Category Archives: Bars
Cork, Ireland
Posted by Beau Woods
When I got to Cork from Dublin, it was after 8pm and all of the tourist info places were closed. The map I had was useless for trying to find anything and I didn’t know any hostels anyway. So I sat down on the street and hopped on somebody’s WiFi and spent about 10 minutes looking things up. For the sake of ease, I just went to the first hostel I found. They had beds and so I checked in.
The place was foul, the sheets were stained, the free WiFi tried to attack my laptop (possibly to force me to use their pay computers?) and I had to climb a hill to get there. They didn’t use keys, only electronic locks on the room doors. People pretty much came in and out and nobody checked if they were a guest. Since the dorms slept about 20, the room doors were always open. So in other words, if you’re looking for a free place to stay in Cork, you can probably find it there – but I’ve withheld the name to protect the guilty.
The next night I went to a much better place which I highly recommend. It’s called the Bru Bar & Hostel. Even though the rooms are above a pub, it’s quiet, clean, and safe. The people are cool and the bar is a good place to hang out, as is the common room/kitchen.
Colorful Locals
Since I didn’t really do anything my first night in Ireland, I figured I should at least go out and have a couple of pints my second night. So I meandered around and hit a couple of little bars. It’s easy to find the popular places in Ireland becuase there are always tons of people in the street smoking outside. But when I saw a couple of guys head into a poorly marked pub with nobody outside smoking, I decided to check it out anyway.
I walked in and there was a guy who must have been about 90 playing the piano and everybody was talking and having a great time. It was a tiny place and it was really just like a perfect Irish pub. So I figured I’d get myself a drink. I ordered a beer and turned around to watch the performance. From the corner of my eye I saw the guy next to me giving me the stare down. So I turned and looked down at him (he was only about 5 feet tall) and said hi.
He started talking with me and it was going amicably, then he started asking me how I knew everyone in the room if I was just visiting Ireland. He seemed to think that I knew everyone there, apparently in some secret conspiratorial way. My denying it confirmed his suspicions.
At one point he said in his charming brogue “Tha next time I see yah, I’ll kill yah.” I told him I hoped it wouldn’t come to that and asked what my offense was. Apparently he’d seen me looking at his woman. Turns out he had a thing for the bartender. I said that I really didn’t know any other way to buy a drink that didn’t involve at least glancing in her direction and suggested that maybe he’d have to buy the rest of my drinks to solve the problem. He relented and agreed that maybe I could look at her after all. We talked more and ended up the night laughing and chatting. He was a strange fellow, that’s for sure.
Blarney Castle and the Stone
The stone is said to bestow the gift of elloquence on the lips which kiss it. Mine were among those which did.
The crowded clouds like fists of grey and silver tumbled overhead, promising to press down against the castle grounds. Intrepid peddlers stood at the ready to receive the custom of those displaced from the open to the overhang of shop stalls by the silvery earth-bound needles and pins. But for the moment the sky cleaved and displayed its color like a strutting peacock.
Ten Euros paid to walk around the grounds and climb the ramparts along the twisting turning narrow spiral staircase. Gentlemen should allow the ladies to pass in front for a better view; ladies should pay mind to their skirt length. When climbing, you’re eyes to arse with the visitor ahead.
Fred Zeppelin and the Random Band
On my last night in Cork I was walking around just after dinner and saw a bar that had a lot of people standing outside and all of the windows were plastered with band posters. Sounds good to me. I went on in and ordered a pint. The bartender asked if I was going upstairs and I asked what was up there. Turns out it was a concert so I went on up.
The cover was 3 Euro but when I started counting my small coins trying to make up the last Euro they let me know that what I had was good enough. The tiny room held in a hailstorm of fuzz guitar, slap bass, and thunderous drums. The young crowd all moved their heads in unison with the tunes, their haircuts and clothing reminiscent of something from an early Sex Pistols show.
While the first band started packing up their kit, I spoke with a young guy wearing a Mastodon t-shirt. They’re a small band that nobody’s ever heard of from Atlanta so it was wild to see a kid from Cork Ireland wearing it. Apparently they’re big over here in certain crowds. He gave me the information on a few of the others in the room. This guy was his friend from when he was 12; that girl is dating the lead singer of the next band; that guy there plays guitar and has a half a bottle of booze in his jacket. It was like a raucous party of friends that I’d stumbled into.
