What's your favorite place to pour one back?

In My Humble Opinion
41

matt’s bar, prescott arizona. go there and you will know why. (the whole downtown of prescott is cool for drinkin’)

heres another down south:

the bacamarte
rua general osorio, campinas, sao paulo, brazil
i spent about 10 months in brazil and about 5 of em in this bar. huge 660 ml bottles of beer for about .30 cents US, decent munchies, brazilian hotties who love gringos who throw cash around. got to watch a riot from the comfort of my table by the window in the election riots of 1984. cool little place.

42

two places–

  1. Aidan’s in Bristol, RI

  2. My wife’s navel

43

Name: Patrick’s Restaurant.
Address: 550 Cranbrook Road, in the Cranbrook Shopping Center.
Location: Cockeysville, Maryland 21030.
Prices: Domestic beer: $2.00 - $3.00. Imported beer: $4.00 and up. Limited selection of imports. Don’t know about mixed drinks.
Why it’s a great place to drink: Lots of old people. Cool, nice old people. Good afternoon / early evening place to hang out. Not a meat market. A dame can sit alone at the bar and not get annoyed by mashers. Weekends are livelier, with a younger crowd mixed with the older regulars, but still pretty palatable. The food is terrific: basic pub food, but tasty. Outstanding onion rings, excellent wings, juicy huge burgers, and good fresh seafood.
Good stories: No really good stories, but it’s honestly a jewel of a place if you want to have interesting low-key conversations with your date (or the sweet old dude in the pink Lacoste shirt sitting beside you at the bar), and / or drink your hooch alone and in peace.
Website: I did a Google search and couldn’t find one, but Patrick’s is on two different online Baltimore Pub Lists.
Submitted by: Creaky.

44

I drink at the Utopia in downtown Colorado Springs because there aren’t any old man bars around here and I don’t mind hanging around a bunch of potsmoking twentysomething hippy wannabes dancing to terrible local music. I usually like sitting in the frontmost booth in the corner on the right side as you walk into the place. I really can’t stand the other places because they’re too loud and have really irritating clientele. It’s on Bijou between Nevada and Tejon. They don’t have a web site. I don’t think you could consider a place to be a good bar/hangout if there was a web site.

45

Thanks again everyone…I’ve got most of them up now on our site at beerseye.com/beer/main.htm

46

Oooh, I love Aidan’s! Great clam cakes and chowda!

Sorry, I don’t know your wife’s navel.

47

so we can put it up on our site?

Also, we only have 21 states + Washington DC with entries…the other 29 states must have some good places to drink… :slight_smile:

Our list so far…

48

only a couple dozen more states to break into. Anyone?

49

I guess I missed this one the first time around. Here are my favorites. Has Florida been done? Actually, what with Connecticut being such a small and crappy state, it might have been left out despite being close to your home locale. My CT location might not fully count, though.
Name: Foss Hill
Address: Overlooking the field at Wesleyan University
Location: Middletown, CT, USA
Prices: A buck a beer for a can of something cheap, usually 3 for $2
Why it’s a great place to drink: On the warm, sunny days in spring and early summer, usually starting around this time of year, droves of students come out to sit and hang out on the Hill. Throw frisbees, play guitars, do other assorted hippy and loafing-style activities. Enterprising students (or local, erm, entrepreneurs) would make runs down to the package store and buy cases of Beast, Busch, PBR or Natty Ice and pack 'em into coolers on wheels and hawk 'em on the Hill. Good times.
Good stories: Nothing specific.
Website: Not really. Feel free to check out www.wesleyan.edu but it’s boring as heck.
Submitted by: White Lightning.

Name: Some dive in outlying Orlando
Address: Somewhere outside of Orlando, FL on Orange Blossom Trail
Location: Orlando, FL, USA
Prices: $1 for a frosted mug of Bud on tap
Why it’s a great place to drink: Well, there’s the dollar mugs. There’s the gigantic industrial-size freezer behind the bar which is full of nothing but frosted mugs. There’s the 25-cent pool table. There’s the industrial-size bags of spicy pork rinds they have, also for a buck. There’s the atmosphere that you can only get in a really sleazy dive. There’s the strip joints with $5 covers less than a block away.
Good stories: I’ve only been there once, but it was a great experience. The 300 pound, really drunk woman who said she was a professional pudding wrestler who wanted my opinion on whether she should give coleslaw wrestling a shot, with the 100 pound really drunk man who was billed as her manager. Also, the $1 mugs of beer.
Website: I’d be shocked.
Submitted by: White Lightning.

