‘She’s an icon’: Tacoma tavern owner retires after 45 years. And her chicken and jos?

Habits might have changed since Connie Peterson bought Hans’s Place Tavern in 1978, but much else hasn’t.

These days, the scent of cigarette smoke lingers only on the fingertips of barflies who lay a coaster on their pint glass while they step out back, to the parking lot, or through the front door, where cars whoosh by car shops along South Tacoma Way.

Overhead, a curved yellow arrow on a vintage sign still points to “the tav,” established in the 1940s, where cold beer and wine — the latter if the bartender can find it — have provided respite to generations of Tacomans. Resting a weary bottom on black vinyl and chrome stools, they swapped secrets with strangers-turned-friends, their nails meanwhile sinking into the crisped skins of whole, pressure-fried wings and fresh-cut chunks — the preferred, bite-sized style of jos within these walls.

Truthfully, said longtime regular Steve Tharp at Peterson’s surprise retirement party last Friday, secrets are a stretch: “Connie knew every secret.”

“You mean the party that I’m not supposed to know about?” she said wryly when I called her two days prior.

Soon to turn 70, Peterson remained a sharp fixture of her establishment until the waning hours of Oct. 27. On Oct. 28, she would return to hand over the keys and help the new caretakers, Ge Gao and Chon Woo Lee of Graham, on their first day.

Over her 45 years as the proprietor of Hans’s, Miss Connie, as loyalists like John Trottier knew her, became “an icon.” She is of the rare bartender breed that can keep up with anything, everything, all at once.

“Her banter, I’ll miss that,” he said.

Miss Connie commanded respect — you did not want her stern look to reach your gaze, combined with the words, “Finish your beer and go” — yet she exuded warmth.

Even on her last night, she was a far cry from basking in the bright light of retirement, which she says she’ll spend sleeping in, getting to all the things she would put off until tomorrow and, most importantly, sailing.

In conversation, leaning on the bar — tonight bereft of pull tabs and lotto tickets, on which a customer won $2 million in 2017 — her side-eye slowly turned to gather intel on why her staff was stressing near the Broaster.

Her fans, well over 100 of them, had packed the place by 5:30 p.m., weaving in and out until near-closing time. (These days, it’s midnight, give or take. “When it dies, we close,” she said.) By 7:30, there was a 45-minute wait for chicken. Only so many half-birds, or the popular whole wings and potato chunks — all breaded in perhaps the bar’s only well-kept secret — can fit inside this pressure-cooker at a time. The machine beeps when it’s locked in that juiciness, and the nearest available bartender shuffles over to unwind the hatch and retrieve the goods, allowing them to drain for a couple minutes (is that the secret?) before tossing into a plastic basket lined with white paper.

“I just kind of tweaked the recipe a little bit,” said Peterson, who was also known for pressure-frying fresh Puget Sound oysters she would pick up herself from a wholesaler in Lacey. “I added to the recipes, made it my own. Being cooked under pressure — that makes it so good.”

The fate of the chicken was top of mind for just about everybody in the bar that night, followed neck-and-neck with best wishes for Connie and a palpable unease as to whether the new owners would foster the same environment so many had learned to love, and maybe need.

“They’re excited for me,” Peterson said of her customers, who for weeks, as news spread of the sale, have been offering praise and appreciation. “‘We’re gonna miss you, thanks for the years.’ We both kind of get teary, you know?”

Still, she admitted, “They’re worried about the chicken.”

In addition to doing what she can for Lee and Gao, who did not immediately respond to requests to discuss their plans, to ensure a smooth transition, she implored them: “Don’t mess with the chicken!”

HANS’S PLACE A SOUTH TACOMA STAPLE

Hjalmar Hanson opened his tavern more than 75 years ago. Peterson believes it was Hanson and his brother, hence the name, in 1940. The concrete structure, doorways flanked by glass blocks — a prominent architectural detail of the era, was joined next door by a Kirby Vacuum store around 1949, according to county property records for 6401-6407 South Tacoma Way. It’s still a vacuum store but now called Vacuums Etc.