The second band played and the place got even louder and more full. I went to get a second drink and just asked for the cheapest draught they had. The bartender informed me that the cheapest was Beamish but that it took a long time to pull. The fastest cheapest draught was Fosters, so I had a pint of that instead. That explained why everybody upstairs was drinking a lighter colored beer rather than the typical porter.
I talked to a few more people in the audience, including one guy who was to be the drummer in the headlining band. He said it was not his instrument of choice and that he didn’t know how to play the drums. I also found out that they’d only practiced a couple of times in the last month or so. This was going to be an interesting show.
At some point I started talking to this huge hulk of a guy, probably 6’8″ and 300lbs. He was a hugger. And a kisser. And a slapper. And he spared no one, even the foriegn newcomer.
The second band finished their set and the third band, the headliners, took to the stage – a place so small 4/6 of their band had to stand on the floor for most of the show. They all took off their shirts except for the singer who strode up in a woman’s dress and proceeded to wrap the magnetic tape from an old VHS around his face. The guitarist, my first friend there, donned a Transformers mask with sunglasses taped to them. And they had a backup singer playing a toy guitar which they’d amped up. Oh yeah, this was going to be an interesting show.
After tuning up, the singer introduced themselves by saying “I don’t know why we’re the last show, we really suck!” And with that they launched into their songs. You could tell that the individuals were good at their instruments – the drummer was no Dave Grohl, but not terrible – but that they hadn’t practices together. The four out front danced around and smashed into the crowd, which by now had crowded the stage to the point where it was difficult to hae enough room for the band to play. At one point they invited the crowd to get naked. Some guys took off their shirts, but that was all the response they could muster. It really was an interesting show!
I went downstairs to get one more round of Fosters and when I came back they were destroying the toy guitar. People were taking turns stomping on it and the big moose was lifting people up and dropping them to get extra propulsion. So I hopped on the ride. In the end we smashed the thing into pieces. The guy who was playing it said that now it’s going to ruin the sound for the next show. Someone else allowed that he’d ruined its sound for this show, so it was fair.
All in all, Cork is a wonderful place. The people were
v
ery warm and hospitable and I felt at home almost everywhere. It was like a big village where everybody still has that neighborliness that makes for great cities.
I Just Flew In From San Francisco…
Posted by Beau Woods
…and boy are my legs tired! Ah yes, San Francisco, that wonderful peninsula and surrounding area which has more than 50 hills within the city limits. From which the dot-com revolution had its equivalent of the cosmological inflationary period. The legendary Haight-Ashbury area, formerly home to beat poets and radical hippies, has been transformed in the same manner as the Die Hard series of movies: A once great institution now mostly only good for outrageous incongruence and mocking. The Castro district, a place Fidel would almost certainly avoid…not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Mark Twain said about the city “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Unfortunately, that’s not true this week as temperatures are hitting the mid 80s and low 90s. But then I’m in the middle of the city, not on the north side where the pacific breeze tends to keep the climate more moderate. Microclimates are plentiful in the city by the bay, and there can be a 10 degree (F) temperature swing just on the peninsula. Going inland can be more than twice that.
If you’ve never been out here, you could come for a month and not see it all. Becoming friends with a local will really help out with that. Alcatraz is cool and the Golden Gate bridge is pretty, but ditch the tourist trail as soon as you can and head out on your own to explore. Budget accommodations tend to be abundant in certain areas of the city, but be forewarned that you get what you pay for. Don’t expect to be pampered for under a couple of hundred bucks. On the mainland your luck is better for finding affordable places that are decent, and you can take BART back into the city.
I don’t have time to run down all of the great stuff that I’ve done here, but I want to highlight some cool things I’ve done here.
- In the Haight, track down a sausage shop called Rosamunde’s and get one of their gourmet sausages cooked up and grab a beer at the Toronado next door while you’re waiting for your secret knock on the wall to tell you your sausage is ready.
- Head out to Muir Woods (no relation) and hike through the redwoods. They are magnificent. Legend has it that there is a private biergarten somewhere that occasionally allows non-members in.
