Fall is upon us. No really, it is. Think of the clouds as a warm fluffy blanket covering the earth and keeping you and everything around you warm, snuggy and well watered and you’ll do just fine with it.

And with this changing of the seasons, comes our new schedule…

…and new food…

…and drink menus;

all designed by the incomparable Zan Christensen as part of our collaboration to provide the Northwest Press a permanent retail presence and administration space on our beloved Capitol Hill (kind of like that Subpop/Fantagraphics joint down in Georgetown except weh mehr kewler).

FALL SCHEDULE

In addition to being open 2 – 10pm EVERY DAY (what what!), we’ll still also be open until Midnight Friday and Saturday night and open at noon every Saturday for our usual drafting as well as this weekend’s upcoming Kaladesh Prerelease (Slots still open! Come by, call in, or email us to reserve yours now!).

FALL MENU

We’ve gone hyperlocal, national, and international in our quest to bring you the best options possible this season and are excited to bring you:

SODO Pizza
Located in the most rustic corner of Sodo that you are never gonna find without a seasoned guide, Sodo are the real deal. They’ve been working with local bars like ours in Seattle for years now and they know what’s up. They prep and par bake all of our delicious personal pizzas for us so we can bake them off fresh in our oven and provide you hearty meals featuring both vegetarian and gluten free options.

Moonlight Mead
We’ve been carrying mead from the very beginning and, frankly, we’ve taken a few wrong turns. It wasn’t until we found this New Hampshire based meadery that we knew we’d found our match. Moonlight strikes that very difficult strike balance between classic fermentation and innovative recipes that slaps and caresses us right in our palette. Our fall seasonal Moonlight Mead menu includes black cherry, blueberry, black currant, Sumatran coffee and, our most popular, ginger vanilla, by both the glass and the bottle for your sipping pleasure.

Maeloc Spanish Cider
Lest it weren’t obvious from their love of mead and our growing hard soda selection (now featuring Orange Cream!), our customers tastes run a bit on the sweet side, which is why it came as no surprise to us at all when they took strongly to what may well be the sweetest cider we’ve ever tasted, Maeloc’s legendary Sidra con Fresa, or as we call it stateside, Strawberry Cider. So we are super excited to be partnering with them bring in our very first tap for it this fall, thus making us, as far as I know without having done even the slightest actual research into the subject, the only venue in our entire city serving Spanish Strawberry Cider on tap.

So come on out and try some of the great new food and drink items that we have for you today (I didn’t even mention these amazing new deep fried peanuts that we have!). We’re an all-ages retail gaming space in vibrant Capitol Hill with spacious tables, an open gaming library and a great menu for you and your friends. We have frequent public events, reservable tables and event space rental options to serve whatever food, drink or gaming needs you have. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Hello, I’m Aric Fehrenbacher. You may remember me from such blog posts as Aric’s Last Shift (I came back) and Why You Should Be Watching Professional Starcraft (WHY AREN’T YOU!) or you maybe more familiar with my work was “that guy who is always behind the bar who wears stripped button-ups gesticulating wildly at the beer cooler”.

I’m here today to share with you some exciting news about my personal favorite subject booze. We here at The Raygun Lounge have slowly been refining our menu to more accurately resemble an establishment that sells awesome, interesting beers, ciders, and now, meads. As much as I love Deschutes and Newcastle they are pretty basic as far as beer choices go and we live in the PNW home to hundreds of small independent breweries making amazing brew!

With the help of Orcas Distributing we now carry some of the most unique and tasty brews available to a small gaming establishment without access to draft beer. But enough jibber jabber allow me show you some of my new favorites which a few of our bar regulars have “agreed” to model for us.

Uncommon Brewing Bacon Brown

So we picked this assuming it would be a kitschy novelty beer and probably be terrible in reality. I mean Bacon+Beer? Turns out it’s just an amazingly solid bodied brown ale with a subtle hit of delicious gristle at the end. Also, yes it is actually brewed with a pound of uncured bacon.

