05/27/2026
I’ve run out of full-time Hood Canale’ staff to feature, so you’re stuck hearing about me this week.
My restaurant career is as follows:
Summer of ‘78: flip burgers for McDonald’s
Summer of 2023: Open Hood Canale’ with Jolica and a lot of good help
I got to Union in 1990 when a grassroots lobby group called Beer Drinkers of America needed a National Field Director and said that person could live anywhere.
While fighting higher beer taxes and building designated driver programs for professional sports teams across the US, it allowed me to travel 200+ days a year and win a bet to see visit all 3,086 counties, boroughs and parishes in the USA.
After that 7-year run, every stitch of my soul said figure out a way to travel for a living so I began to write travel stories for newspapers, and magazines, and for 11 years, the Washington State Visitors Guide.
This led to creating our own magazine and with a local friend, we published the Discover America Visitors Guide in six languages, distributing 5.5 million copies in 23 countries.
We sold the magazine in 2012 and for the past 14 years I’ve worked for the company I sold it to as part of a team that welcomes the world to the US.
In 2021, after the painful 1-2 punch of the pandemic and Robin Hood closing, Jolica and I met with Pam and Gary Hanson with an idea to bring this beautiful town a gathering space where ALL are welcome, where art and music thrives, and where the pizza and pasta will be made by hand, slowly, to compliment craft beers and cocktails and a deliberately selected collection of wine that will soon number a 1000 bottles.
Come see us soon … June Bugs music with Kern’s Kitchen this Saturday, Rob Hill record release June 7th and then the official reopening begins with open mic on Thursday, June 11.
Soon after that we’ll add those craft cocktails and hand-made pasta dishes to the menu, and you can be sure, plenty of surprises will come out of the kitchen and on the stage all year long.