- Wine tours in the local areas are a fantastic way to ruin your palate for the $10 special at the grocery store. No more Thunderbird after that. Make sure you have a designated driver, too. I recommend Coppola and Miner wineries.
- Bay to Breakers annual run is awesome. What do you get when you take thousands of weirdos, dress them in costume, pump them full of alcohol, and tell them to run up and down hills for 7+ miles? QED, the answer is in the question. It is pure hilarity. Mix in some people in salmon costumes who start at the end of the course and swim upstream for added chaos.
- Alcatraz night tour. It’s way better than the day tour – kind of spooky. Still touristy, but it’s got a fascinating history.
So anyway, that’s my quick list. Here are some additional notes about accommodations, places to eat, etc.
- DeLessio cafe is a great place to grab breakfast or lunch.
- The Metro Hotel has friendly and knowledgeable staff, a great location, and is cheap. I won’t promise anything more about it than that.
- The Travelodge is a really cheap place to stay and they have parking onsite for an extra $10. Definitely better than getting ticketed or towed on the side streets.
- The Independent is a decent place to see a show. I went and watched Johnny Lloyd Rollins, Ki Theory, Silver State, and South. Good bands, all.
- Nick and I walked the Bay to Breakers course and back. A great time was had by all.
Indianapolis
Posted by Beau Woods
I went back to Indy again last week. Last night I had some free time so I went out. The following account was written on my iPhone. Please forgive the misspellings and nonsensical portions. It’s hard to type properly without whittling down my thumbs and it’s hard to make sense when I had to take a break to drink beer or walk to a different bar. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty and the editing has not been done because I’m lazy.
The dancers were as enthusiastic as you’d find at a dry wedding. Mostly mid 20s and trying to relive their college youth. As Sir Mix Alot comes on there is a vague rwsembelance to Rump Shaker but with a sack of Vienna sausages. The white women had found their “back.” As the DJ was tipped by an appreciative patron for never having exited the golden 90s I observed that the mass of people resembled an undulating cup of kefir on a Eurail train. It was then that “Ride That Train” was chosen by the DJ as the most appropriate tune to exhume. Remember people, I brave these wilderni for you.
At some point the undulating mass began to assemble like a video of toppling dominoes ifalling n reverse. Going from no structure or pattern to an organized line quivering and swaying in time with each other moreso than the music and seeming to defy gravity, this mass flowed.
And then the crowd split like an amoeba. Keith Sweat’s “Too close” was a poor choice, as half of the dancers were in elementary school and when the song came out in 1993. Music from “Off The Wall” brought some participants back, but the spin doctor had lost his core crowd already. They were soon to do a buttery nipple shot and call it a night. Bobby Brown solidified their choice.
I left and went to have a nice day cafe Indy. The people dancing weren’t so much dancing as they were swaying. This would have signaled a bad night but all of the “bikini girls” were backstage preparing for the contest. Yeah, this was a younger crowd.
I grabbed a bourbon & coke for a drink. All beer was 25 cents so that had Natty Light written all over it.
So I went back to that first place. Cause I had. Stamp ok my hand to prove I’d paid the $5. And cause i had no shame and didn’t want to to to bed. Now the dance floor was moving more. Like a thermal pool you might say. Hands were up and heads were bobbing and there was much rejoicing. The median age swelled to over 25 and I grabbed a beer. Drunk 30 year oldy are entertaining, and I don’t just mean me.
Postscript:
In between bars I ended up sitting on a bench. A guy was walking down the street talking to the people he met and handing them something. He looked at me on the bench and kept going. I went and asked him what the story was and he said he didn’t want to tell me. He said he thought I was in town for the po-lice convention. I assured him that I wasn’t and he still didn’t trust me. He asked if I was SURE I wasn’t a cop and why I had followed him. I told him it looked like he was giving out CDs. He said he was homeless and that he was throwing a benefit for him and his friends and could I donate. I told him no, that I wasn’t interested. He scoffed at me like I had offended him and that I should be ashamed of myself. I went back to the bar.
