Charleston, SC: AC's Bar: The Champagne of Beers of Bars

Charleston has a really big bridge. You can see it from miles away. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie, suspended by huge cables in a large arc. Throughout the 16 or so hours I spent in Charleston, I was to become intimately familiar with this bridge.

You see, if you miss the turn for Bay Street off of Highway 17 in Charleston you are damned, damned I say, to cross that bridge, make a u-turn and try it again. However, one thing I learned about the Carolinas is that they only like to mark exits from one side, not the other.

I drove over this bridge a grand total of 9 times.

Not in a row, obviously (I am slightly more navigationally capable than that) but throughout the day I either missed the Bay Street exit or was attempting to get somewhere else and ended up on the bridge 9 times.

Impressive, I know.

During my time in Charleston I came across a little hole-in-the-wall called AC’s Bar (467 King Street, Charleston, SC for those of you keeping score at home). From the outside, one would be hard-pressed to choose AC’s over any of the other bars in the neighborhood. Just a small neon sign reading AC’s and a nondescript awning adorn the façade and one imagines that the patrons like that just fine. Comprised mostly of tattooed rockers, bike messengers, the denizens of AC’s appeared to enjoy their own Private Idaho. And who wouldn’t? A nicely cluttered bar area gives AC’s that lived in feel, scruffy and unpretentious.

$2 PBRs and a damn good burger for roughly $5 make this place easy on the pocketbook as well. I had a straight up cheeseburger which was expertly cooked (not too done, not too raw, with almost a slight char on the outside, delicious).

However, the most memorable thing for me was that the bartender had, apparently, rifled through my high-school record collection and played a TON of music I hadn’t heard in eons. Right when I showed up, in fact, he played Alkaline Trio’s “Goddammit!” record in its entirety. By the time I decided to leave ACs my brain was so addled by PBR and Chicago-style pop-punk I was getting ready to seek out a drummer and write some 2 minute hookfests about drinking cheap beer and sitting on couches, all soaring octave lines and machinegun drum fills. However, I soon put the kybosh on that notion as I continued my journey across that damn bridge…

AC’S BAR

467 King St.

Charleston, SC

BEER

Tap: A few locals and some crummy domestics.

Bottle: Selection seemed pretty good, AC’s has their “Beer of the Month” where you get a pretty damn good bottle for $2.25 . This month it is Harp.

They also have their whole booze selection written on the mirrors over the bar including a section which says, simply, “Champagne: Miller High Life - $2”

FOOD

Excellent burgers, pretty standard bar fare. Apparently they also have the best Philly Cheese Steak south of the Mason/Dixon.

ENTERTAINMENT

TVs: A few on which baseball and America’s Funniest Home Videos bid for my attention.

Bar Games: Pool, touch screen.

CLIENTELE

Rockers, hipsters, bike messengers, etc.

MUSIC

Jukebox: Not that I could see. An iPod that, apparently, can look into my past lives at the bar, though.

Live: There appeared to be a stage at the front of the bar, although there weren’t any fliers up for shows.

DÉCOR

Cheers meets your Uncle’s basement

BANG FOR YR BUCK

Pretty damn good. 5 Buck Burgers and 2 Dollar PBRS. I got out of there for 9 bucks plus tip.

OVERALL RATING

8.5

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Did I give this bar a higher rating because it inadvertently brought me back to my childhood? Maybe. Should you still check it out if you are looking for something to do in Charleston? Definitely.

Right in the Breadbasket: Lawrence, KS pt. III: The Bottleneck

Another helpful hint for those of you out there on the road, free pool time is your friend. Generally you can find one or two bars in any given town that have set their pool tables to “free” during the afternoon/evening*. These free pool times also usually accompany happy hours which is also a bonus. Free pool is great for myriad reasons.

1) Idle hands are the devil’s plaything.

If you tour like I usually do, you generally have a lot of time on your hands to screw around. They say that time equals money and this has never been more true than when you have a little bit of money and a lot of time on your hands with nothing to do. Free pool eliminates your need for something (which usually costs money) to do. Also, as I mentioned before, free pool is usually accompanied by happy hours which also ease the strain on the wallet. Also if you happen to play in a band with someone who is really good at pool, it gives you the chance to progressively improve in order to one day defeat them**.

2) Hey there Stranger.

Free pool/happy hours are great places to meet people. Don’t know anyone in town? Afraid no one is going to come to your show? Hit up the local beer hall with free pool, play a few games with your bandmates and strike up conversations with people playing near you. If you/they are cool they will end up coming to your show later that night and probably call their friends to say “Hey I met these dudes at the bar earlier, they are playing tonight, let’s go!” You want this.

