Governor Chris
Gregoire's appearance at the Olympia bar Hannah's two weekends
ago wasn't a first-time thing. In fact, says owner Todd Ruzicka,
"The governor shows up once a year." Indeed, Gregoire's office
confirms that every summer she serves food down at Lakefair
(Olympia's version of Seafair), then takes her staff over to the
sports bar for some
post-festivity
boozing.
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- Gregoire’s
bar-door shutdown was preceded by not kissing
Mick at Studio 54.
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Nevertheless, a
bouncer at Hannah's refused to let the 61-year-old Gregoire, who
wasn't carrying ID, in on the governor's most recent visit.
Bartenders had told him "no ID, no entry," Ruzicka says—and the
bouncer took them at their word. Ruzicka adds that the bouncer
had gotten the job a week before demanding that Gregoire prove
her right to consume alcohol. He's laying low now.
Over the 12-year
life of his bar, Ruzicka's seen his share of Olympia politicos.
Mike Lowry, for one, was a year-round regular. "We had to cut
him off on a couple of occasions," says Ruzicka. "He can drink."
Predecessors
aside, Gregoire's shutdown inspired The Cutting Room to do some
deep digging into the governor's entrance-denial past. Turns out
she has a long history of trying to pull one over on attentive
bouncers. Some highlights:
• At age 5, a
precocious young Gregoire is denied access to the kindergarten
bathroom after a hall monitor asks for a pass, which she fails
to produce. Gregoire explains she left it in her lunch box.
• Fun Forest
operators deny the first-grade Gregoire entrance for failing to
provide evidence that she is taller than a cartoon beaver.
• In a previous
wallet-forgetting incident, Gregoire, at 19, is barred from the
then-risque film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Gregoire is
asked to leave the express checkout line at a University
District grocery store in 1967 when a clerk informs her that
even though toothpaste is on a three-for-one special, the tubes
count as separate items and she has exceeded the limit.
• April 26, 1977:
Gregoire isn't allowed past the red rope for Studio 54's opening
night when she becomes the first woman in history to refuse to
make out with Mick Jagger.