Name: Epcott Center
Address: In the Disney World complex
Location: Orlando, FL, USA
Prices: Pretty steep. $5-$6 for a cup, but (this is the secret) $13 for a half-yard in England land, $6 for refills. Assorted (inflated) prices on the various froo-froo and hard drinks you can obtain.
Why it’s a great place to drink: Every different nationality-style park within the park has its own beer. Dos Equis in Mexico land, Beck’s in Germany land, Sapporo and Ichiban in Japan land, Bass in England land, etc. You can walk around and drink in public at a theme park. When you’re really plastered, stuff that’s aimed at amusing the 5-to-12 crowd gets a lot more appealing. The half-yard in the pub in England land is the biggest container I’ve ever been served beer in, and it’s the price of a pint to get it refilled.
Good stories: Again, been there only once. I got magnificently pissed. At a theme park. I had so much more fun there than I had anticipated.
Website: Probably, but why bother?
Submitted by: White Lightning.

Name: Club Mallard
Address: San Pablo Avenue in Albany, one block north of BevMo.
Location: Albany, CA, USA
Prices: Typical bar prices. $3.50-$4.50 for a pint, $4-$6 for a mixed drink.
Why it’s a great place to drink: Decent assortment of beers, creative construction of daily specials on the mixed-drink end of things, good pool tables at cheap prices, average-to-decent jukebox, hot hot hot hot bartenders.
Good stories: Nothing specific. The female bartenders there are incredibly, consistently attractive. The clientele typically isn’t bad on that front either.
Website: Well, whaddayaknow: http://www.clubmallard.com/.
Submitted by: White Lightning.

Name: Albany Bowl
Address: San Pablo Avenue in Albany, across the street from El Cerrito Plaza.
Location: Albany, CA, USA
Prices: Around $3 for a bottle or a pint, $12 a pitcher (Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada, and Bud), probably bar prices for mixed drinks although I’d never order one.
Why it’s a great place to drink: Drink while you bowl. Drink while you throw darts. Drink while you play pool. Drink while you play arcade games. Need I say more?
Good stories: Many, but few probably bear telling. The bartenders/waitresses are pretty lax in the carding department, so that was nice when I was underage, and we’ve gotten free pitchers there more than once. They bring the pitchers and cups right out to you while you’re bowling.
Website: This is the best I could do: http://www.bowling2u.com/centers/find_detail.asp?ID=240.
Submitted by: White Lightning.

50

Name: The Old Post

Address: 103 W. Spruce

Location: Missoula, MT, USA

Prices: Around $3 US for good microbrews, most local. As far as I know, they don’t do macrobrews on tap. They do have Guinness, though.

Why it’s a great place to drink: Small without being claustrophobic, only 2 TVs, nice atmosphere, brick walls (it’s a former VFW post, hence the name), live jazz (tiny dance floor, though), friendly staff…just a nice to place to have a pint or three. Oh, plus a great menu (if small) with a smattering of Latin American/Caribbean food in addition to the usual pub food.

Good stories: Nothing springs to mind, but I did sit next to a woman in a hot pink arm cast last Friday who broke it snowmobiling when a pickup truck pulled out in front of her as she was crossing a road…:eek:

Website: Apparently not.

Submitted by: LindyHopper

51

Opening up two states and expandinng our lists in two more! Nicely done! Those places all sound pretty sweet. One of these days when I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams, I’m gonna go and visit all these places on our list. What a great trip that would be.

Thanks again!

52

Hey, LindyHopper. Old Post is niiizzzze. Your name sounds familiar and I’m trying to figure out if it’s because I’m from Missoula.

In Sapporo, if I can choose only one spot, I’d have to say

Susukino Jibiru

A brewer who worked with Jurgen at Bayern Brewery started traveling around the world helping set up breweeries, and he happened to pick this one a few years back. They make all their beer in the basement there, plus Sapporo beer for the folks who don’t like good beer. Old photos of the city hang on the walls giving it a kinda nostalgic feel, 60s, but very clean. 600 yen (about $5 now?) for a glass, 2000 for a pitcher. The beers are very similar to Bayern beers, so I was a happy boy when I found that place.

