Comments on Oly Outrage

I am from Oly and people like you this person are why I left.

BTW, Oly beer is the best.

Oly Oly Ox In Free!

baseball bats are made of ash, not maple.

wow, THAT'S what jumped out at me from that post.

sorry.

Pretty much sums up why I generally try and avoid Olympia.

Home to the 8oz. stubby.

He means wood bats as in cricket.

Either he wants to paddle you, or he wants to break your legs.

I think it was left ambiguous as to which on purpose ...

I'm from Tumwater and I'm offended by the blogger's use of the word "Scumwater." The proper term is "Cumwater."

I keep thinking you're going to be talking about the oly rollers when the posts start like that, but I have roller derby on the brain.

Everyone in Oly calls it Oly. I fail to see the outrage.

Small town, has anyone ever told you you're are beautiful when you're angry?

Yo everyone I think Em was joshing us.
If you look at Olympia from the air though it is hard to justify the existence of three cities in this area.
Tumwater, Lacey and Olympia should all be one city.

Olymaceywater.

Course that would be one hell of a name for a state capitol.

@9 Its not Oly I have a problem with. Its the Oly=state government I have a problem with.

Say Oly until your blue in the face. OlyOlyOlyOlyOly.

Just don't let it become like Olympia=state government.

I can't believe you had to ask about pizza. Any local would send you to Old School. http://www.oldschoolpizzeria.com/

Josh: Old School Pizza! You've never seen their basketball posters?

Emmett: Metonymy is not going away because you say so. Crown for royalty? Washington for the federal gov't? You've got a big crusade on your hands.

Boo hoo, you live in the state capitol and people associate your town with it. Your life really must suck.

Ramblin Jacks has FUCKING AWESOME sweet potato pound cake with bourbon sauce. I hope they're still serving that, I talk about it a lot and have tried to recreate it without success. (Without success, YET.)

I never heard it called Oly until Josh started doing it. That goes to show how much time I've spent down there, I guess.

#11: They definitely need to be three cities. They are as different as three cities right next to each other can be.

Olympia: State capitol, awesome downtown, woodsy hippy college -- the perfect small city.
Tumwater: Cute hillbillies.
Lacey: Sprawling hell on earth oh my god this city sucks so bad.

Definitely Old School Pizzeria.

Old School Pizza is exactly what I came in here to post. They're at 4th and Franklin right by the Bus Terminal. Really Josh, it's a must visit, for both the grub and ambiance.

I lived in Olympia from 4 years now. No one I know from here cares if you call the city oly.

As for the stuff to do Josh here's the run down:

If you want good pizza: Old School
If you want great pizza: Vick's on the west side

As far as bars go I think you could do better then Jacks. I love their food but as far as bars go I would suggest the following: The Brotherhood for booze, The Reef for a dive, The East Side or The Fish Bowl for beer, Swing for wine, The Mark for fancy booze, and if you want hang with the pros show up at Ben Moore's at around midnight.

Hope that helps.

I miss the old Old School location, it was slightly larger and less, um, dirty than the current location.

But the food is still AMAZING.

The bloggers' hangout bar in Olympia: the the Brotherhood

The Brotherhood was the only bar the would serve me when I was underage.

It was also kind of scary/divey then - is it still?

@23 Depends on when you were down there. A few years ago one of the original owners of Thekla bought the Brotherhood and changed it around to a more hippster friendly place, along the lines of the Mark. Though, not as expensive, if that makes any sense.

So, I'd guess not as "scary/divey" as it was back then.

@20 - IF you're referring to King Solomon's Reef, the correct shortening of the name is "King Sol's" - The Reef no longer exists, IIRC.

And Ben Moore's sucks donkey balls.

I am dubious of your omission of the China Crippler, Destroyer of Livers!

@24 - Thekla! Do I miss that place! Needless to say, I have not lived in Oly for a long ass time.

17 WINS.

also, re: Old School, ask for the garlic knots.

the brotherhood is still a dive, a glorious fucking dive-mother of all dives. there are no hipsters in olympia. the reef is still there.

A wood bat tournament is a baseball tournament that uses wooden bats, not those aluminum bats with their annoying ping. They give Legion ball/high school/college players a chance to show the pro scouts what they can do with real bats.

Just remember, if you live in Lacey, always insist you don't live in Oly.

Even if they're pretty much the same thing nowadays.

will in seattle, to me that's like saying Kent and Bellevue are the same.

Olympia and Lacey are very CLEARLY different things, culturally, economically, educationally, etc.

ok, fine, there's a chip on our shoulder.

I like my baby Jesus to party!

26--I miss Thekla too, so many wonderful nights of dancing and karaoke...

Old School is great. I discovered there that honey on crust is awesome.

See, all I'm thinking about is if he's used the concept of "metonymy" correctly. "Oly" is an abbreviation, and it's stretching it a bit to consider an abbreviation to be a piece of something that represents the whole. Or is what he's saying that "Olympia," which is connected strictly to the the state government, represents only a piece of "Oly," which is the complete place, so "Olympia" is the metonymy? Hm.

Also, I wonder if he gets mad about people using "Washington" to refer to "Washington, DC," which in turns refers to the federal government in Washington, DC. I'll be looking for his next post on that pressing matter.

I'll echo the others -- Old School Pizza is pretty good.

