And then there’s The Veritable Quandary or simply The VQ in SW Portland. It was one of my favorite watering holes years ago.
And east of the city in the town of Boring,Oregon (no I’m not making it up!!) was the infamous Boring Tavern!
I’ve posted this before, but one of the coolest names for a bar I’ve ever known of is Mabel’s Chainsaw Repair & Beauty Parlor, in Birmingham, Alabama.
It’s no longer in existence, but was a hoot while it lasted.
Sydney
The Cat and Fiddle
Billy The Pig’s
Brisbane
The Dead Rat Hotel
Thailand
The Dog’s Bollocks
There used to be a place called The Ruptured Duck in Poulsbo, WA. (Dunno if it’s still there.) I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, until later I found out it’s a reference to WWII B-52 bomber crew insignia or something like that.
Yeah, I happen to like that one too.
The Monkey Chews is most certainly still around, and a finer pub you will not find in London. I’ve spent many of the best nights of my life in that pub, chatting with wonderful friends over a pint or two (or eight). The place always has a great atmosphere, cool lighting and funky music. They do great food too. It’s pretty busy on a Friday night, absolutely pumping on a Saturday night, and fairly chilled the rest of the time. I highly recommend heading down there for a quiet pint on a Sunday night. It’s on Queen’s Crescent, off Prince Charles Road. (That’s right innit, Crusoe?) Have a cocktail for me.
The Enterprise is great!! It’s like having a beer in someone’s loungeroom. Love the bookshelves and the mantlepiece. I like the exterior too - it’s certainly hard to miss.
The Purple Turtle is pretty groovy, but I couldn’t hang out there too often. A little too much fluorescent purple for me.
Try heading up Havestock Hill to the Sir Richard Steele’s. It’s decorated with fairy lights, antique sewing machines, bizarre knick-knacks, old movie posters, and a million other things that have no place in a pub. It’s great.
Crusoe – I assume Positively Fourth Street is named after the Dylan song. Any Dylan connection, I wonder?
Here in Sydney, I find the oddest pub name is The Bank. Odd for it’s mundaneness, at least. “I’m going to the Bank” never sounds quite as exciting as it should.
Hunt’s Mill and Mining Co in Burlingtop, VT. A high class joint featuring good bands.
The Bucket o’ Blood, a biker hangout since closed down.
Hank’s End of the Road, same as above, alas.
The Burley House. This one was on E. Main St. in Norfolk, VA. E. Main was wide open in the early '60s and wall to wall Navy. The usual suspects shut 'er down.
I’ve seen some more modern ones, but can’t think of them offhand.
“The Ruptured Duck” was an insignia given to servicemen at the end of WWII who were about to be mustered out. It allowed them to wear their uniforms for 30 days after discharge, and told MPs of their status. It consisted of an eagle straddling the ring that surrounded it.
Anyway, my nomination is The Horse You Came In On down in Fells Point, Baltimore. Very old pub, and also the title of a Martha Grimes’ mystery novel.
A few months back I got a little turned around on one of the little back roads around here and I passed a bar with the coolest name. The sign reads (in huge letters),“Third Base.” Printed under the name, in much smaller letters, are the words “because it’s your last stop before home.”
There is a bar near here called The Office. My mother went there loking for office supplies.
Back whan my father went to college, he went to a bar called Out of the Universe.
In Vallejo, California there were two I liked:
My Office (same idea as “The Office”) - Generic dive.
The Horse and Cow (later a sister bar of the same name opened in San Diego) - Submariner bar, later turned Biker bar. A veritable museum of submarine artifacts, home to “The Dance Of The Flaming Asshole”, and birthplace of the drink “Nuclear Waste”. Dunno what’s in “Nuclear Waste”, but it’s green, and glows under blacklight. It’ll kick your butt, too.
Haven’t been out in the while so the only one I can think of is The Hairy Canary, which isn’t really even that good.
Heretic Harry’s Hades up in Park City Utah…they had a great ‘get the guy plastered’ game. They had 7 drinks of serious alcohol in flavors called the ‘7 deadly sins’. Some were sweet (lust), some were cruel tasting (sloth being the worst). Any person that could belly up to the bar and toss em back got a “I did all 7 sins, been to Hades, and got a stupid tshirt” tshirt.
I hear of one in a college town called “The Library”
Sex Cauldron.
If clubs count, then in South Beach there is a Bed (“I’m going to Bed”, “Want to go to Bed?”) and it is full of, you guessed it, beds that you lounge on.
$3 Dewey’s in Portland, ME. All the pints are $3. Don’t know who Dewey is, but he put a hell of a lot of taps in there.
The Church Brew Works is a brewpub in Lawrenceville, PA converted from a deconsecrated (put under an act of suppression) Catholic Church. Still pisses some people off.
** Don’s Marching Band Society **
Also in Columbia, SC. Technically it is (was?) a “private club”–a ruse to avoid the mandatory 2 am closing law.
In Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
It’s A Bar
That’s it. Most other names are pretty boring, really. Usually family names and such. Of which 40% are Irish family names. 
The Ugly Broad. Cleveland, Ohio
The Betty Fjord Clinic in Stockholm, Sweden.
Ryans 
OK OK what about “Ye Old grinding Young”
or “Turks Head”
Two gay bars called “The Back Door” & “Out on the Liffey”
I’ve been known to drink at the Jude the Obscure in Oxford… but you wouldn’t know that one.
There’s The One-Eyed Rat in Ripon - don’t know what it’s like, but the name stuck in my mind.