After I wrote the last line of my tale above, I ended up meeting a very pretty young medical student and we chatted for a bit. The conversation turned to baseball and I found out that she’s as big a fan as I am and can even score a game! But she’s a Cardinals fan. C’est la vie.
Big Sky Country
Posted by Beau Woods
Recently I was in Montana. Big Sky Country. Former home of limitless speeds on the roads. I don’t have time to go into all of the details, but I’ll run down some highlights.
Canadian Passport Stamp
I drove about a half hour from where I was staying to the Canadian border. The crossing closed at 5pm so I had to get there in a hurry. Fortunately, two-lane highways have a 70MPH speed limit. Along the way, I passed a US Coast Guard station. Strange. When I got to the border, the guard asked me the standard question of why I was coming to the country. I told him that I was close by on some business and just wanted to get a stamp in my passport. He clearly wasn’t expecting this answer and seemed to think it was kind of a novel thing. He was friendly and polite (no, I’m not just stereotyping, he actually WAS friendly and polite) and after a few more routine questions and answers (and one non-routine one – he asked who I was doing business with and I said that I couldn’t tell him because of a non-disclosure agreement) he went in and stamped my passport.
I turned around and headed back to the American border. The guard acted a bit differently, approaching the car from behind like a police officer approaching a possibly hostile driver. He asked why I was in Canada and I told him that I was just there to get a stamp. He asked if I was the one who had just gone across and turned around and came back (a fact that I would have thought obvious) and said he’d still like to check the trunk. I opened the empty trunk and he closed it after a quick glance. He verified that I wasn’t some kind of wanted criminal and sent me on my way.
An American who has a Canadian stamp on his passport is pretty rare and I’m one of the only of my friends who has it. Score one for me.
Fast Food
If you ever get the chance to eat at Taco John’s, don’t. The food is pretty terrible. It makes Taco Bell look like a five-star gourmet place.
I stopped into a Wendy’s and it took them fifteen minutes from the time I ordered to get my food. I’d nearly finished my baked potato by the time the burger got there. There were four people working in the back, but only one was doing anything. One was filling up coffee cups with tea because he didn’t know the difference. One was walking around doing air drums against the walls.
At one point an apparent off duty employee came in to ask for her check. She also talked to the guy who didn’t know tea from coffee. Apparently the rumors around school was that the he was going to be quitting the job because the girl was sexually harassing him there. The manager came over and said that they shouldn’t be talking about it at the restaurant in front of customers (…wait for it…) because the kid needed to be working.
Great Falls Nightlife
In trying to juggle flights around to find a good time to fly out and back, I ended up making my flight for Saturday instead of Friday like I had intended. Oops. So I had an extra night to kill in Great Falls. It’s a sleepy town of about 50,000, with clean streets and lots of little coffee shops. I stopped into one to grab a quick bite and some java. I talked with the proprietor some and he advised me that there was a cool bar in town that I should check out.
It’s called the Sip-n-Dip Tiki Lounge and this is the picture I took from inside the place. They have a couple of mermaids swimming around all night to entertain the patrons. Pretty classy. In 2003, GQ magazine voted it one of the top 10 bars in the world. That’s going a bit far, but it was cool. Everything inside seemed to be right at home in an ambiguous year in the late sixties or early seventies. The other main draw of the place was the organist who’d been playing every night for the past 40 years. Crazy place.
There’s another bar that seemed pretty fun. They used to call it “Dirty Murph’s” because it was apparently really trashy. It’s located right next to a bowling alley a few miles out of town. I don’t know what the name of it is, but I went and hung out there for a while. That’s where to go if you want to dance to cowboy music.
Colorado Aficionado
Posted by Beau Woods
I don’t know what the word “aficionado” means, but I always feel like it means “great big fan of”. So when I say that I am a beer aficionado, I mean that I’m a great big fan of beer. Good beer and great beer. Sure, I’ll drink the occasional bad beer, but I’ve never really enjoyed them. Colorado, my friends, is a beer aficionado’s paradise and I’m a big fan of being out here.
I was flying to DEN from ABQ through SLC. But due to inclement weather in Utah, I was given a pass on a different airline to go direct instead. Plus the guy at the Delta counter wanted to go talk with the cute girl over at the Frontier counter. So at about the same time I would have touched down in Salt Lake City I was in Denver.
