted into our apartments or rooms. It's like, you know, going out and having, um, some sort of genuine random interaction with someone out in the world. I mean, isn't that kind of the point, isn't that kind of the allure and excitement and joy of being in a city?

Cynthia: No one gave us a side eye for sitting here for so long and having eight cups of coffee between us.

Tony: Yeah. I feel welcome. Do you feel welcome?

Cynthia: I absolutely do. Yeah. Love to come back here. Always do.

Tony: All right. Well, thanks so much. It's been great getting to chat with you about diners.

Cynthia: Thank you, Tony. This was fun. Yeah, appreciate it.

Voice-over: Field Notes is a production of HistoryLink. You can check out over 8,000 articles about Washington history on our website, HistoryLink.org. And again, check out the show notes for links to audio and text versions of the articles we talked about today. If you liked the show, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app. It really helps us out. And share it with a friend! Special thanks this week to Vanishing Seattle herself, Cynthia Brothers. And thanks, too, to everyone over at Twede's. I know we didn't ask permission to record there, but you were incredibly hospitable anyways.