for me the main runners bars in Seattle are:
Matchstick's
Blue Flame
Dante's Inferno
Big Rhino
Penumbra
What's yours ?

Biers

Stolen unabashedly from Terry Pratchett, but very cool nonetheless.

-Siege

How can you not love After, or the Tokyo Shoe?

Runner bars? Too conspicuous. We always went to someplace where people have no curiosity:

Bangkok Hut

The Hot Legs nightclub. But only if the Replicants are playing.

Michael (Should stop reading the PA thread )

Whenever we need a Decker, we head to the Pink Flamingo...

9 times out of 10 I GM groups through biz meetings at The Murdered Mime (that is.... until a group decided to ram a winnebago through its front windows.... *sigh*)

I just ran some players through a meet at "The Tack Room"-- a very old gentlemen's club (plush chairs and cigars type, not topless dancing type) in Renton. I like locations where the runners stick out like a sore thumb. Kind of levels the playing field for Seattle's corp types. Lets folks know who's hiring runners (though for what purpose is still unknown). After 1 drink, the maitre d' asked the runners, politely, to leave.

We typically meet and look for work at Reno's (Seattle Sourcebook, p. 35, © 1990). It's owned by a former combat biker who often supports Shadowrunners in their missions.

Well, for the group I played in for the longest time, it was definetely The Inferno... Then again, we owned a room in Hell, and Dante owed us a list of favors longer then his arm.

As for the rest of the groups I've played in/GMed, it's sort of a toss up. One group liked the Murdered Mime and the Italiano, while another liked a little place down-town that specialized in 'Imported Entertainments.'

The group I'm GMing right now has a little spot in some gang turf I invented for my game. The place is in Hells Kitchen, and it's called Eden. It's run by a guy named Meggiddo and his ghoul daughter. *makes Homer noises*

Grim Shear
"As sure as I am you could break me in half, I'd worry about the guy behind you..."

Well, I have a hole in the wall that actually spent some time as an open IC on the forums and in mIRC. Tiggy's Bar and Grill is an absolute craphole. It features dart boards with bullet holes, strong drinks (there's even Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. I have the recipe. Seriously.) and shady characters. Each of the bartenders is a retired runner, and most of the regulars are, although business is seldom done there. It's really an R&R kinda place. There's also the bit about the ghost of old man Tiggy, but that's something else entirely.

[drunk japanese]NEON NIPPLE!!![/drunk japanese]

(A strip club that very few runners ever bother with.)

A friend of mine created a truck stop on the Seattle/NAN border. It's called The Fifteen Troll Bar and Grill. It is essentially a bar designed from the ground up to fit trolls, from the table sized stools to the pitcher sized bottles of beer and the 2kilo cheese burgers. There's a section in the back for meta's though. The bartender is an old, scarred, on horned troll name Tigger. He doesn't own the place, and wont say who will, but he does run the place. The food is good, the drinks are cold, and privacy is pretty much guaranteed.

Dante's Inferno...

Though I'm crafting a Nightclub/Casino/Brothel based off of the Alien Games from Heroes Die. Run by an elven sorceress, mainly populated by metas. You're friendly house of sin.

We use mostly the Penumbra, together with a couple of places I created: the High Lights (an enormous gothic disotheque) and the Matrix (a small decker hangout).

Our starting groups usually meet at the Doublecrossed. What's this place, you ask? Well, description follows:
------------
DoubleCrossed
Medium Bar/Eliak Obanon, Owner/Bias Against Police
This bar is made for shadowrunners to gather and make a meeting with Mr. Johnson. Corps usually are careful with this place and send some messagerunner (low level employer) to deal with Shadowrunners. Mr. Johnson will not ever come to make deal with the Shadowrunners to DoubleCrossed, it’s just too dangerous. Overall feeling of the bar is that everone in the room is armed, also the bartender. There is a jukebox in the back of the room by the way and it doesn’t work. Or it does work, for the favor of owner who doesn’t repair it because runners seem to lose some money into it.
------------

This place was made by one of my past GMs. It was supposed to be one-shot, but it stuck, so we just use it whenever meeting new Johnsons. Or when characters want to go out drinking in some low-class place. Or something.

The Blue Orchid

This private lounge features a very down tempo atmosphere. The subtile blue lighting and comfortable seatings allow you to relax while enjoying the lounge's namesake drink, a blue slightly fizzy liquid whose presentation is sure to dazzle you. Let the down tempo beats of trip-hop flavouring guide your rythm as you move on the central dance floor. The music really is sublime. After all, what else would you expect from the two-dimensionnal (litterally) cartoony jamaican looking Free Spirit DJ that spins those tunes, without doubt the source of the Orchid's fame.

