Search Results for: america's corner pubs

A reader writes:

I am stunned that with the sheer number of people that read you, and the percentage of those in Boston, no one has mentioned the pub culture here.

A reader writes:

Please allow one more entry in the the Chicago pubs thread. A couple of decades ago, a pioneer by the name of Michelle Fire opened a small bar in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.  She named it Big Chicks. 

A reader writes:

As a former newspaperman and lifelong Chicagoan, I just wanted to point out that The  Mirage Bar wasn't run by the feds, as your reader stated. It was run by the Chicago Sun-Times, in one of the great undercover investigative journalism pieces of all time.

Can you imagine a newspaper today doing actual investigative work like that? I know, totally ridiculous. They'd be too busy telling us why we don't need wikileaks because they find out everything there is to know and tell us what's important.

Read more about the amazing story in The Mirage, by investigative journalists Zay N. Smith and Pamela Zekman. And there's more about the city's pubs in Sean Parnell's Historic Bars Of Chicago. Randy Kohl covered that book in an article called "The Gastropub Revolution":

A reader writes:

I'm on board with Chicago, Wisconsin and Oregon, but let's not leave out Seattle. Like Portland, it is the home to numerous micro-breweries, and the corner pub is definitely a feature of every neighborhood, including Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Belltown, and Fremont. Seattle is definitely a city where the pub crawl is alive and well. Many have amazing food – in the so called gastropubs – and many are very family-friendly. There are toys or a play area on one side and tables for the parents to spy on the kids while enjoying their pints. Please add my $0.02 for Seattle.

Another two cents:

A reader writes:

I got a chuckle out of seeing that you used the Brehon Pub to illustrate your post on "authentic" Chicago bars. Brehon (which means judge or lawyer in Gaelic) actually had the least authentic of origins. 

A reader writes:

At least on the north side, it's tough to walk more than a couple of blocks without running into a decent neighborhood bar of the type Avent describes. Damn good beer these days too. I moved here from DC about a year ago, and the ubiquity of great corner pubs with good burgers and friendly bartenders and a couple of decent games on the tube made for one of the nicest welcomes I've ever received in a new city.

Another writes:

Obviously these writers have never been to Chicago. 

A reader writes:

Portland, Oregon has more breweries (36) than any city in the US, and they all have their own brewpubs. Oregon law requires bars to serve food, and a lot of them serve stunningly good fare. 

A reader writes:

Have Avent and Steinglass never been to the Upper Midwest?  St Paul, Duluth, Madison, Milwaukee?  Corner pubs are everywhere. Get out of the boring Beltway and live a little.

Another writes:

Wisconsin has got to be the closest thing to the English utopia these two dudes describe.

A reader writes:

Unfortunately, the pub culture in the UK is changing, and has been for years. 

A reader writes:

Coincidentally, I just returned from a trip to England, where I was able to enjoy the amazing pubs in London and in some of the smaller towns in Shropshire. While I can't speak to the regulations or culture in DC and New York, I believe I do have an insight as to why there are no corner pubs in the rest of the country: Most of America is suburban, and in suburban America we don't have corner anything. Pub culture is town and city culture. It's walking culture. A pub that everyone has to drive to is no longer a pub. It's a piece of kitch that sells drinks and hamburgers.

Another writes:

Actually, America did have a pub culture just like that of England today.  It just disappeared over time.