Last night I got in an interesting conversation with Mikey at the bar, and wanted to post thoughts… he told me that people from other parts of town ask him, “Why do you always hang out the places you do?\u00a0 You’re always at Calhoun’s, Bardog, the Saucer… it seems like you’re in a rut.\u00a0 Why don’t you ever hang out at Hooters?\u00a0 At Alfred’s?\u00a0 At Silky’s?”\u00a0 It’s a valid question – with so many choices down here, why do we go to the same bars day after day after day?<\/p>\n
I thought about it, and while I can’t (and don’t claim to) speak for all Downtowners, there are 4 main reasons this<\/em> Downtowner goes the places he does:<\/p>\n 1) My friends hang out there.\u00a0 I like places where I can walk in and just about be guaranteed to find someone I know.<\/p>\n 2) At least one value drinking option.\u00a0 Examples: PBR at Calhoun’s and Bardog; the Fire Sale at the Saucer; pretty much everything at Big Foot.<\/p>\n 3) Circulation.\u00a0 A feeling of “you never know who you may see there.”\u00a0 Not the same people day in and day out, every day.<\/p>\n 4) The sense that the people who work there are like us.\u00a0 Meaning, if they weren’t on the other side of the bar serving us, they’re the kind of people we’d like to have on our side of the bar having a beer with us.<\/p>\n I’m going to come back and go into detail on each of these points (with examples) sometime next week.\u00a0 For now, though, here’s my latest version of my “favorite places to hang out” list.\u00a0 Where you see a series of dots below, think of them as an asteroid belt indicating major separation.<\/p>\n 1. (Tie) Bardog Tavern<\/p>\n 1. (Tie) Flying Saucer<\/p>\n ………………………………<\/p>\n 3. Calhoun’s<\/p>\n ………………………………<\/p>\n 4. Big Foot Lodge<\/p>\n 5. Red Rooster<\/p>\n 6. Earnestine & Hazel’s<\/p>\n 7. Automatic Slim’s<\/p>\n 8. Jillian’s<\/p>\n Notes on this list:\u00a0 This is “places I hang out,” not “places I go to eat.”\u00a0 I don’t really hang out at the Majestic (other than Sunday brunch) or Circa much these days, but if I were going somewhere for a good meal, they’d be at the very top of the list.\u00a0 Also, Raiford’s is such an unusual place that I find it impossible to rank against my other hangouts.\u00a0 It’s a permanent honorary #1 in my book.<\/p>\n Quick recap of Thursday and Friday to come, then I gotta head to the flip cup tournament at the Rooster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night I got in an interesting conversation with Mikey at the bar, and wanted to post thoughts… he told me that people from other parts of town ask him, “Why do you always hang out the places you do?\u00a0 You’re always at Calhoun’s, Bardog, the Saucer… it seems like you’re in a rut.\u00a0 Why … Continue reading “Why Downtowners hang out where we do (short version)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}