125 years ago, when an American made beer in Sapporo for the first time in Japan, he had to pay people to drink it. Now…

53

Dude, that’s brilliant.

TMaxwell, you are one fast-updatin’ webmaster. You even got that cool Mallard logo for the Club Mallard page. You rock. Your site rocks. It always did rock, but it rocks even more now.

Ah, man, only now do I realize how much more publicity this needs to be getting. Get the word out!

54

First of all: Whoever told you to go to Platinum Plus (it’s not called the Platinum Club) in Memphis is nuts. Sure, they’ve got good-looking women, but you can find good-looking strippers in any city in the country. To get drunk in a real world-class dive, you must go to…

Name: The P&H Cafe

Address: 1532 Madison Ave.

Location: Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Prices: Beers run $2 to $3.75; they only serve beer, no liquor

Why it’s a great place to drink: A cozy, Midtown Memphis bar, where the service is friendly and the servers always have something interesting to talk about. Go there once and you’re a regular. The walls are covered with snapshots of regulars from the past 40 years, plus pictures of celebrities who have been there, plus pictures of musical greats, from Hank Sr. to Carl Perkins to of course Elvis. They have the second-best jukebox in all of Memphis, which is saying something in a music-crazy town like this one.

Good stories: A lot of the film The Poor & Hungry was shot there; the film was nominated for Best Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival, and won Best Digital Feature; the trophy is in a glass case on the wall. (The film that won Best Feature cost something like 1,000 times the budget of this one.)

Website: http://www.pandhcafe.com

Submitted by: A regular. Trust me.

55

your submissions are now up.!

And thanks for the plug White Lightning. I’m glad you like the site…we hope to have a lot more new stuff put up there soon!

56

Name: Hap’s Beer Parlor

Address: 1505 Railroad Avenue

Location: Helena, Montana, USA

Prices: Domestic Beer - $2, microbrew - $2.50, shot $2-2.50, mixed drink $2.50

Why it’s a great place to drink:
It’s cheap, I use to live 100 feet away, it’s friendly, the usual sport on TV is golf, it’s about 90% regulars except on Friday night, you can throw your peanuts on the floor, you can throw your cigarette butts on the floor, they remember your drinks, they hire good looking 30-ish women as bartenders, my dog can come in when the owners aren’t working, it has two golf tournaments per year, you can find a next-day golf game any day of the week, annual chili cookoff, free food on Super Bowl Sunday, St. Paddy’s Day, after the Bastille Day tournament, it’s blue collar but filled with smart blue collar and white collar people, it’s 67 years old and in those years they have painted the ceiling once and buy one new barstool per year, there’s a horseshoe pit out back, with a Tigger teddy bear on a chair.

Good stories:

  1. This is a bar that gives “woodies” (if someone buys you a drink and you are not ready, you get a wooden nickle good for a drink). The female bartenders throughly enjoy asking, “Whistlepig, can I give you a woody?” After the Bastille Day golf tournament EVERYONE brings in the woodies they have collected in the last year. The whole bar drinks for free all afternoon and night. Much fun is had watching the owner try not to steam over the fact that for one day, he’s giving EVERY drink away for “free”.

  2. About 10 years ago a drunk that had been thrown out fired a .357 through the front window. One fellow was hit in the arm by a ricochet. He was ably attended to by patrons, one of whom suggested he lay down on the floor until the ambulance came. His
    reply?

“F You, I’d sooner die than lay down on this floor!”

Website: Are you kidding?

Submitted by: Doug, the guy who comes in and does the crossword.

57

Name: Lynagh’s

Address: University Plaza, Woodland and Euclid Ave. (across the street from the Dr. J compound)

Location: Lexington, KY, USA

Prices: A pint of Guinness is $3.75; a pint of Bud (if you must) is $2.50. Plenty of quality brews in between.

Why it’s a great place to drink: There are two halves to Lynagh’s, formerly separated by an unaffiliated cajun restaurant–the club and the pub. The pub draws a fairly diverse late-20s crowd. It’s dark, it’s sleazy, it doesn’t have big freaking television screens everywhere (there are a few small, unobtrusive ones). Several dozen bicycles of varying vintages hang from the ceiling.