Great pasta at Trinacria.

Hushed, leisurely deal-making dinner at Gardener's.

Decent bagels at Otto's.

I'm getting hungry...

Okay, I have so much to say about this. Most beat me too it, but as a native Olympian turned Seattle transplant, here's my two cents:

It's still the Reef. It was only King Sol's before you were old enough to drink in the bar.

Old School is so much better than Vicks. Unless you're a hippie. And I like Vick's! I'm not hating, I'm just saying. I've been trying to find pizza up here that's anything like Old School's for the past eight years. There is nothing.

Tumwater=cute hillbillies? No. Tumwater=ignorant hicks that go downtown to cruise in their pickups and scream "FAG" at anyone who doesn't look like them, regardless of sexual orientation. That is not to say that some rad people haven't come out of Tumwater - Hi Matt, Vern!

Actually, the list of metonyms on wikipedia specifically includes a section on locations, which includes things like "Washington" and "Detroit" representing government and the automotive industry respectively. Looks like Emmett is fighting an uphill rhetorical battle if he doesn't want the name (or nickname) of a place to be associated with a major function of or in that place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

Okay, I'll shut up now, since I'm probably the only person here who cares about rhetorical devices. They're just so cool!

fyi olympia ex-pats, Otto's is now tragically GONE FOREVER.

i know, it's a tragedy.

@3: "baseball bats are made of ash, not maple."

I'm sure nobody else cares about this, but to set the record straight: Maple bats are rapidly taking over, due in part to the success of Barry Bonds (no doubt because of the bat, not the pharmaceuticals). See www.maxbats.com.

@25
Who the fuck calls it "king sol's" that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Also, the china clipper is for douchebags from lacey. Just like the mint, and the vault, and charlie's, and on certain nights, the 4th ave. Tom at Ben Moore's is one of the best people on the earth.

@37 beat me to it.

Oh yeah and, as someone who grew up in Olympia, I strongly disagree with Emmett's point that Evergreen equals Oly. Evergreen equals a bunch of kids from out of town who descend upon Oly for nine months out of the year.

Sorry. My punctuation is usually better.

@ 34: Hi, back!

I have to agree with Emmett.

Oly = the scene that's been an important part of the indie world for decades.

Olympia = the place where they enact stupid smoking bans.

I'm in Seattle now, but in Oly you should have happy hour at Ben Moore's for good, cheap drinks and food, or during the spring and summer the patio at the Brotherhood is one of my favorite places to be ever.

At night, you can get drunk and puke your guts out at the Reef. It's like the Maharaja, but with American food and less english.

Get a tattoo at Spidermonkey.

Buy lotion at Archibald Sisters.

Get your coffee at Batdor & Bronson.

Congratulations, you've experienced Oly while covering Olympia. They're two different worlds, and those of us from there like to make sure it stays that way. That, I think, is Emmett's point.

It's also why my decades-old screen name is "mattoly" and not "mattolympia".

:-)

Otto's is GONE?! Seriously? Wtf happened? Where am I going to get olive and walnut cream cheese now? Remember, Josh, how you said (or wrote?) somewhere a while back about how a certain bagel combination from there was your most favorite meal ever? Sad.

I am so sad about Otto's!

RE: Otto's.

Well, Otto actually owns the building still, but he sold the shop about a year ago, and the new owners packed up a week or so ago. If you can make it up the hill, the SF Bakery is still around. That was always much better than Otto's anyway.

callie, i've been in mourning since it happened. they used to make me a magical peanut butter & sprouts on a cheddar bagel, near-daily, for under two bucks: that was the magic.

recently they had introduced a genius breakfast-device, the bacon & cheddar egg bagel.

RIP.

The only bar worth a shit is McCoy's.

@ 46: I know where to get that exact bacon and egg and cheddar sandwich in Seattle! Next time you crash over, we'll go get some!

Is it just me, or is this thread turning into Satanosphere?

@48 Where?

@48. How old school of you.

Its actually turning into http://www.olyblog.net

So, Josh, when you have to write, you don't have an office in Oly to do that, right? So where do you pen stuff from on the fly if you have to?

I usually just use the campus cafeteria.

The funniest part: his blogspot's URL name is olywa.

Evergreen is not just the students and it's not just nine months of the year. It's the faculty and staff and administration, all of whom live in Olympia and support locally-owned businesses (many of which are owned, I might add, by some way cool Evergreen graduates who bring their vision of 21st century business practices to a thriving downtown).

Far East off 4th has a pretty good orange chicken. Not too sweet and nice and crispy.

La Voyer is a vegan friendly place that has good garlic fries, but the place smells like a deep fryer.

Old school has good pizza but it isn't brick oven fired. Haven't tried Vicks yet.

There is also a good coffee place off Capitol and 4th, but I forget what it's called (its before you hit the starbucks on your way to the capitol campus)

Gomez@52 - I believe that's purposeful, as the point of the post was that the "locals" are the ones who should be referring to it as "Oly," not the outsiders such as Josh who have no idea what it is to be from Oly, who have no clue what the true culture is off the legislative campus, etc. etc.

@ 39, you hit the nail on the head. Old School is some of the best pizza I've ever had outside of the New York metro area. Vick's is merely tasty food.

Also, for a great Oly bar, check out The Royal.

Oops, I meant to tag 34 (Callie)