Zippy the Dalmatian didn’t get a big slice of cake with spotted frosting and raspberry filling. Instead, Everett’s best known dog munched on his own birthday treats, natural salmon chews.
It was still a special day for the polka-dot pooch. Since 2007, Zippy has lent his name to his master’s downtown coffee shop. Thursday was Zippy’s 13th birthday.
Customers joined in the festivities at Cafe Zippy, a fun and funky place on Wetmore Avenue across from Trinity Lutheran College.
Cafe Zippy, which last November began the process of becoming a cooperative business, is a gathering place that hosts poetry and game nights, live music, raw food classes and other events.
“It’s unique in Everett,” said Tony Unruh, a cafe regular. The Marysville man stopped by Thursday for his morning pick-me-up and to offer birthday greetings to the dog he has known almost a decade.
“When he could, he used to sit up here with me,” said Unruh, tapping a bench seat along one wall of the coffee shop.
The cafe’s namesake isn’t as zippy as he used to be. He still accompanies Cafe Zippy proprietor Marilyn Rosenberg to work every day, but no longer is able to run the mile or so from her north Everett home.
Depending on which dog-years calculator you use, Zippy is the canine equivalent of someone in his 80s or 90s — an elderly gentleman of a pet. He has earned his frequent naps on a red, fold-up bed at the back of the cafe.
Long before Rosenberg opened her first Everett coffee shop, Zippy’s Java Lounge on Hewitt Avenue, her pup joined her on the job. Before moving to Everett, Rosenberg sold art at Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
“Somebody was going through the market with a cute red wagon with Dalmatian puppies. A friend of mine got him,” she said. “You could hold him in your hand. He looked like a toy.”
The friend couldn’t keep him, and Zippy became Rosenberg’s first dog and her co-worker. He is her service dog, which she said allows him to be in the cafe.
Zippy stays out of the kitchen. Customers know he’s in the coffee shop, and don’t mind a bit. For some, seeing a pet in the middle of a work day is a nice break.
Jeff Rivers, who works for Snohomish County’s Public Works Department, is a longtime Zippy’s client. On Thursday, Rivers ate birthday cake while sitting in a chair next to the dog’s bed.
“When Marilyn opened on Hewitt, I would come in for a cup of coffee and to pet Zippy,” he said.
Aletha Tatge and her sons Conrad, 14, and Duncan, 11, brought their schnauzer, Ellie, into the cafe Thursday, a birthday gesture that had tails wagging.
Customers have created artwork of Zippy, and for his birthday Thursday night a special poetry session was planned.
“I’ll be back for Zippy’s birthday party,” said Everett’s Mary Santiago, a poet who was in the shop Thursday morning.
A Navy veteran who served on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Tatge and her husband, Bradley, live near Kayak Point, but she finds her way to Zippy’s a couple times a week. She is on the committee creating bylaws for a Cafe Zippy co-op.
“I’ll be a charter member,” Tatge said. “It’s about community.”
Sometimes it’s about politics. Congressman Rick Larsen will be at Cafe Zippy from 10 to 11 a.m. Saturday for a community coffee.
People are invited to talk issues with the 2nd District Democrat.
Rosenberg said Zippy has had a high-profile dog walker. Once, she said, when Gov. Jay Inslee was in Everett, the state’s first lady popped into the cafe and took a liking to Zippy.
“Trudi Inslee took him for a walk,” she said.
“Zippy wants to greet people,” Rosenberg said. “He understands this is his place.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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