When I moved to Everett 30 years ago, I quickly found out that if you wanted to learn what was really going on in this community, you needed to show up at Jack’s Bar and Grill on Hewitt Avenue.
Jack’s was a melting pot, with a lawyer grabbing lunch or a martini next to a longshoreman having a beer and a polish sausage sandwich. Every Tuesday, Democrats from around the county would show up for lunch.
Some Republicans liked it there, too.
“You needed to be seen at Jack’s,” remembered Bruce Agnew, a former Republican county councilman now with the Cascadia Center. “It was almost a courthouse away from the courthouse.”
If you still want to be seen at Jack’s, you’d better hurry. What was for decades an important institution in Everett is closing its doors at the end of the month. Manager Sheryle Strobel said that Jack’s owner Tony Joyce couldn’t agree on a new lease with the building’s owner and is calling it quits.
Jack’s bar and dining room have long been a home away from home for the influential people of the day, although it’s fair to say that it’s not a fancy place. I don’t know how to describe Jack’s decor. Perhaps it sums things up to say its postage-stamp-sized dance floor still has a glittering disco ball affixed to the ceiling.
Jim Shaffer of Shaffer Crane in Everett remembers with fondness showing up at Jack’s regularly to discuss the hot issues. “On Friday nights we would all meet there,” he said. “We used to call it family hour.”
Mostly, Shaffer remembers having “a lot of laughs” with the lawyers, businessmen, judges and “all the waterfront rats” who hung out at the bar.
Bob Bibb, a retired Snohomish County Superior Court judge, liked to stop by for a martini while walking home at the end of the day. “It wasn’t just where the elite would meet to eat,” he recalled.
As I walked to the door around lunchtime on Thursday to chat with Strobel, out walked Augie Mardesich of Everett, a retired commercial fisherman and lawyer who was a legislator (a Democrat) for 25 years and worked his way up to the powerful position of majority leader of the state Senate in the early 1970s. He’s been eating there for at least 40 years. Maybe longer.
Strobel said many have been showing up for decades, becoming more like family members than customers. “We’ve got guys we give a baby aspirin to every morning,” she added. “Others, we always make sure they’re taking their medication.”
She noted that the customers give a lot back.
“They’ll do anything for you,” she said. “If we need something done, we just put the word out and somebody will know something about it. They come from every walk of life.”
Virgie Gross, 84, of Arlington worked at Jack’s as a bartender for 30 years and made some good friends. “Every day I went to work was a happy day,” she said.
Of course, her previous job was as a bail bondswoman in downtown Seattle, so Jack’s certainly offered a better clientele.
Jack’s was started by Jack Sherin, who sold the business to Joyce many years ago. A restaurateur with a penchant for politics, Sherin is credited with making Jack’s a fun and relevant hangout.
“He had a sense of humor that was unstoppable,” Shaffer said.
Strobel said it wasn’t unusual for Sherin to have a couple cigarettes going in the ashtray while lighting up a third. He also liked a drink on occasion. Sherin was a longtime lobbyist of the Legislature for the gambling industry. And he abhorred the state’s high taxes on cigarettes and liquor.
Shaffer noted that Sherin’s doctor once told him what he considered to be the quintessential Sherin story. “The doctor said he had told Jack that he had to stop all this smoking and drinking, and Jack told him, ‘Listen, if you don’t smoke and drink in this state, you should be arrested for tax evasion,’ ” Shaffer said. “The doctor added, ‘It just took the wind out of my sails.’ “
Bibb and Shaffer both likened Jack’s Bar and Grill to the tavern in the popular sitcom “Cheers,” a place with a likeable cast of characters where people had fun. “They welcomed anybody who could behave themselves,” Bibb added.
Al Swift, an Emmy-winning broadcaster who represented Everett in Congress from 1979 to 1995, was a former Jack’s regular who is sorry to hear it’s shutting down.
“Jack’s was one of our grand institutions,” he said, adding, “Time passes, and so do our monuments.”
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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