Just curious what kind of bars you guys frequent. There are great bars in every town in America and other countries. Where do you go and why do you go there? Is it the people, the drinks, the hookers that hang out there?
Here in Tampa I often go to The Hub which is dowtown. It’s been there for 50+ years and is a staple of Tampa nightlife. It’s really small, dark and dirty and basically consists of a bar, pinball machine, jukebox, and about 6 or seven little tables. The jukebox has everything from Johnny cash/elvis to Jets to brazil and many indie bands. The biggest selling point to the Hub however is the drinks. If you don’t already have hair on your chest when you walk in, you will when you leave. Rum and coke is more like rum and C. They don’t leave room in the cup for the ‘oke’! And it’s cheap too.
Yup, my vote goes in for the Hub. How about y’all?
Way out in the lead is the Monkey Chews, a pub in the less-pleasant back streets of Chalk Farm. It’s dimly lit in red, decorated with leather sofas and trashy '50s stuff, and has a cool pyramid of spirits topped with a King Kong statue. They have ambient DJs on a Sunday night, and there’s also a fresh fish restaurant in the back.
I also like The Porterhouse just behind The Strand near Charing Cross. It’s bizarrely decorated (split-level, mazelike and built out of wood and brass), horrifically overpriced in a typical Covent Garden way but serves one of the more unusual ranges of beers in central London.
The Enterprise and Steele’s (aka The Sir Richard Steele) in Chalk Farm are also nice in a more traditional pub way.
Sydney:
Sadly Sublime on Pitt Street is no more (apparently), but I have very fond memories of the Coogee Beach Hotel (CBH) in Coogee – a favourite haunt in a beer-sodden year as a backpacker. The Australian Hotel in The Rocks was a classier place, with gourmet pizzas (like curried kangaroo or emu and red wine) and its own range of beers.
Edinburgh:
There’s a bar called the Carwash at the top of The Mound (facing Princes Street). It’s about as '70s retro-styled as you’d expect from the name. It also had the best arcade game ever (something off involving pedalling and balloons).
Ye Olde King’s Head on Santa Monica Blvd. at 2nd St. in Santa Monica, CA. It’s owned by a British ex-pat, and has the best fish’n’chips I’ve ever had. I daresay the best in the world!
Well, IMHO, the best bar is the Four Moon Tavern here in Chicago. IMHO, smaller neighborhood bars are better than those fancy, schmancy nightclub-type places. At the Moon (as we affectionately call it) has, IMHO, the best bar food around. We know all the bartenders by name, and they treat us really well, which is nice, IMHO. Free drinks always taste a little better, IMHO. We often go on Saturday afternoons to have brunch and shoot some pool, or just to hang out with the regulars. We’ve met some really cool people there, and there’s nothing better than that, IMHO.
Favorite bar in San Francisco - Mad Dog in the Fog - European Football (soccer, for the unenlightened) on 5 or so TVs, good English and German brew on tap.
Back in Portland Maine - it was a tie between The Basement (formerly Leo’s) and The Stone Coast Brewery. The Basement was the hub of alternative bands. It was in this dingy basement (surprise) with different rooms on different levels (a step up here, a step down there), free pool on four tables in the back, and air hockey. No meat market, very much a place for the heads. Stone Coast was a little more meat-markety, but they also had free pool on better tables, and relatively well known bands on the weekends. And Red Stone Ale - I love that stuff.
AFAICT, the only bar here in Denver worth anything is the Cruise Room. A small little hotel bar, with black leather booths, red lights, and the meanest martini in the city. It’s got atmosphere!
While in grad school at Clemson, we started hanging out at a bar called Edgar’s. It was inside the student union and had REAL cheap beer. Not that Natural Light is my choice, but just as an example, they had Natty Light bottles for $0.75. It was like state subsidized drinking. Plus, they had great bands, pool tables, foosball, airhockey, and free popcorn. For $5 I could get fairly buzzed, listen to a good band, and eat as much popcorn as I could. That free popcorn came in very handy to a poor grad student.
There’s a little place in Port Charlotte (actually I think Punta Gorda) FL called the Celtic Ray. Hands down the coolest place on earth for drinks and such. There’s no alcohol, just imported beer, and homemade Scottish food (thanks to a Scotsman cook). I think most of the decorations and the bar itself were transplanted from Dublin, Ireland. All the employees (all five) are transplants too. The place just rocks.
I can go there on a weeknight, relax and have a drink without loud music blaring and guys trying to pick me up (not into the meat market scene anymore) and the bartender always remembers what I drink. This is quite a feat as I only go there once every couple of months.
I like a number of the “destination bars” in New York City…the White Horse Tavern, the Lion’s Head (or whatever bar moved into the place that USED to be the Lion’s Head), the King Cole Bar and the Bemelmans Bar.
Neighborhood bars can be tricky things. When I lived on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, I used to go to Fanelli’s (on Mercer and Prince) and the Shark Bar (on Spring and Mulberry) a lot. They’ve both become irritatingly popular as SoHo spread inexorably eastward.
O’Farrell’s, just off Prospect Park in Brooklyn, used to be a nice old-fashioned Irish bar…but became famous for being a nice, old-fashioned Irish bar, and started attracting the wrong sort.
