With Spud’s Pizza Parlor and Trophy Room, Spud Hansen left his mark on Tacoma
For Gerald “Spud” Hansen it wasn’t just about a love of sports and his community in Tacoma — though that was certainly a big part of it, according to his son.
To the gregarious local pizza magnate — who in the early 1960s opened what would eventually become the iconic Spud’s Pizza Parlor and Trophy Room — sponsoring a long list of Eastside Boys and Girls Club youth sports teams over the years was also good business.
Seeing “Spud’s” emblazoned on little league jerseys across the city was golden promotion. Having teams come in for pizza and soda after a game built a rock solid clientele.
As it turns out, it’s also one of the main reasons Spud’s remains beloved to this day, Mark Hansen believes.
“It was a way to generate traffic and good will,” Mark Hansen told The News Tribune. “He kind of created this community and would have a rotation of teams that would come in and celebrate victories. ... I think that whole thing spurred a trove of memories that people still share, and a tradition.”
On Sunday, Feb. 7 — just moments after the Super Bowl ended — Spud Hansen passed away at his home after a battle with kidney cancer. He was 86.
True to form, Mark said he believes his father — who fancied a small wager or two — waited to make sure his final bets were winners before cashing his chips and heading toward the sky.
In 1962, Hansen — who was raised in the small town of Chinook, Washington — opened his pizza restaurant at 7025 Pacific Ave. in Tacoma as part of the Pizza Pete’s franchise. By the early 1970s, Hansen had ditched the franchise affiliation, and the restaurant became Spud’s Pizza Parlor.
In 1983, Hansen added a cocktail lounge, The Trophy Room.
While Spud Hansen retired and got out of the pizza business two decades ago, you can still feel his presence in the old-school orange sign along Pacific Avenue, every bite of a combination pie and every Canadian bacon sandwich that’s ordered at the counter, according to current co-owner Lisa Almonte.
Particularly on the city’s Eastside and South End, Hansen built a legacy that has stood the test of time, Almonte said.
As news of his death has traveled, the memories and stories have poured in.
“Everybody’s got a story. There is not a day that goes by without somebody coming in and reminiscing about Spud,” Almonte offered Thursday afternoon from behind the bar.
With a group of longtime friends, Almonte purchased the business in 2001 with her husband — who passed away last year. The self-proclaimed “South Tacoma/Eastside girl” said that it’s been a deliberate decision to keep things much as they were back in the day, from the bakery where the pizza crust is made to the faded youth sports trophies and memorabilia that give the bar its soul.
“I came here as a child with my parents,” Almonte, 56, said of when Hansen operated the restaurant as part of the Pizza Pete’s franchise. “The partner group that purchased it, we were friends in junior high, and in high school, and this is a place that we hung out. When we first started driving, this was a destination. We’ve just always been here.”
For nearly 40 years, that was exactly the type of familiar, unassuming community vibe Spud Hansen created at the restaurant that still bears his name. Along with being a father of three, a die-hard Washington State Cougar and a charitable fixture in the community — the Boys and Girls Club presented him with a Lifetime Supporter Award when he retired — Hansen was a larger-than-life character.
“Spud’s fundraising and fun-loving nature often entwined,” the late TNT columnist Art Popham wrote shortly after Hansen’s 2001 retirement party. “At one charity event, he wrestled the female owner of another tavern in a vat of 200 gallons of chocolate pudding. ”
Rick Talbert — who grew up in the area and would go on to represent the neighborhood on the Tacoma City Council and Pierce County Council — isn’t quite old enough to have memories of Hansen’s colorful side. But he does recall how prevalent the restaurant’s name was growing up, and how finally being able to saddle up to the bar and order a beer once he turned 21 was something he planned long in advance.
“For people like me, who are in their 50s, it has always been there. It just seems like it’s always been part of the fabric of South Tacoma,” Talbert, 55, said. “So many people had some involvement during their youth with Spud’s, not necessarily as a restaurant, but as community sponsor and booster. By the time you became of age, you had a history with this place.”
According to Mark Hansen, the collective history of Spud’s will be his father’s lasting mark in Tacoma.
What he’s likely to remember most are the more personal moments, he said, like how his father put him to work at 14 busing tables and washing dishes and the work ethic it helped instill in him.
Everyone seems to have a story about Spud.
“He’s the kind of guy that would walk into a room or a bar or restaurant, and everybody would know him,“ Hansen said of his father.
“He just made people feel good, and knew how to do it well.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 5:05 AM.
