Greg Sutton has lived in Queen Anne for over twenty years and has worked at Lower Queen Anne dive bar Streamline Tavern for the better part of the past 17. He’s the bar’s second-longest employee, and tonight he hanging up his bar-keeper hat and saying goodbye to the neighborhood and the community for good. Sutton is closing the book on his life here in the States next week to fulfill a longstanding dream–to retire in Vietnam.
Former PI reporter and co-owner of the Streamline, Mike Lewis, first met Sutton in 2004. He and some other journalists at the paper frequented the bar and got to talking Sutton, who at the time was the bar’s primary tender, working six days a week for most of the years he spend behind the bar.
“I’d been coming in the bar a bit when I was a reporter at the PI, and I got to know him a little bit there, and then I found out that he was teaching himself Vietnamese,” Lewis said. “I thought that was interesting that he was a Vietnam vet and teaching himself Vietnamese. He had been to Vietnam during his service, but then he also had gone back on one trip and had been blown away, both when he was in the military and then when he was there as a civilian.”
Lewis decided to do a story on Sutton for his dive bar column (you can read that story here) and found himself back at the Streamline, chatting with Sutton on a regular basis. One night Sutton started musing that there weren’t enough people tending bar at the establishment, and offered Lewis a part-time job spur of the moment.
“I filled in for him one day a week, and then he came back, and then the regular Thursday night guy quit, so I took over,” Lewis said. “At the time I thought I’d do this for a few months, but that turned into years and eventually led to becoming an owner at the bar.”
In more recent years Sutton, now 64, has been working three nights a week at the Streamline, as well as a number of day shifts. He’s last day on the bar was Monday, but Lewis has found a sneaky way to get him into the bar tonight for a proper send-off.
“We bought him a laptop and I’m teaching him how to use it, so under the pretense of him coming in for another computer lesson, he’s going to be in the bar,” Lewis says.
While you might spot Sutton hanging around the bar over the next week, as of Wednesday he’ll be off to Vietnam. Lewis invites anyone who’d like to say goodbye to Sutton to swing by the Streamline Tavern any time after 7:30 p.m. tonight.
“We are going to buy Olympia Pizza for the whole bar and will be putting out the big tip jar as a final fund-raiser for him,” Lewis said. Lewis says there’s no chance Sutton will read about the surprise send-off beforehand, as he doesn’t read anything online, but he asks that those planning to attend don’t mention the event to him beforehand—it’s meant to be a surprise.
“I’m definitely going to miss him. I think he’s pretty done with the bar business. It’s not easy if you’re young, but when you get older it can be a pretty demanding—moving the kegs around and all that stuff can wear on you a bit,” Lewis said. “He spent an enormous amount of time in that bar over the last 17 years, so I think he’s ready for a change and he’s ready to spend a lot of time somewhere far away from the bar and from Seattle.”
“I just thought it was a great way to memorialize many years of service,” he added.