I had at least two hours of free time because of the reroute so I decided to go to downtown Denver to grab a bit instead of heading straight to Longmont. I got on Colfax and drove around, remembering that it was one of the main thoroughfares of the city, but after a while I found no place that looked decent to eat so I pulled over to search with my iPhone. I found some places that looked like they might be decent, but wasn’t entirely satisfied.
As I was looking around and realizing that I was seeing several bums walking past the cracked windows of the laundromats and pawn shops, I thought it might be time to just head to one of the Google recommended places. Then I noticed I’d parked about 15 feet from a place called The Cheeky Monk. I’d managed to randomly pull over next to a Belgian bar and cafe. So I decided that bad neighborhood or not, I had to go in.
I sat at the bar where the majority of the patrons were gathered and got a Leffe Blonde and a food menu. Talya, the bartender, helped me practice my practice my Russian. She’d moved to Denver a few years ago from Moscow so we talked about travel. It was quite a random place that I stopped, but it worked out being perfect.
The next night, I went to the Pumphouse Brewery & Restaurant. The food was good and cheap. And they have a great cilantro-lime vinaigrette salad dressing. The entree came out about 3 minutes after I ordered, even before my salad. But I simply saved the salad until last and enjoyed the main dish and the excellent vanilla porter.
On Thursday, I headed up to the small burgh of Lyons, Colorado and the Oskar Blues Grill & Brew. As the name hints, the cuisine is of the southern variety, specifically Louisianan. Cajun and creole influence is obvious on the menu, but the beers are all Colorado. Instead of garlic bread, the chipotle chicken pasta has an honest-to-goodness homemade buttermilk biscuit. Southern. And the beers (many distributed nationwide) are pure hops. Colorado. Great music scene there too.
Lefthand Brewery is a great place to sample their beers, including some that they only seem to have there. And you can buy half-gallons of it to go. And when you go, stop by Sugar Beet. The food is great and fairly reasonably priced. Say hi to Justine.
I went to Boulder for a couple of days, walked around the town, and saw the Christmas parade. Boulder was a disappointment. When I was a kid watching Mork & Mindy, I used to want to live there. I don’t know why, something just really appealed to me. I think it still does, even though there’s really no soul there anymore. Just a bunch of spoiled college kids, rich sorta yuppies, and wanna be granolas. So that is that.
From there I drove down to Denver through Golden. Along the way, I stopped and climbed up on a mesa to hang out and see if I could get a good look of Denver from above. It was a nice hike and I saw tons of deer. I’d change course to avoid a dozen and run up on another dozen or so and change course again. I had some great views of Denver and overlooked an old-timey railroad train that was making tourist runs. Somewhere on my way down I lost my hat, so if you’re out that way and find a “One Track Mind” wool cap that smells like sweat and hotel shampoo, drop me a line.
I spent a few days in Fort Morgan, about 80mi north-east of Denver. There’s nothing redeeming about that town. There are a few industrial plants there and they smell nearly indescribable. There’s the beet processing plant where apparently part of the process is to rot them. Then there’s the cow blood processing plant (huh? read about this one on the Internet). And it smells like there’s a pig feces processing plant somewhere around there. Something I noticed was that there are no young people between about the age of 18 and 30. Either one of the industrial plants there makes Soilent Green or the kids get the hell out as soon as they can.
Minneapolis and Parts North
Posted by Beau Woods
Minnesota is a nice place, for the most part. I had a good time while I was there. People are mostly nice, especially outside of the airport. But man are they dumb on the roads! I several times had to dodge cars stopped at a green light in the center lane in downtown Minneapolis.
There are a lot of bums in Minneapolis. “Hey man, can you help me out?” They all asked me to help them out, which is a bit different than how they ask in most other places. None told me a sob story and some didn’t even ask me to help them out; they just said “What’s up man?” each time I passed them during the night. Strange.
“The Cities,” as the metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul area are called, are a sprawling pretzel of interstate highways. I-35, I-35 E, I-35 W, I-94, I-394, I-494, I 694. And there are a number of roads which, though not interstates, are large divided highways with limited access. Most of these become interstate highways off and on, but some just circle the city. All for a population of less than 3 million. Lots of pork barrel projects, it sounds like.
