Dublin, Ireland:
the bleeding horse.
They serve nice guinness, too.
Timperley, Cheshire, UK:
The Slug and Lettuce
Pig and Porcupine
My two all-time favourites:
The Muscular Arms (long defunct boozer in Glasgow)
The Hairy Lemon (horrible Dublin pub but with a great name)
Yes Lion on the Beach is still there and going strong. I must say, however, that I am firmly in the “Beaches” camp, if you are familiar with that “great” debate.
There is also a great little place on King street that was called Betty Fords, until they received the cease and desist letter from the Betty Ford clinic and changed their name to Betty’s. The letter has since been blown up and is proudly displayed.
When I was at the University of Waterloo there was a bar called Poets, which I never went to but always assumed was a rather eclectic, dark artsy type dive with beat jazz playing in the background, until I found out that P.O.E.T.S stood for Piss On Everything Tomorrow’s Saturday and it was just an engineering department boose can.
Someone in a position to know these things has reminded me of a bar in Pattaya, on our Eastern Seaboard. It is what is called a “blowjob bar,” of which there are several in Bangkok and Pattaya, where you receive oral sex while sitting at the bar having your drink. This one is called the Pump Station.
Just how legal are those blowjob bars, Sam?
In the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, there’s a bar called “Madam’s Organ”. Neat place, too - good live music.
In College Station, Texas, there is a Library and a P.O.E.T.S. as well, in addition to the local favorite, The Dixie Chicken, which a friend of mine claims sells the second largest amount of alcohol per-square-foot in the US. The Chicken is complete with a wooden porch and a set of swinging doors.
In Sierra Vista, Arizona, we had the Sorry Gulch Saloon (Live Music on Tuesdays, Exotic Dancers on Thursdays, and a Thanksgiving Potluck dinner)
In Monterey, California, we’ve got The Mucky Duck (which I’m told is the favored hangout of many of our sergeants)
In Dallas, Texas, there is a nightclub called The Church
Here in Melbourne, we have:
- The Old Bar
- Bar Open
- Bar None
- A Bar Called Barry
- Kelvin
- Don’t Tell Tom
- Ace Morning
As with so many things in Thailand, including prostitution, they are totally illegal and completely legal, thanks to generous payments to the police. It’s not completely off the mark to say that police are among the wealthiest people in the kingdom. (Thaksin Shinawatra, the crappy prime minister who was overthrown in our military coup last year, was originally a cop and eventually the wealthiest man in Thailand, a dollar billionaire and on the boards of several international companies along with his good buddy George Bush Sr. Today, he’s in exile in England and owns some football team in Manchester. But I digress.)
Some of the BJ bars have been open literally for decades, such as Star of Light and Kangaroo Club. Star of Light was one of the original Patpong bars, present even back in the 1960s in the old Air America days. (Air America’s offices were in the Patpong area.) However, I’m not sure if it started life as a BJ bar. But it certainly was by the time I washed up on these shores way back when. I no longer indulge these days, being happily married, but I had a wild youth, and I have enough friends who DO indulge that I’m able to keep up on them. Always fun to throw a newbie inside one a BJ bar, too.
One BJ bar even has its own website with street directions, hours and prices: Lolitas. I guess Lolitas as a name for a BJ bar is another bizarre name. But fear not, as the girls are of a decidedly un-Lolita age. Lolitas has proved so successful that there are now branches in the towns of Pattaya and Hua Hin.
The San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino in Highland, CA, has a bar called the BAR BAR BAR. Not bizarre, but clever.
Butte, Montana has “Pisser’s Palace.”
Okay, I have another one: G Spot Bar, in the Nana Plaza bar area.
And here’s a little Christmas story about G Spot Bar. At one time, it had the best live lesbian sex show in Bangkok. A shower room set into one wall, with four lesbians doing themselves up. Well, one year in the mid-1990s – it was 1996, I think, maybe 1997 – the wife is out of the country on business, and my best buddy in Thailand, a fellow American, was in Bangkok from upcountry for a little R&R. It’s Christmas, and as usual during his trips down, we stop by G Spot about showtime. We sit there, but the show never appears. We ask the waitress, and she says that they can’t hold the show that night, because it’s Christmas. !!! What the …?!? She said the police had come around that day to all the bars saying they could not stage live sex shows on Christmas (they’re completely illegal anyway, but never mind). We’re flabbergasted. Because it’s Christmas??? But this is a Buddhist country, we helpfully pointed out, and Christmas is not even a holiday. She said the police told them farang (Western) tourists might be offended by live sex shows being staged on Christmas. We tried our best to explain that any farang in the Nana Plaza area let alone in G Spot Bar on Christmas was probably not going to be offended by live sex, but what could she do? She was only a waitress. So it seems live lesbian sex in Bangkok gets cancelled for Christmas. 
THE POLICE STOLE CHRISTMAS!! :eek:
From the lesbians, at that!
I think it would make a great Hallmark Christmas special on television.
“But Sting, how could you do it? How could you steal Christmas, Sting? 
”
The Cock and Bull did comedy nights (and on checking has now become a franchise.)
The Grumpy Mole was a description of it’s female customers, now closed.
We also have a Dog’s Bollix up in Auckland.
And not just the sex shows either. Lollipop Bar, also in Nana Plaza, at that time featured a giant aquarium stocked with nude girls. No sex, just cavorting around like sea monkeys. They had to remove the girls from the aquarium for that night. That could very well have been my worst Christmas.