By: Tim Donahue
The beloved State Street Bar burned down on January 3, 2024, just a few days after we all packed in to celebrate the coming New Year, it was closed permanently. Now, four months have passed, and the entire landscape of Bellingham’s social scene has shifted. For some it has shifted for the better, and although many yearn for things to go back to the way they were before, time passes and it becomes increasingly clear that the Bellingham bar scene will never be quite as complete as it was in the days of The State Street Bar.
State Street was not a nice place. It was “Bar 101” said Christian, the owner of The Cabin Tavern. There were carpeted floors and office chairs, doctor’s office lighting and always, always some new kind of smell. A child-proofed nest for the newly twenty-one to learn how to act in a bar.
The external sign of State Street Bar that reads ‘State Street Bar’. Tim Donahue // Wavelength
State Street was special, but it wasn’t for the ambience. It won’t be missed because of the beer or the smell or even the cheap price tags (although that does have a role in it); no, State Street Bar will, and has been sorely missed because it when it burned down it left us, the students, without a place to congregate away from the classroom.
Maybe I’m wrong here, maybe it’s just me that’s feeling the void. But trust me, I’ve been looking, and there’s no true replacement for the role that State Street played in the nightlife that existed in Bellingham for so long. There are house shows and house parties, but by the time someone turns twenty-one they’re often sick of that scene. There are breweries galore, but expensive beer draws an older, earlier to bed crowd, and those places are usually closing by the time a place like State Street was just filling up. Bellingham Bar & Grill is too dark, the Waterfront Bar is too local, the Orion’s too sci-fi, and the skeeball doesn’t work at the Beaver Inn. I’ve tried the Ramble Tamble, the Wild Buffalo, but nothing felt quite right and the student migration was left to wander—as a collective, I believe—to the Cabin Tavern.
We’ve been descending upon them ever since. Students flood in on Friday and Saturday nights, spilling out both into the back patio and the street seating in front of the tavern’s main room. But the Cabin Tavern is smaller than State Street Bar was, it’s a tighter packed space that has, until now, served an older demographic of locals and regulars.
Series of photos taken inside the Cabin Tavern. Tim Donahue // Wavelength
This migration has always been destined to lead to conflict. The people that are used to a more neighborhood-centric Cabin Tavern have had their whole routine uprooted by the rowdy influx that has come out of the past four months. There has been an uptick in theft and fighting since State Street closed, and trespassing and vandalism are at an all time high. In a post on The Cabin Tavern’s Instagram, they lamented the behavior of their new clientele by sharing pictures of recent vandalism that had occurred in the bar. They ended their caption by saying that if “you” continue to act in such a destructive manner then “WE DO NOT WANT YOUR BUSINESS.”
One commenter noted on that same post that it “Seems like the clientele has changed recently.” To which, The Cabin Tavern’s Instagram account replied by suggesting, “Maybe we just turn into a 25 and older bar?” An idea that, according to Christian, they have been considering.
It’s obvious that The Cabin Tavern doesn’t view themselves as a student’s kind of bar. Their comments, and the general reaction that they’ve had to the change in their patronage, have told us as much. But what is a rowdy Western student supposed to make of a downtown with a State Street sized hole in the center of everything?
Series of photos taken outside the Cabin Tavern. Tim Donahue // Wavelength
Well, Christian would argue that the path to a new home is not that hard for the students to come by. It starts by “learning how to behave in public,” and the people at the Cabin Tavern acknowledge that it’s “just a few bad apples,” but that doesn’t change the fact that vandalism, theft, and fighting are unacceptable acts in a place of business. Friends need to check in on, and check their friends. Friends don’t let friends steal from bars, and if our Western masses have any hope at finding a place to call home, we’ll have to start holding each other accountable.