In the 1950s, the Turf was located at Third Avenue and Union Street where businessmen often ate and held lunchtime meetings. Then the restaurant moved to the bottom floor of a brick building at Third and Pike, a half-block east of Pike Place Market where it was mostly frequented by homeless people, drunks and drug users, and was a pay station for people late on phone and credit card bills. The dive bar's last location was in a smaller space at First and Pike before the owner changed the name to Ludi's in 2011. As quoted from the local Seattle paper, The Stranger, "The Turf is one of the last vestiges of old, seedy downtown Seattle, and as such, it is a civic treasure of a dive."