Take a look inside Jake’s on 4th ahead of its grand reopening this summer for Pride
A place for late night food, drinks, drag and dancing is coming back to downtown Olympia this summer. Andrea Pareigis, also known as “Dryte,” gave The Olympian a tour of Jake’s on 4th ahead of its reopening for Capital City Pride at the end of June.
The nightclub sat empty for five years after it closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pareigis is working to keep the original vibe of the space alive, but with a few additions.
One of the first things you’ll notice about Jake’s is the street-facing window that served as a hot dog booth for years. The hot dogs are coming back, along with Italian beef sandwiches. Pareigis said Italian beef will be the new focus of the business; one of her partner owners is from Chicago and has been perfecting his recipe.
“It’s really good, and Olympia does not have that,” she said. “And now everyone has seen ‘The Bear,’ so they know what it is, right?”
As soon as you go inside the club, you’ll see the bar and a seating area with pool tables and eventually pull tabs. Pareigis said the main bar will feature two speed wells to make simple drinks quickly. She said the idea is for the area to take on more of a happy hour vibe.
Past the happy hour section is a small set of stairs that empties onto the dance floor. Disco balls hang from the ceiling surrounded by mirrored walls lined with sleek booths. A “The Wizard of Oz” mural stretches between pillars.
Pareigis said the original painter plans to touch up the mural and paint a new one behind the stage. His idea is to incorporate “The Wizard of Oz” into downtown Olympia.
The full stage features a DJ booth and a more private area for performers to come and go. Pareigis said a storage closet next to the stage used to be the green room for performers.
“I’d rather use that as a closet and let the performers have some space,” she said. “They apparently used to shove, like, 19 queens back there, and I can’t imagine that was comfortable.”
Instead, performers will have access to an apartment-sized green room on the second floor, which has never been open to the public. The space is outfitted with a full kitchen and a bathroom with a bath tub.
Pareigis said the previous Jake’s had a house drag troupe, which isn’t something she wants to do. She said those queens weren’t really allowed to perform anywhere else, and no new performers ever came in.
“There is such a vibrant arts community in this area, and I want to be able to host and support a wide variety of artists,” she said.
Performers won’t be the only ones to have access to the upstairs space. Pariegis’ plan is to use all of the building’s almost 9,000 square feet.
What was originally storage space will be renovated into a second bar, potentially a speakeasy or some other type of specialty cocktail lounge. Another room will be used for private party rentals. There’s already bathrooms set up on the second floor that will be expanded. And there’s still space leftover for offices and storage.
People will have access to outdoor space at Jake’s as well. There’s a smoking patio in the back, and Pareigis said maybe one day the front entrance area will be turned into another patio.
Rebuilding a piece of the community
Pareigis said the response from the community has been overwhelming. She said they took over the original bar’s Facebook page, and just one post with the word “test” to make sure they had posting access received 200,000 views in four days.
“The community has been so supportive, and so many people have come and offered to help and volunteer and to clean,” she said.
She said in the first couple days after they received keys to the building, an “army” of people showed up asking if they could help scrub.
“It was really nice community action, getting out to, like, want to rebuild a piece of the community that’s been missing,” Pareigis said.
She said not only do people want to drink and dance, but having a neighborhood bar provides people with community and connection.
“It’s a place where you feel your emotions,” Pareigis said. “You go when you’re celebrating something, you go when you’re mourning something, and that’s why I love this industry. I think that people had that connection here, and they’ve lost it, and are really excited to try to bring that back.”
Pareigis said the pandemic really hit downtown Olympia, and it’s still feeling its effects. She said state workers started working from home, which had benefits for the workers, but few benefits for the local economy.
“They’re no longer here after work for a happy hour drink, you know? And that was a huge impact,” she said.
She said she sees Olympia in its renaissance right now, and a lot of new businesses are opening. But that’s come at the end of a couple of hard years where many small businesses didn’t survive, including Jake’s.
“And now I think it’s time — Olympia is ready for it to come back,” she said. “There’s more apartments being built. More people are living downtown, and there are people in Olympia that want a place to dance.”
The plan is to open the kitchen and begin serving food out of the street-facing window first, and then host a couple of soft openings before opening for Capital City Pride.
According to previous reporting from The Olympian, the original Jake’s on 4th owner said the space was opened in 2004 so that queer people could feel safe “to be themselves and not have to worry about what other people are thinking.”
Pareigis said she doesn’t want people to feel like she’s a “rainbow capitalist,” or profiting from the LGBTQ+ community as someone who isn’t personally gay. Because of this, she doesn’t want to call the new era of Jake’s a gay bar. Still, she wants to acknowledge the history of the space.
“I want all my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters and ‘theysers’ to have a space where they can build community and be safe,” she said.
This story was originally published May 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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