Celt Thirsty Warrior

I cannot say enough good things about this cider, and I think drinking cider is a sin against Raugupatis (look it up). If you think you like Angry Orchard (you don’t) one sip of this will make you realize that you’ve been wasting your time and money all this time sending you into an existential crisis the likes of which only protagonists in Lovecraft stories have ever experienced. I may have gotten carried away there but trust me, it’s really good (Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn).

Lost Continent Double IPA

You think you know what a Northwest IPA should taste like? Not until you’ve laid your lips upon one of these mega-hoppy bad boys you presumptuous fool. A miracle of modern brewing that somehow treads the line between tasting like you’re chewing straight hops and being immensely drinkable. Schrodinger’s beer?

Moonlight Meads

Some people (losers) say that mead is for neckbeardy weirdos who can’t handle real alcohol. Well those people hate and , hence losers. Regardless of your feelings towards nordic subjects this mead is bomb as #$*&.  Every flavor is different and interesting capturing the sweet honey core that any good mead should have while experimenting with berries, ginger, vanilla, and currants in ways that morph the flavor into something truly unique.

Are you thirsty yet? Well then come on down to the Raygun for this weekend’s Magic Origins Prerelease or come in next week for our other amazing events which I guarantee will make you want to drink. That’s a little bartender humor for you. Stay classy Seattle.

A Preface

What’s cooler than going to the gym? Swordfighting. What’s cooler than reading up on what gear you need to most efficiently up your DPS in PvP? Being outside. What’s cooler than watching Game of Thrones? Well, not too much really (haha, Red Wedding). What is really cool (but also dorky, which is okay because everyone around is also doing it)? LARPing. Yes, it is totally nerdy, but it’s still cooler and more fun than not LARPing. Don’t knock it until you try it.

I mean, come on, this is badass.

Seattle hosts a fine LARP/Medieval Combat Society/Wargame/Sport via Dargarth where you are the hero. You get to crush baddies (your friends) and revel in the real-life feels of victory. What’s cooler than button mashing to slay goblins? Physically hitting grown adults that are acting like goblins with foam swords. I promise. Dargarth hosts a reasonable set of  developed by a former Darkonian, Count Andor.  You can even spot him in the incredible documentary for a second. Not only do fighters battle each other over fictional hexes of land for the good of their countries, but players engage in active and enriching role-play through their characters molding and forming the lore and realm around them. Plus, currently The Explorers Guild and The Holy Order of Mârdûr are engaged in the very first war of the realm and my character, Witchbane Cragon, is leading the first Dargarthian Inquisition!

Dargarth at this year’s All’s Faire.

I suppose no one can be expected to care about all this, but if interested you can refer to the schedule or check the . Even if hitting people with foam weapons isn’t your idea of a fun Sunday, watching other people hit people with foam weapons and engage in jolly cooperation is fun too, again I promise.

A Gay Olde Tyme

With the preface and plug out of the way, Dargarth is going to be having their Summer Fundraiser at Volunteer Park this Pride Sunday and the Raygun Lounge is excited as can be to host (and sponsor) the Afterparty! Expect to see proud LARPers in garb guzzling mead and overflowing with personality and reasonable eloquence (hic) spouting off about Malum (The Blood Goddess) knows what. Collectively, we will be raffling off garb, armor, and other various LARPing paraphernalia as well as some Raygun swag both at the Volunteer Park event and at the Afterparty at the Lounge.

Alongside of what other proud and gay olde tymes happen to be going on this weekend, we urge you to stop on by, drink some grog and play with us this weekend.

I’m thrilled to announce that as of 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, The Raygun Lounge has an official Washington state license to sell beer, wine, ale, cider and mead. Yes, mead. This means that tonight’s (Friday, 11/30) invite-only event (a reward for everyone who backed us at the “Soft Opening” level) will indeed feature the very first time we’ll be serving beer. First shipments are arriving tomorrow afternoon in time to be chilled before our guests’ arrival.

The flipside of this stellar news is that as of 5 p.m. tonight – just mere hours from now – The Raygun Lounge becomes an exclusive 21+ establishment. We’re in talks with our new neighbors, the Black Coffee Co-op, to provide alternative gaming event options for our fans and friends under the age of 21. We’ll release more details on that exciting collaboration once we sleep off tomorrow’s inevitable hangover.