The club is far and away the best spot for live music in Lexington, sporting local bands, regional acts, and plenty of moderately big-name bluegrass and alt.country. It’s a dive, but it’s my dive.

Stories: Living across the street from these places has been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I can always stumble home. Also, if I’m feeling particularly cheap, I can go to the show at the club and run across the street now and again to get beer from my own fridge. On the other hand, I’ll often be minding my own around the 1:00 closing time when I’ll get a knock on the door from some of my classmates, who need a ride or a couch. I’m always more than generous–God knows I’ve had my ass hauled around plenty, by many of the same people–but sometimes I’m not in the mood to put up with drunks, and that seems to be when they show up.

Web Site: http://www.lynaghs.com/

Name: The Green Parrot

Address: 601 Whitehead St. (one block from Duval)

Location: Key West, FL

Prices: The best bargain in Key West–a 12 oz. Newcastle draft for $2.50.

Why it’s a great place to drink: This is my favorite bar in the universe. This is the sort of bar that you can bring your dog into, and the bartender will pour it a bowl of water as he gets your beer. The prices make the gouging a block away on Duval seem that much more criminal–it’s amazing that a place like this can survive so close to the tourist glitz. (Then again, a lot of people go to Key West to find places just like the Green Parrot. I know I did.)

Stories: I first went to Cayo Hueso during my first year of med school. I had my guitar with me, and I joked all week that I was just going to give up med school and get a job playing Jimmy Buffet songs in one of the bars on Duval. One night at the Parrot, I was telling this to a local stranger, who revealed that he had been on Spring Break from his second year of law school when he decided to do exactly that. I saw him the next night playing a few blocks away.

Web Site: http://www.greenparrot.com

Dr. J

58

Some great stories from the both of you. I’ve put up your writeups on our site. Thanks again!

59

I’m a bump this since I just googled myself and found out I’m on a website. Not a bad website, either.

I figure there’s got to be more dopers out there who drink.

I don’t see any Wisconsin or UK on there, so I’ll start with that.

Name: Wolski’s

Address: 1836 N. Polaski St. Can’t find it unless you know where you’re going.

Location: Milwaukee, WI

Prices: Cheap, but what do I know? I drink in Chicago.

Why it’s a great place to drink: This is one of the few places in Milwaukee that you can hang out without seeing nothing but frat boys. Not that I have anything against frat boys, but sometimes you gotta drink with real people, y’know? Plus, this place is all about the beer. They have beer and then they have beer and then there’s beer. You can get a shot of cheap vodka or whiskey if you need a beer chaser, but that’s about it. If you’re the busy type, you can play darts. The preferred method is to park your ass and drink, though.

Stories: Go early, stay late, get an “I CLOSED WOLSKI’S” bumpersticker. What could be better than that?
Name: Archery Tavern

Address: 4 Bathurst Street (Lancaster Gate tube stop, which is on the Central London line)

Location: London, England, United Kingdom

Prices: Honestly, don’t ask me. They don’t even use real money over there. :wink:

Why it’s a great place to drink: I think it’s a perfect British pub. Lots of great beer of all kinds of varieties. Not a Bud in sight. Normal people, not touristy at all. Normal Brit hours and decent food. You pretty much HAVE to get drunk in this bar.

Stories: I stumbled on this place on one of my many London trips. Out of all the pubs I’ve been to, this is the only one I’ve returned to time after time after time. I walked in at 100p for some lunch and was kicked out at closing (1100p). This pattern has repeated itself over the years. The bartenders are super-friendly and will advise you on the unfamiliar beer and will knock back a pint or three with you at any time.

60

Name: Der Rathskeller

Address: Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St
Location: Madison, WI

Prices: $3ish and up for beer. Only beer. All on tap, and mostly very, very good.

Why it’s a great place to drink: It’s one of the student unions here at UW, so the frat boy contingent can be high, but there’s just so many other kinds of people who hang out there too. Great atmosphere inside, and if it’s nice outside you can head out to the Terrace and sit by the lake. There’s live music on the weekends, and Monday nights you can catch old movies shown on film.

Stories: No real stories, just watch out for one of the many local nutjobs, Scanner Dan. He’s the scruffy guy with the beard and the red Badgers sweatshirt. He’s harmless, but man he’ll talk your ear off. I know from experience! Visit while you can before the mean ol’ administration takes away our 46oz cups!