On the night of New Year’s Day, Matt, ACWF, and I went looking for some new bars. We’d been going to the same bars for quite some time, and we wanted to find someplace new.
Before I go into what we found at the new bars, I have to explain why the old bars were so good. Some of the Baltimore readers may have already been to some of these places.
1) The Phoenix- Very cool staff, and a decent beer selection. At certain times, you can have the whole bar to yourself, and chat up the bartenders to your heart’s content. My name is on a plaque in this bar for drinking all 99 of their available beers. The “Frat” crowd only shows on Wednesday night.
2) J. Patricks- Irish pub. The guy who owns and runs it is Irish. He serves his Guinness warm, and his whiskey selection is unmatched. You can catch traditional Irish music here regularly. No “Frat” crowd, no hoochies.
3) The Blarney Stone- A good place to meet up in Fell’s Point. Cheap National Bohemians (Natty Boh). Only occasional “hoochies,” but they usually leave when they see the female bartender with sleeve tattoos.
We would go to a few other places, but these were our haunts. So when we went looking for new bars we went looking for a similar feel.
The first bar we went to was a sports bar. That pretty much nicked the whole concept. But it was the next bar that sent us packing for the evening, and drove us back to the waiting arms of our familiar bartenders.
The first thing that struck me about this bar was not the piggish bartender, or the horrible carpet, or even the distinct lack of women (I just like to have a good male to female ratio. I’m not particularly fond of the company of men,) but what struck me first was the smell.
Actually, the smell didn’t “strike” me. The smell instead invaded my nostrils like a mob of angry villagers carrying torches made from burning gym socks that had never been washed. It smelled like that, and smoke.
I don’t really mind smoke. I used to smoke, and actually enjoy the aroma at times. This place smelled like the carpet had been used for an ashtray at the last chain-smoking convention.
The whole time we were at this place I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I would never be able to go back in there again knowing that the smell would throw my mind for a loop at its sheer putresence.
Is it too much to ask for a bar with a friendly crowd of men and women who aren’t frat boys or hoochies, and whose interior doesn’t smell like the locker room of a wrestling team?