More often than not I suppose I find myself having a cocktail and a smoke in the Minetta Tavern, on Macdougal Street in the Village.
It’s a big plus if there is NO television of ANY kind.
I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite bar, but every Friday night you’ll find me down at the Stadium Club. There’s a juke box, a bunch of chairs, a bar, and a Megatouch game. Woohoo…we live the life.
They do have excellent food (of the hamburger/wings variety), cold beer, and the bartender, Jack, hands us our beers as we walk in. We always know everyone in there and we all sing along to the songs that we play on the jukebox every week. To top it off, they let us put a Weddings, Parties, Anything CD into the jukebox (my husband’s Australian and this is his favorite back-home band). Little does WPA know, they have a huge following in this little South Carolinian town.
When I lived in New Jersey I had 2 favorite bars.
The Melody, in New Brunswick, Matt Pinnfield DJed there when I frequented it. Dark, edgy, alternative, more fun when the college kids (Rutgers) were out of town.
The South River Pub, in, of all places, South River.
Your average small town 20-30ish get together on Friday night place, fun on Sundays during football season. Free hot wings, cheap beer, and all your friends, a rockin’ good time.
In Pennsylvania I had 2 favorite bars.
The Rathskellar, in State College. Fun, lively college crowd. This bar, even though it was in the middle of PA, kind of had that ‘hole in the wall somewhere in the Village feel too it’. Again, more fun when the college kids were out of town.
And Alice’s Pub, in Philipsburg. Basically just like the South River Pub, but the crowd was a little older and a little hardened. Think deer hunters with chew. The best hot wings I have ever eaten.
I do not have a favorite bar yet here in CA, and I wonder if I ever will. I really don’t like the idea of not being able to smoke in a bar, so Demo and I usually just buy a case and chill out at home. Does that mean we are getting old? Ugh.
When one wants to get wildly drunk and dance like an idiot, I feel the only option is BAR in Ybor City, FL. I visit Tampa every three years or so and a night out at BAR will make me feel like a kid again every time. Vats of ice and beer, jiggly girls at every turn, bouncers who know how to manhandle drunks nicely. The only caveat is to wear heavy leather shoes because the glass beer bottles and tile floor never mix.
In Seattle, I drink most of my Guinness at Conor Byrne’s Public House in Ballard. Live Irish reels and jigs every weekend, always smooth Guinness. When I dated a girl from Waterford, she said Conor’s was the most like back home. For me, it’s like Conor fixed up his basement with a keg and had all his friends over; Conor plays fiddle at least once a weekend himself.
Seattle’s real gem is outside the wealthy meat markets of Belltown; it’s Dad Watson’s in Fremont. Excellent drunk food (the fries are terrific), McMenamin’s own beers, and a set of knowledgeable bartenders. Olympia Stubbies still availabe, complete with rebus inside the cap. Freaky Indonesian woodcut decor, hard-to-pronounce Dutch streetsigns on the wall, and high-backed booths for tucking into Captain Neon burgers. When the local lesbian book club monopolizes the large-table area, the atmosphere is a little hostile, but every other night of the month it’s very mellow and you can hear yourself think.
The only trouble I’ve ever had at Dad’s was when the bouncer wouldn’t let two of my friends in when only one had her ID. They’re identical twins.
Right around the corner is a huge statue of Vladmir Lenin, retrieved from some Czech town square a decade ago. It’s magnificently ironic that the father of Soviet Communism overlooks the center of Seattle entrepreneurialism, the Fremont Sunday Market. Lenin’s in-stride pose also puts his left hand extended over pedestrians above head-level, so I have photographs of most of my out-of-town friends, full of Hammerhead beer, pulling Lenin’s finger.
TNT Sports Page at Preston and Beltline in Dallas. It is in a strip mall, but it’s got that nice dive bar feel. Most of the customers are regulars and the bartenders John and Al are both great. Also, the place makes a great pizza.
My favorite bar in the world is The Soggy Dollar on Jost van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. You swim in from your boat, get a Painkiller (pineapple juice, OJ, cream of coconut, and lots of rum) and then loll in one of the many hammocks strung up between the palm trees.
My favorite bar in Hartford, CT (yikes) is The Spigot. Smoky and seedy but hundreds of beers and I spent most of grad school there so it’s like a second home.
I don’t get up that way much anymore since I got married and moved out of the neighborhood, but I always loved Madam’s Organ (“Where Beautiful People Go To Get Ugly”) on 18th and Columbia NW in Washington, DC. The upstairs bar wasn’t often crowded and they had a good variety of music downstairs as well, even an open mike night on Sundays. The weekend bartender upstairs knew the proper way to pour a Guinness. Pure heaven.
Hmm, there are so many to choose from in Denver. I guess I have to go with El Chapultipec. It’s been pretty much the same kind of place since before I was born, surviving when LODO was a average kind of place, when LODO was a dirty hole, and now when LODO is an overhyped yuppie area. Just a bar that has good Jazz, pool tables, people lookin for a fight, people lookin for a friend, people just looking to hang out, all in a cozy place that seems really small when its empty, but just kind of absorbs everybody who wants to go in.