3) R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Many places you will play on your tour will be bars. These bars will have pool tables, and if you can play a decent game of pool against someone at the bar you gain that person’s respect. This will lead to them sticking around to watch you, buying a t-shirt and maybe offering you a place to crash. Careful though, just because Cletus put up a fight against you and your bass player during cutthroat does not mean that his house will be clean, not covered in cat poop, or that he will not try to tell you about how he robbed a bank and/or try to get you guys to “party” all night***. So, free pool is your friend then, because it offers you the chance to work on your game.

4) Bonus Round.

As you can see in the above photo, you can also take awesome band pictures while playing pool and people will think you are cool.

So after eating a delicious meal at the Mad Greek, Jack and I found ourselves in a position we occupied a lot, namely, having very little money and a lot of time on our hands. So, what did we do? You guessed it. Free pool time.

The Bottleneck is apparently a pretty cool rock club. Although we were there in the middle of the day, the lineups seemed to be pretty cool, mostly touring acts. The Old 97s or some band of that ilk was playing the night we were there. Most importantly for us, though, they had free pool and cheap beer.

We were the only ones there, so numbers 2 and 3 were eliminated, however it did give me a chance to lose spectacularly to Jack about twelve times as well as to consume some of the local Free States porter which was delicious.

The Bottleneck qualifies as a dive bar, for me, dude behind the bar with a bad attitude, nasty looking concrete floor, no door on the bathroom/stall, etc. so, since it’s been a while I’m going to bust out the old DBRS:

Tah Dah!

THE BOTTLENECK

737 New Hampshire

Lawrence, KS

BEER

Tap: Pretty good, a lot of locals.

Bottle: Good.

FOOD

None that I could see.

ENTERTAINMENT

TVs: Meh.

Bar Games: Three pool tables (worn and lumpy just like a dive bar’s should be).

CLIENTELE

Couldn’t tell, as there was NOBODY there.

MUSIC

Jukebox: Above average.

Live: National touring acts.

DÉCOR

90’s Alt-rock press photos/standard rock dive fare.

BANG FOR YR BUCK

Happy hour was pretty decent from what I remember and they appear to have several of them, can’t speak for showtime, though. Also the free pool didn’t hurt.

OVERALL RATING

7

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The Bottleneck seems like it would be a good place to see a show. We certainly had a good time playing free pool and drinking cheap beer there, if you’ve got time to kill in Lawrence I’d recommend it.

*A quick search on Google usually will turn these up.

**Kelsey Crawford, if you are reading this I am coming for you.

*** “Party” generally involves watching CHUD II, drinking the worst beer you can think of and listening to his stories about all of the different ATVs he’s owned in his life. Not cool.

Iowa Pt. III: A La Recherche du Paul's Perdu

My beloved Twinnies lost! But did that do anything to quell this man’s Playoffs Fever? Absolutely not. Still sequestered in Dubuque, Iowa I continued on my search for dive bars in which to feed my need for beer and baseball. I heard rumors of a place called “Paul’s Tavern” “Paul’s Tap” and “Paul’s Bar” where one could get a cheeseburger and a beer for two bucks. Now, either there are a lot of guys named Paul in Dubuque who are all trying to corner the cheap drunk market, or Paul’s Tavern/Tap/Bar was the same place. Sure enough, at 176 Locust St. in Dubuque Paul’s Tavern reared its ugly head. A doublewide bar if I’ve ever seen one, Paul’s Tavern has to be one of the narrowest bars I’ve ever been to. It also features the most frightening array of dead animals I have ever seen in my life which are, apparently, “Paul’s Big Game Trophies”.

Photo By Darren Snow

These “Trophies” range from deer to mountain goats to small varmints all stuffed and neatly arrayed in large, neon-backlit glass cases that line both walls. Remember when I said Paul’s was one of the narrowest bars I’ve ever seen? Well huge glass cases full of dead animals encroaching from either side doesn’t help that sense of claustrophobia.

The television in Paul’s is a tiny remnant of the Carter administration, crouching under the glassy gaze of a mountain goat in the farthest rear corner of Paul’s. As it coughed up the only game that the Sox won in their series against Tampa I ordered what was to become the first of many $1 beers from a bartendress who looked like a 90 year old shaved cat that had been smoking Virginia Slims since the Titanic sunk. The beer? Old Style. Classic Chicago-baseball-watching beer. Now, Old Style, for all of you beerficionados out there who don’t drink yard beers with us plebeians, is not, I will admit, the greatest beer in the world.* However, THIS particular keg of Old Style had, apparently been sitting in the basement of Paul’s Tap since the last time the Twins won the World Series.** AND, apparently the way that Paul’s Tap could justify selling Old Style for $1 was if they doled it out by the thimbleful. After roughly 18 Dixie cups of Old Style I was ready for a burger.

The Paul’s Tavern burger was probably the most blatantly unsanitary thing I have ever consumed in my life. This is saying a lot coming from a guy who eats off the floor to keep his immune system on its toes. Nefertiti’s Mummy pulled a pre-made hamburger patty out of a cooler which I could’ve sworn was sitting open since I walked in, tossed it in some sort of grill/oven which was so crusted over it looked like a topographical map of the Appalachians, looked annoyed/bored and said, “One dollar, sweetie.” Now I suspect that the crustitution of this particular grill/oven thingee had something to do with how delicious this particular slider was. Whatever the case might’ve been, it was absolutely delicious. And only a dollar! How magical.