>> Here's the download on the what Joe Shadowrunner needs to know about this place: the owner is rumoured to be an ex-runner with lots of contacts, so mind yourself. Security is tight at all times, and if you ain't a beautiful person, don't even bother trying to find where this well hidden place is. The yakuza provide high-quality mind-benders in there. Mob disputes are however not tolerated by the establishment, a dubious feat that speaks about the owner's influence.

And if you're planning asomethng with that free spirit, think twice. Although he sometimes coems down from his booth to mingle, he doesn't talk or otherwise communicate. Word is he exists purely to experience music in all it's form. He's not interested by metahuman drama. And the Orchid's security always keeps a watchful eye on those who take an interest in him since a Mantid spirit tried to eat him a few years back.

This place is PACKED with fixers, so if you're looking for work, you'll find some. The simple fact you got in the door is usually enough to impress most people there. Many other colourful and shadowy characters come here, so always keep an eye out if you're here for business. <<

No more visits to the Murdered Mime. It was a mime it died, end the insanity.

I don't know. I've always had very bad fealings about the whole concept of runner bars. I mean, the whole point of shadowrunners is that they're meant to be annonymous and untrackable. Having places where they're all known to congregate and anyone with even half a brain and some etiquette skills could find, just screams bad idea to me. As I've said before, what's to stop the police or corps from staking the place out and just taking down the details of everyone that comes and goes? :/

Because the Corps know how useful Shadowrunners are to their business, and the Police know that the Corps pay for their contract, essentially. A respectable Shadowrunner bar/clubs would have good enough internal security to provide secluded conference rooms in the back where Johnsons can chat with runners. (Whitenoise generators practically built into the tables as well as the extra ones often brought in by Runners.)

For an initial meet, it's generally in the Johnson's hands. Dante's is always popular, what with Club Penumbra being out of vogue (what with the Arc right next door and all).

For anything else, I prefer to walk one block straight ahead, and look to my left (provided you know that part of town well enough to not walk into a hostile place) and go into whatever's there. Can't beat random joints for some quiet discussion with people who know how to talk around subjects.

Ugly's

A great little dive bar out in Renton run by a big ass mean troll named Ugly .
A former child prodigy pianist who could not cope well with his goblinasation . Ugly always had our back , and knew what we wanted to drink when we got there .

Saying something is a "runner bar" is like saying, it's a "cop bar."

This is not to say that only cops frequent the bar, but it's a preferred haunt.

Now, try IDing all the people going and coming who might be a cop -- whether plain clothes, uniform, detective, etc.

With that in mind, so many people come and go from a bar or nightclub it would be amazingly difficult to track all the people coming and going and connect those IDs with open cases. Especially if those cases suffer from multi-national boundries.

And I imagine that it's just not worth the effort -- the amount of time, energy and money spent to stake out a maybe runner bar and sort out the "real" runners from the wanna-bes would tedious at best.

-Siege

Had our own in Redmond which kept cropping up called the Terminator's Armpit (if anyone remembers Thrud the Barbarian his favorite tavern was called the Hobbits Armpit, so we stole it and 2050'd the sucker). We found there were branches all over the world in popular runner spots, always in Z-zones. Was very cool, till the damn suborbital landed on the one in Seattle...

I mixed the bar from a couple Nigel Findley adventures with a bar I visited a couple of times in Korea and came up with:

The Blue Door

Small bar archetype.
On Canyon, between Hwy 512 and 112 St. Erin Blokovich Owner/No Racial Bias LTG 4026 (31-5419).
A smoky club situated on the borderlands between Puyallup proper and Loveland. It’s famous for the drink from which the bar gets its name. A hangout for runners looking to relax, and gangers from the barrens looking for some neutral territory. The beer is real and not watered down, and the food is greasy but hot (and more soy than not). A lot of shadowy types meet here, but not much actual business is done, as there is no privacy.

>>>>>>[The Chinaman is the only guy who ever waits tables there, even though the bartenders seem to change every couple weeks. As long as you tip him good, he’ll pass along messages and keep his mouth shut. And if you’re real friendly, and really need a place to meet or just hide out, there are a couple of rooms in the basement that can be had.
There is no detector at the door, so expect everyone to be packing heavily. And never, ever have a Blue Door if you’ve got work to do in the next few hours]<<<<<<<<<
Blackowitz (01:17/05-03-56)

When my recurrent important NPCs are tailed, they head to the Blue Oyster ... mwuahahahahahahaha!

Ours is a little neighborhood bar (made up by our GM), called the John Wayne. It's not really a runner bar, more of your Joe-Average-Wants-A-Soybeer-After-Work kinda bar.

The owner, a human named, surprisingly, John Wayne, is your classic old neighborhood bartender. A very good contact for a card-carrying psychotic physical adept with an unhealthy obsession for guns, and the need to hide from the law very often.

Well, my GM torture victims like this one place I made up called Shadow's Edge...Especially our ninja adept...

