The Perfect Bar
It’s 21 and up, but you’ve been getting in effortlessly since your freshman year. Weekly happy hour excursions aren’t an option, they’re expected. The only thing stronger than the drinks is the urge to sing “Piano Man” at the top of your lungs when it reaches the top of the jukebox playlist.
You know what I’m talking about. Every college town has at least one perfect bar, a place that transcends the “casual drinking establishment” title and becomes something more akin to a sacred alcoholic pilgrimage.
But what makes this bar so great? Sure, quarter pitcher night and two dollar doubles are always an excellent excuse to catapult yourself into an inebriated hurricane of sloppy devastation. And yes, the random beer signs and decorations (where the fuck did they get that moose head?) add a nice touch, but the true value of this bar transcends what you can see.
This bar is not a place, it’s an attitude. And that attitude is a blatant disregard for the collective livers of everyone captured beneath the glow of their neon lights.
Any girl you regularly see here is instantly a class ahead, because she clearly has her priorities straight. While some girls go out to be seen, or take as many pictures as their 16 GB SD card allows, these girls come to get drunk and ideally coordinate a sloppy game of tonsil hockey.
The best night to go this bar is usually a toss up between Friday, Saturday, Wednesday, Monday, Thursday, Tuesday and Sunday. Sure, sometimes walking from one end of the bar to the other seems like a voyage of biblical proportions, but when you finally get that plastic cup of whiskey with a minuscule splash of ginger you instantly know it’s worth it.
The bartenders know you by last name, because that’s what they see when you inevitably rack up a gargantuan tab (with a handsome tip on the end of it) every night.
Making your way to the pissing booth is never an easy task, but the wisdom you gain from the stained bathroom walls make the journey worth it. You can also see countless creative artistic interpretations of dicks and balls, if you’re into that sort of thing. Dispersed between the sharpied genitalia are some of the most ignorant, blatantly offensive, and consequently hilarious statements ever made.
It’s important to recognize these bars for what they are: crucial keys for getting the most of your college experience. Sure, the fraternity house parties are a culture all their own, but there’s something to be said about a place where an entire room of strangers can be united in drunken bliss simply by the right song blasting over the speakers.
Here’s to the bars we can’t live without. Sure, we might not remember everything that happens under that hallowed roof, but no matter how hard we black out we can wake up the next morning knowing it was time well spent.
Follow me on Twitter @StuffFratsLike
Esso Club, circa 2003, FaF.
“New and Improved” Esso Club – NF.
13 years ago at 3:24 pmI think this goes for about 10 bars in Athens, but Generals and Sandbar are usually the best in my opinion.
13 years ago at 3:34 pmClub South, Birmingham, AL
13 years ago at 3:53 pmNo. Every bar in Birmingham is full of UAB and Samford f.aggots. The only fratty part of Birmingham is Mountain Brook.
13 years ago at 12:11 pm^this. Dram is FAF.
13 years ago at 7:16 amWhich bar is this?
13 years ago at 4:01 pmbig 12 at mizzou
13 years ago at 9:46 pmThe pictures don’t show it, but the entire article reeks of Salty Dog in Gainesville. Good work.
13 years ago at 4:05 pmIt’s entirely about the dog…
13 years ago at 8:22 pmThat’s because it IS the perfect bar
13 years ago at 3:23 pmRed Lion or Kam’s @ u of Illinois Champaign
13 years ago at 4:14 pmdefinitely KAM’S
13 years ago at 7:12 pmdo you have ANY class?
13 years ago at 2:02 amYES. The motherfucking Red Lion
13 years ago at 2:24 pmThe Ranch, MU North Ryde!
13 years ago at 4:27 pmStormed that bar like Normandy once or twice in my career.
Stadium Oxford Ohio
13 years ago at 4:36 pmyeah in fuckin 1996
13 years ago at 10:48 pmI read “for getting the most of your college experience” as “forgetting most of your college experience.”
13 years ago at 4:45 pmwell played sir, well played
13 years ago at 1:22 amTOTS in Blacksburg
13 years ago at 4:46 pm