Bright lights, big city for bar owner
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Maybe when Keith Robbins retires, he can brag to his fishing buddies that he owned a tavern in hip Belltown before the neighborhood was either hip or known as Belltown.
Or maybe he'll boast of opening an upscale cocktail bar at a time when most people knew the word "cosmopolitan" as just an adjective.
But more than likely, the humble Robbins, 43, won't even tell those friends about his primary occupation for the past 13 years - running some of the most popular neighborhood bars and clubs in the city.
Robbins owns Tini Bigs Lounge, a corner martini bar facing Denny Way at First Avenue in Lower Queen Anne. He opened his fifth venture next door in December, and named it Watertown after a legendary First-and-Bell tavern he ran for nearly three years in the late 1980s. One of his other clubs, the Romper Room, occupied the new Watertown spot until last September, when Robbins decided to revamp the place.
For the moment, Robbins rules the nightlife scene between Lower Queen Anne and Belltown. But this may not be as small a distinction as it sounds.
In the capricious world of nighttime entertainment, successes are measured in months, not years. Robbins has been going strong at his "little strip mall" of night spots for a decade.
"I really wanted somebody to shoot me if I got into this business," he said. "Now I think I'm the luckiest guy I know."
The cartoon beauty with the hushed lips pictured on the Tini Bigs sign at First and Denny looks out onto a neighborhood that has transformed physically and economically since Robbins opened the Romper Room next door in 1990.
"If we had an apartment around here that was $500 a month, that was high end," Robbins said, pointing in the direction of tony residential towers sprouting along First Avenue.
"Now there's a condominium that's selling, I think, for $2.2 million."
His projects have mostly kept up with, or even presaged, that change.
"His timing has always been exceptional in terms of being able to read the market," said Peter Levy, a close friend and co-owner of the Jitterbug, 5 Spot, Coastal Kitchen and Atlas Foods restaurants. "He was ahead of the curve on the whole martini craze."
But on more personal matters, Robbins is loath to change what works. Exhibit A: His car. The red '86 Volvo wagon is rolling, reliably, toward its 116,000th mile.
Given the chance to pick the topic, Robbins, a stout man usually dressed in khakis, a sweater and a boyish knit cap, veers not toward nightlife but fishing, his passion since childhood.
Robbins sits on the Sport Fish Advisory Board for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. And even at cocktail hour on a recent Friday evening, he couldn't resist pontificating on fishing policy.
"I do the restaurants and bars for a living," he said. "I do the fishing for life."
The Seattle native is widely known as an authority on Puget Sound salmon fishing, and from spring to fall, he works as a guide on area waters. He introduces himself as Capt. Keith Robbins on his answering machine.
"As far as Puget Sound goes, I doubt there's anyone who knows more than he does" about fishing, said Keith Willits, a manager at Ballard's Salmon Bay Tackle.
Robbins, though, prefers to keep his two worlds separate.
"When I'm out fishing, I never tell anybody I own a nightclub - it's a credibility thing," he said. "And very few people from the bar know I'm an avid fisherman."
Robbins says he has a deep concern for wildlife conservation. His policy as a fishing guide is to safely release all of his catch.
His other pastime is auctioneering, a skill he learned at a school in Florida in 1992.
He'll preside over the annual Magnum wine auction March 3 at 570 Roy Street, from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Proceeds will go to Gilda's Club Seattle, a support network for cancer patients, and First Place School for homeless children.
When pressed to talk about the bar business, Robbins admits his strategy is less than scientific. Take Tini Bigs, an elegant space with reddish lighting and mellow music.
"I was going to serve big martinis, and the place was going to be called Big Tinis (as in mar-tinis)," Robbins recalls between sips from a pink-stemmed martini glass.
Then it hit him: Reverse the words. "Tini Bigs" was born. The lounge is buzzing most nights with a late 20s to late 30s crowd.
The jury is still out on the new Watertown, with its iridescent purple booths, glowing paper lanterns and mirrored dance area. It's slowly building a following. But long gone are the Belltown restaurant workers and artists who gave the old Watertown its eclectic charm - Robbins used to commission Etch-A-Sketch drawings from them to display for sale to charity. Initially, people scratched their heads over Robbins' decision to move from the thick of things on First Avenue to the western end of Denny, still a sleepy part of town 10 years ago.
Friends have also ribbed him for his choice of business names.
"Who in the hell would name their business the Romper Room?" Levy joked. "I thought he was crazy."
After opening Romper Room, Robbins opened the brazenly named Hardened Artery restaurant next door, where he served veggie-phobic dishes such as the "BBQ pig sandwich" and "big-ass monster chili cheeseburger." The restaurant wasn't his greatest achievement, he says now.Two months after opening Watertown, Robbins wants to talk more about going fishing than holding another opening night.
"I don't plan to do anything like this ever again," he says, before catching himself. "After each one, I say that."