Seattle bar reopens after Covid-19 shutdown: Not a lot of people 'but it's 15 more than zero'

The Streamline Tavern has reopened in Lower Queen Anne neighborhood -- one of the Seattle businesses coming back after the coronavirus shutdown.

Here’s what co-owner Mike Lewis told KUOW about that “soft opening” on Sunday and Monday.

We put just a tiny little video of a beer can opening on Facebook and --- wow. It was not as soft as we actually would have liked. Immediately, our customers were interested in coming by, but at a 25% capacity and a lot of spacing, it's not a whole lot of room for people to hang out in the bar. But it was nice to see people show up.

I mean, it's not a whole lot of people, but it's 15 more than zero.

When people come in, they have to wait before the bartender checks them in, they immediately have to use, we have a hand sanitizing station. And then from there, the bartender tells them where they're going to be sitting. Because you'll get a mixture of individuals and small groups. And obviously, we can't have groups more than five. And so we have designated areas in the bar where you can sit and then there'll be times where you have to wait outside before you can come in because there's just not as much seating available.

We're also doing rapid, consistent wiping of the entire bar in between customers, that sort of thing. So it's pretty labor intensive for a bartender, and then we've been running a couple of extra persons just to run around and wipe things. So it's not it's not business as usual, certainly, but it's business.

I think our customers have been so happy to come back and so I think that has offset the stress level of having a mask on and the constant policing of the environment. We have about half of our staff interested in coming back and we're operating on reduced hours. So normally we were noon to 2 a.m. And now we are 4 p.m. to midnight.

Judging from last night, and then the night before that we were open, I'm feeling a little better about things. But we also know that with these phases in place, it doesn't mean that they move one direction, they can move the other direction.