A wake was held Sunday afternoon at the Two Bells Tavern for its longtime owner Patricia Ryan, who’d died of lung cancer one week previous. To get to the memorial, one had to traverse the Fourth Avenue sidewalks past the triumphant participants in a breast cancer walkathon. Once inside the event, of course, the cigarettes flowed like pre-dam spawning salmon.

The happening itself was, as expected, a mixture of pathos, celebration, and reminiscence. The bar and its back-alley beer garden were full with Ryan’s family and friends, and with Two Bells employees and regulars past and present. Ryan’s widower Rolon Bert Garner was in relatively good spirits most of the time; he and several close friends and coworkers offered brief, touching remarks.

(‘Twas truly great to see so many old faces again. Let’s hope it can happen again under less unfortunate circumstances.)

Ryan’s legacy, of course, is the Bells, which has (thus far) survived under new owners in the midst of Belltown’s ongoing Monoculture takeover.

One of Ryan’s original ingredients for success, according to several of the speakers at her memorial, was that she continued to make the old regulars welcome after she’d bought the place in ’82. A lesson we hope will be heeded by the nearby Rendezvous’s purported incoming new operators.