And their airport has two terminals separated by a few miles going by the signs on the road coming from town. But geographically they are much closer to each other. In fact, the road to each terminal lets you get to the other. So there is no point to having two separate exits. Especially when there is no indication of which airlines are served at each, which one has the rental car return, or any difference whatsoever between them. It’s madness!
For most of my stay, I was in a small town a couple of hours outside of the Cities. There, I found the food to be passable, but not great. And everything was covered in gravy. I only had two meals in Minneapolis, and they were a little better, but not a lot. Mainly they were different, which was good.
For dinner I went to a place called Club Havana. It’s a place on Washington Street in the strip club and sex toy district. But it’s a nice area. Strange. Anyway, I had one of their Cuban Martinis, which was really just a mojito with champagne and vodka instead of rum. It was mediocre and didn’t have the flavor coherence that the mojito has. It stimulated all of my taste areas, but didn’t blend them well. I’m not sure how to say it better than that. I had a salmon dish stuffed with avocado and crusted with crushed pistachios. The pistachios were too much and detracted from the flavor after several bites. The place won’t make you feel like you’re in old Havana town, but at least there was no Che memorabilia.
I should have eaten at a pizza place and bar called Pizza Lucé. The pizza smelled great, the beer was good, the ambiance and music were great (I heard The Black Keys and Manu Chao back to back!) and the service was overwhelmingly friendly. The patrons were similarly friendly and I met quite a few interesting and fun people. At around midnight or one AM, people came streaming in for pizza. They put up a rope barricade to keep the line from obstructing the rest of their business. In fact, people who were bar hopping came back at the end of the night to get a slice.
For breakfast I went to a little coffee shop that did some upscale breakfast thing. I had a glorified quiche with fruit on the side. The chile sauce they put over top was very nice and made the dish good.
All in all I like Minnesota. The people that I met there were all very nice and friendly. They felt very comfortable and no one that I met seemed the least bit pretentious. It’s a nice place to visit, but I don’t think I could live there.
From what I saw of housing prices, there’s no way I’d do that. A studio condo was going for $300k! I could get a house in Atlanta for less than that. Hell, I did! The condo didn’t even look that great, it was just another insta-building made to look like an old factory or warehouse. I can’t imagine what someplace cool would run.
There is Only One Bar in Holbrook, Arizona
Posted by Beau Woods
Actually there are two bars in Holbrook, Arizona. Maybe there are more, but I haven’t seen the inside of them. After getting done with a job in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I had some time so I went off to visit a friend in Holbrook. It’s a little town whose claim to fame seems to be that it is the closest city to Petrified Forest National Park, both of which are in the middle of the Painted Desert. It’s also about 100mi from Meteor Crater and about 150mi from the Grand Canyon. It would be a cool place to hang out for a day or two if you’re going to be out that way. I recommend the Motel 6 there; it’s undergoing extensive room renovations (the new ones look great!) and they just put in a pool. Make sure to say hi to Russ, John, and Danielle. Ask them about the bar(s).
Albuquerque has three restaurants I wanted to mention: 66 Diner, The Library, and Il Vicino. The Library has one main attraction and that is the waitresses. I am not a big fan of places like that typically, but places like that typically aren’t staffed by beautiful women from the University of New Mexico. They’re stunning. Maybe it was just the halo effect, but I thought the food there wasn’t bad. Try the Jules Verne.
At Il Vicino, the sensory overload is in the mouth and nose. They make what is probably the best pizza I have ever had: the Campagnola. It was complemented well by the beer they brew themselves. I could say more about the place, but I’ll just end up drooling all over the keyboard. That place is a must if you’re in town.
If you’re interested in Route 66 memorabilia, stop into the 66 Diner, where you’ll find that the only thing thicker than the kitch is the milkshakes. Grab a seat at the bar and watch the decades old blenders whirl up some of the best tasting shakes you will ever have. They must pump out a million of those things a year. The poor guy making them when I was there could hardly keep up and the place wasn’t too full. People would stop by just to get a shake to go. They’re worth it.
meanderingwoods 