Roller Coaster By The Sea

The best part about hanging out in Boston for unofficial EBONY events that really have nothing to do with the mission of this blog? That I don't have to bother remembering the exact names of every place we visit so they can be checked off the list. Over 4 days of vacation I had a drink in some 13 different places -- philly airport, mj o'connors, uno pizzeria (wtf), boston beer works, fenway park, some bar at 40k on the marathon course, the bar at the copley square mariott, hotel 140, solas on boylston, grafton street in harvard, some dive bar in cambridge, the boston airport bar, american airlines flight 1081.

MJ O'Connor's, an Irish bar downtown, found me watching the Bruins with some old Russian men who were drinking Jager (wtf?).
The Uno Pizzeria was lunch after running the inaugural Boston pre-marathon 5k, where my lying friend Jason may or may not have run a 15:30 and finished 7th or 8th. Technically it was a Sunday and they weren't supposed to serve us beer until after Noon, but we charmed our russian-immigrant Law & Order-loving waitress and her manager. Beers made their way to our table by 11:15.
Boston Beer Works is on Yawkey right next to Fenway and they've got a great assortment of their own brews. People seemed unusually fascinated by the forever diving & rising blueberries.

Our seats at Fenway were nearly obstructed by a pole. Lester pitched a gem, lowering his ERA from somewhere north of 8.5 to the lower 5's. Good times at the ball park.

Heading back to Boston Beer Works we tried to determine if these two kids were on a date or not. Jason eavesdrops.

Marathon Monday finds Rick, Annie and I at the 40k mark, just West of Fenway Park & Kenmore station, at a bar we never got the name of. Here's the marathon course outside the window.

We watch on television as Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher put forth admirable efforts on the New England roads. We head outside in time to see them both run by, along with the rest of the well performing elites.

The bar attempts to charge us a $10 cover for our return, and this was probably where I started to get on the surly bus. No cover was paid. Another beer down, then more watching of our friends as they begin their parade past our vantage point.
Moving downtown we congratulate the friends we can find, have a beer at the Mariott and Hotel 140, then head back up to Boylston to see the last of the finishers and to grab a couple more beers at yet another Irish bar. Two people wearing their marathon medals step outside for cigarettes. Surly levels escalate.
A T-trip to Harvard takes us to Grafton Street for a post-marathon dinner. I can't speak for everyone else, but the oysters, clam chowder, cuban sandwich & slice of flatbread pizza I had were delicious.
Looking to celebrate even more, Zach takes us to a dive bar around the corner where things progressed quickly, especially after Jason ordered 17 irish car bombs. Somehow Toto comes up on the jukebox twice. I only dropped one girl while dancing. We closed the place down like you'd expect out of our marathoner friends.


Tuesday...the Boston Airport bar in the B terminal only has microbrews, and this angers at least 5 people I heard attempt to order Sam Adams. My 4th 22 ouncer is paid for by a 40-something married republican woman from Texas who's father is a Pentecostal Pastor. She proclaims to have been "saved" multiple times in her life. Aside from not caring what others have to think about you there aren't many things we agree on.

Flight 1081, despite being several hours behind schedule, was actually pretty damn fun. One more beer is finished on the flight as the conversation in our row (me, my new Chicago Trader friend, and the 100% Irish woman) covers everything from My Blue Heaven to surprise birthday parties to $6 premium nuts. We're briefly joined by prolific reader Jules from 8 rows up, who probably didn't say 'Hi' to her Mom like I told her to.
I get home at 1:45am...96 hours after I started packing for the trip.

We Were Born to Sin

The prior weekend was a quiet one for us, but we did tackle 2 more bars in the neighborhood. Saturday started off at Clark Street Bar where we enjoyed our overpriced hot dog and fries, and extremely cheap pitcher of 312 while watching our White Sox take on the Twinkies. I guess you can consider this a dive bar/dive eatery all in one. It’s no Hoagie Hut though, which we were truly spoiled by when we resided at the 907. The Hoagie Hut was pretty much our go to hangover joint. We have yet to find one of these places in our new neighborhood; The Bagel had a good run, but ever since Intelligentsia increased the price of their coffee by 50%, my rendezvous down to Broadway has been limited.

After watching a couple innings of the game, we headed down Wellington to meet up with Adam, Sonny and Jorge (amongst many others in their posse) at Kirkwood. They claimed they were there to watch the Masters, but it seemed to us they were more preoccupied with the surroundings of the bar (especially Adam who was trying his hardest to bring out his ‘A’ game). We stayed through the end of the Sox game and progressed our beer intake by enjoying a couple Fat Tires and then finally a Delerium Nocturnum. I am pretty sure this is the earliest in the day I have ever had a Delerium – needless to say, I had a solid buzz going for a couple hours even though I was sans drinking. There were also a handful of idiots within Kirkwood, which I guess is expected on a Saturday afternoon. One especially that sticks out was sitting at the table with Adam. He got to be known as “Sunglass Dude” since he kept his shades on while he was INSIDE the bar the whole time. Seriously why do people do this, I don’t get it? What is even worse are visors, do dudes still wear those? If they do, they should be stoned (like in Biblical times, not with a joint). Anyway, Sunglass Dude is the epitome of Wrigleyville/LP d-bag. I hope he’s reading this (as we gave him a business card) so he can straighten his life together, you can thank us later SD. Adam claimed he wasn’t his friend, but a friend-of-a-friend. Okay Adam, okay. The biggest chuckle of my day came when Jorge was looking at the beer menu and told me how much he enjoyed Kalibur. I debated if I should tell him or not that a Kalibur is a N/A beer. He’ll learn someday.

Kyle and I split ways after this, I met with Annie and we dominated some damn good BBQ at Smoque. Kyle went to a beer tasting and eventually down to Guthrie’s to play some Battleship and Connect Four. We planned on meeting them at Guthries, but it took us a good 2 hours to get home from Smoque because the Addison bus apparently doesn’t run after 8 and there no cabs in sight. So we relied on the CTA and ended up taking 3 buses to get back to her place (Pulaski to Belmont to Halsted). At this point we were beat and bailed on Kyle. I do look forward to Guthries in the near future and taking down my opponent in Scrabble.

On Sunday we headed down to Bridgeport for the White Sox game. So far we’ve been to 2 of the 6 games and my goal is to go to 1 game of every home series. We’re well on pace. We’ll be MIA next weekend as EBONY is heading out to Boston to cheer on our peeps in the Boston Marathon (and celebrate afterwards). Keep your eyes pealed though as we’ll keep the blog rolling with our exploits in Beantown. Peace.