Several more walnut shells full of Old Style later I engaged in conversation with a drunk, nearly deaf man who proceeded to yell at me for roughly a half hour about being in the Ironworker’s Union, how much he hated the Sox (yes, ladies and gents, this man was a dirty, dirty Cubs fan) and how he was going to try to get fellated by his across the hall neighbor. Good luck Lazy-Eye.

Towards the end of the night the Sox won, all was right with the universe and my tab ended up being somewhere around $12. Money well spent, thanks Paul’s!

I spent the rest of the night singing Italian arias down by the Mississippi river with Jack and Sabyre. I brought Sabyre a bag of oranges which she adopted as her baby. I also fell and ripped my jeans, so now I have a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee and look much cooler than I would otherwise. Great!

NAME OF BAR

Paul’s Tavern

176 Locust St.

Dubuque, IA

BEER

Tap: Old Style (comes in tiny, tiny glasses)

Bottle: Didn’t get a chance to inspect the bottle selection, wouldn’t imagine it’s that great.

FOOD

Delicious sliders from a Cold War grilloven.

ENTERTAINMENT

TVs: At least one which probably displayed the Moon Landing.

Bar Games: I believe there was pinball and perhaps Ms. Pac-Man

CLIENTELE

Old drunks. Guys with lazy eyes who talk about their peckers.

MUSIC

Jukebox: I seem to remember them having some sort of jukebox, but baseball was more important…

Live: None

DÉCOR

Scary, scary dead animals, everywhere!

BANG FOR YR BUCK

The beers weren’t that huge but they were only a dollar and the burgers were pretty good and I walked out of there with a pretty slim tab. 8

OVERALL RATING

7.5

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Paul’s is, apparently, an old drunk institution in Dubuque. If you are looking for a cheap in every sense of the word time, Paul’s is the place to go in Dubuque. Also, it is a good place to watch baseball.

* Before all you Chicagoans with a chip on your shoulder start getting your noses out of joint about Old Style, understand that if you think that Old Style is the greatest beer in the world that you don’t actually MEAN that, you simply think that any attack on Old Style is an attack on the Sox or the Cubs or Chicago. Truth be told it has nothing to do with that, Old Style is just kindof a crummy beer, please act accordingly.

**1991 for all of you cretins out there.

Iowa Pt. II

Baseball playoff season has always been one of my favorite times of the year. Maybe it’s because my birthday happens to be smack dab in the middle, maybe it’s rallying behind my beloved Twinnies as they inevitably make it to and then lose in the semifinals, maybe it’s the hot-dogs and copious amounts of cheap beer that are consumed, maybe it’s because, “half passed out, stuffed full of food, with my hand down the front of my pants during the 7th Inning Stretch” is one of my favorite positions. Whatever the case may be, buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks (or an Old Style and a hamburger) and prop me in front of a TV and I am happy as a clam.

As I mentioned in a previous entry I spent a large part of 2008’s playoff season in Dubuque, Iowa for some reason. I watched Twinnies make their inevitable march towards the exit at Breezer’s Pub in what I can only imagine is Downtown Dubuque. Breezer’s is an old drunk townie bar if I’ve ever seen one. Old Drunk Townie bars are one of my favorite places to watch baseball, a couple of wasted old guys sitting at the bar, yelling and cursing at the screen, calling players and umps alike “Ya Bum!”, jukebox full of Merle Haggard and AC/DC, and, most importantly, cheap beer. Breezers had the added cachet of a section of the bar being entirely devoted to a pool table, several large televisions and the largest collection of Hot Babe/Action Hero/Fantasy Scenes 8x10s I’ve ever seen adorning 3 of the walls. Dirty Harry is perched next to Jenny McCarthy in a schoolgirl uniform who is, in turn, situated underneath a heavy metal album cover-esque painting of a barbarian fighting a pack of wolves in a swamp.

Dive Bar Rating Scale
BREEZER’S

BEER
Tap: Poor
Bottle: OK

ENTERTAINMENT
TVs: Good
Bar Games: Pool, Air Hockey, Big Game Hunter

CLIENTELE
Old Drunks

MUSIC
Jukebox: 4
Live: None

DÉCOR
Movie Posters, Island Scenes, Floor to Ceiling 8x10s of famous people and barbarians.

BANG FOR YR BUCK
Happy Hour is $2.75 Budweiser bottles

OVERALL RATING
5

FINAL THOUGHTS
Breezer’s is a pretty middle of the road dive bar, the beer isn't all that cheap but they do have a pool table and a few TVs so if it's playoff season and you want to shoot a couple rounds, Breezer's fulfills all the right criteria.