Club Penumbra is still a regular haunt for the team i GM, with Dante`s being popular when they are not looking for work or running(in either sense). Also there`s a little place I created for them, down just off Tacoma, called the Glass Spider. Classy little joint with some expensive crystal and fibre optics to light the place.

We had the one hole in the wall called Smokey's. It was a small dive out in Renton. The Bartender was an old jazz musician, so the whole bar was filled with old jazz and blues memrobelia. Lotsa people owed Smokey a lot respect but our group never found out why. Had a couple of back rooms where we could meet, but over all it was a place to unwind and have a glass after a run.

Breaktime - A small diner in downtown Seattle and home of the "¥3.99 All-Day Breakfast" and the "Big Booster™" - a 1 litre take-away cup of coffee.

Café Voltaire - A small neo-techno café, filled with "free thinkers" and revolutionaries. (Spot the old computer game reference!)

Matchstick's - I need say no more.

The Wastelands - Nightclub featuring a lot of Industrial bands and a place to pogo.

Hughey's Bar & Grill - A favourite amongst the hicks and crude. On the border of Seattle/Auburn and the Salish Shidhe, this is a cowboy's hangout!

As a GM, I tend to move the meets around a lot. Take the PCs to the Grey Line if I want to impress them with high-bankrolled Johnsons. In general, my Johnsons like places that have secluded corner booths and usually a bit more ritzy than the PCs like. Put them off-balance enough the Johnson might get a little advantage in negotiations, but not so much they're immediately defensive and looking for a fight.

As a PC, I've always favored The Armageddon. It was something that a group I was playing in decided to start as a side venture/place to hang/meet location they owned. The team called themselves, unsurprisingly, the Four Horsemen. Since then, in my own games, I've created their second venture in Seattle, usually called Ragnarok, with a more Nordic theme.

I have several of Blackjack's things in my game, and the House of Cards has appeared a lot. Stupids and The Tavern of Butt have been used a couple of times each, too. But the most frequent is a dance club with an upstairs bar, mainly because the fixer they almost all have as a contact likes the place. I created the place for a run that never happened, and wound up just using it for meets. The name is some Japanese gibberish without any real meaning (the owner let the guys in the bar name it because he couldn't think of anything), though the closest thing to a translation is "wherever."

In the Redmond Barrens in place called TouristVille the bars we meet at are

Skunks, Crusher 495 and when we are hired by the Yak we go to the Joke.

Are there any more?

Funny, nobody mentioned my favorite bar in Seattle. Murphy's Law. Strip club with soy beer and pizza, surly regulars and a long line of former runner/owners named Murphy.

Gee, and here I thought the Flouncing Troll Grill & Bar would be a stick out. Did I mention the bartenders name is Chuck?

The "Insert Bar Here" chain of discount strip clubs was a favourite for a while. The one-armed stripper seemed to add just the right kind of atmosphere.

Jenna's Jiant Jugs - or Triple J - is a strip-club that one of my players insisted on frequenting. I should really make a write-up of that place. Think the Badabing - or however you spell it - from the Sopranos.

We go to Shorty's Cajun Bar and Grill. The owner's an old, retired dwarf with a bum leg. The little Amerindian has a GREAT looking Orc working the floor...she's got legs that just don't quit. He's old friends with our Heavy weapons guy (Mongoose), and a mentor for our Rigger/Electronics guy(Wiz). The food's great, the drinks are cold, and the Blues is hot! It's a great place to unwind after laying low. We make sure not to bring any heat home to old Wailer...he get's mad...just like the time Wiz caught a glimpse of the old man in a soap opera while channel surfing...

Call me old fashioned, but I got a soft spot in my heart for good ol Club Penumbra. In fact my character has been sliding some of his recent pay to the club to help for the rennovations mentioned in SOTA: 2063.

The thing about "runner" bars is that it's almost a myth. "Shadowrunners" are pop icons, the dangerous bad boys of modern society, they inspire mysterious dangerous strangers, it's all about the look, the "vibe". My point being, for every actual shadowrunner there are 400 posers. People who copy the "vibe", walk into an industrial/goth bar some time, look around. Lots of people there are dressed all funky, which they don't do during the day, they escape into the mood, the personae.

Runner bars are born of rumours and those rumours bring in the posers, the wannabees or just the regular folk who like the style and like to move with the trendy club scenes.

It's not like you walk into a "runner" bar and there are 40 runners sitting around talking about their last runs, ya know?

You walk into a runner bar because you heard the rumours, that there are SOME real runners that frequent location A or B.

Going around blowing up runner bars would mean you just killed 2 runners and 500 normals, not terribly effective and you've just made 500 groups of enemies, at least 1 of which is bound to have enough juice to find you.

Bottom line is, whatever bar I walk into, just became a runner bar =)

Kong