Betty and Bud Busch ran Hans’s in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Peterson, who had been working as a dental assistant at Madigan Army Medical Center, bought the bar in 1978 with her then-husband and their friend.

“I was 23, I had braces on my teeth and didn’t how to pour a beer!” Within a few years, the partner had dropped out. “One day I realized it was easier to have the bar and not the husband,” she joked. “I was super green, and my employees just patted me on the head and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll teach you how.’ I just kind of learned from the seat of my pants.”

She always kept the name, knowing that if she changed it, “Everybody would say, ‘Oh yeah, it used to be Hans’s,” pronouncing it, as others have, with the A of “hands.”

In the ‘90s, she arranged to have first right of refusal to buy the building, and by 1998, the whole lot was Connie’s place.

“I worked hard,” said the born-and-raised Tacoman last week. “I had lots of fun, though, with lots of really good people. It’s a real gem, and it’s the customers that make it that way because there’s not a lot of places that you can come in a stranger and leave as a friend.”

At her farewell party Friday night, customers said they have been stopping by for 19 years, 30, 35 or more.

“It goes back a looooong time,” said Neil Pate, retired from decades as a truck driver. He was holding a white hardhat marked with signatures and dates. It belonged to his late friend and hunting buddy, Marvin, and had been hanging here since his death. Pate was taking it home.

“This was our office,” he said.

Hans’s is a workingman’s tavern, he told me, gesturing around the room. Need a new fence? Concrete poured for a driveway? A painter? Ask around.

I turn to Tharp for corroboration. He is sitting at a round table with friends made here, among them Terry Tobacco and Ronald Sacks, who introduce themselves so confidently but then everyone at the table laughs.

“That’s your real name?” I asked. Sacks, just-retired from a quarter-century as a security guard at nearby Mason Middle School, showed me his driver’s license.

“Yeah, everyone here can fix something,” confirmed Tharp. “This is the official unemployed union hall.”

Behind him at a high-top table, a man in a bright-orange hoodie jumped in: “That is so true.”

‘GONE SAILING’

Friday was also a bit of a reunion for Ellie Rozeboom, who could be found behind the bar from around 1994 to 2012. Seated in the back-corner booth with her neighbor Desiree Hess, she is going after a basket of chicken, wasting no meat on those bones. Was it as good as she remembered?

“Oh, it’s delicious! Same as the day I started.”

She recounted her bartending gigs before landing at Hans’s. When I asked what made this one worthy of 18 years, she quickly replied, “The tips.” Laughing, she continued, “It was the people. You’d get sick of it sometimes, but … it was like a living Cheers.”

Peterson comes by with a Sharpie and a daggerboard that reads “GONE SAILING” in hand-painted black letters, now covered in signatures and sign-offs. Whenever she did sneak in a vacation, her staff would hang the keel near the register for easy explanation of her whereabouts.

By 10, the crowd thinning and some wings in-waiting, I pulled up a stool next to Perry Weilenman, who had frequented the bar with his late brother. A pack of Marlboros and an iPhone at his spot, he was turning a wooden Hans’s token between his thumb and forefinger. We agreed the handwriting on it allowed $10 off.

“It keeps people coming back,” he said — but not if you’re a jerk.

“I think the secret is that you treat everybody like a friend, and that you accept everybody — as long as they play by your rules,” said Peterson. “We have a code of behavior, and you’re welcome here. We don’t put up with fights, we don’t put up with arguments. You respect other people. You sit down and say, ‘Hi,’ to someone you don’t know.”

Another in the long string of goodbye hugs motioned to the daggerboard, which Peterson had put away but then brought back out.

“I put my number on there in case you want to contact me,” he said. “Thanks for the years!”

Connie smiled.

“No — thank you for the years.”

HANS’S PLACE TAVERN

▪ 6405 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253-474-6503, hanssplacetavern.com

▪ Details: 1940s-era tavern under new ownership after 45 years

▪ What to order: pressure-fried chicken (drummies, wings, half-chicken and jos, $9.50-$16), cold beer, conversation

This story was originally published November 1, 2023 at 10:57 AM.