Honey Bear Bakery

1/29/13 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink, Hand Book Journal

Back in the ‘90s, when I was still running on the 8-to-5 hamster wheel, the Honey Bear Bakery was located near Green Lake (just a block or so from Zoka Coffee where I now spend so much of my winter sketching time). On my days off (possibly days when I had called in for a mental health day, were I to do such a thing), I would hide away at the Honey Bear to write in my journal and indulge in an oversized, soft and sticky cinnamon roll dotted with sliced almonds. That’s the kind of place it was – warm, cozy and full of good smells and neighborhood “regulars.”

 

At some point it moved to the Ravenna neighborhood, but by then I had switched to a different hamster wheel, this time in the software industry that didn’t accommodate mental health days (though it certainly required more). So I didn’t patronize the Honey Bear in that location.

1/29/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Zig marker, Hand Book Journal

 

Eventually the Honey Bear moved to Lake Forest Park’s Third Place Commons, its current location. A couple weeks ago when Seattle Urban Sketchers met there for the 38^th Worldwide SketchCrawl, I had hoped to get around to sketching the bakery for old time’s sake, but I got too busy with dancers and other people there. So when the Urban Sketchers Flickr group’s weekly theme came around to “bakeries,” it was my opportunity to go back to the Commons, this time for breakfast at the Honey Bear.

 

Although the spacious retail complex isn’t the same as the old neighborhood spot I loved, the cinnamon roll was just as gooey. I had eaten almost half of it when I thought of the work of urban sketcher Matthew Midgley, whose blog and Flickr stream are full of food! Inspired by his mouth-watering sketches, I put my fork down long enough to sketch my cinnamon roll’s remains (and quickly devoured the still life after I finished the sketch).