Is the bar or club from your misspent youth still open? Do you still go there? What made it "yours"? What's your best memory?

[DrPepper12]

[WhiteSteve]

Locationally, all are still open. Some are under new ownership by now though. Actually, two are gone. One is a restaurant now, and the other got demolished for an existing restaurant to expand.

I was also a bouncer for about ten years. One place is open but was sold to a guy who used to be kind of a “friend of the house.” Haven’t been back since then, I fell out with the previous owner, but the new guy was a chef, so I imagine he upgraded the kitchen capabilities as well as taking the bar over.

The other place sold out to a local sports bar after a big relocation effort to get bigger but also find a friendlier deal in terms of rent. I wasn’t there too much longer after the move. Ironically, the move kind of killed them, as all the business was uptown, and they moved a little down the road closer to the entrance of campus, in a plaza, in a place that was initially a grocery store (I worked in the same space as a personal trainer when it was a Gold’s Gym maybe three years prior, lmao). The attempted to fuse two distinctly different upstairs (bar/lounge) and downstairs (traditional restaurant/bar with an older, more “Happy Hour”/after work crowd than the college scene upstairs), plus an entire brewing operation into this cavernous building. Imagine eating in a “dining room” the size of a third of a grocery store, with the high ceilings and all. No good, lmao. The 100-foot bar was impressive, but again, it was cavernous. It just didn’t work. And being downtown was so huge.

But yeah, the ironic part is that they treaded water for a couple more years, but then this place across the street was a little sports bar that ran a hugely popular Buffalo wings operation out of the back, both as a feature of the bar, and as a delivery/takeout service for the nearby colleges. I think they outgrew their shell, and saw the space across the way from them, my old bar, and they approached with an offer. So basically the sports bar and wings operation are over there, and they bought or partnered with the old place for their brewing operation. Haven’t been in there, but it sounds like a big thing.

And the kicker is that, now, as I’m told by younger people I meet from my alma mater, that downtown (we called it “uptown”, but it’s a downtown, haha) area of bars is no longer the hot spot, and down the hill where my old place moved to IS. Which is crazy to try to wrap my head around, as a long time resident of the area. All those “uptown” bars were where “the cool kids” went, haha. Not to mention the premier pizza slice place is right in the middle of them, that was a guaranteed mob scene at 1 AM. Wonder how that’s affected them?🤔

Anyway…. the original location…tons of memories there, most importantly meeting my girlfriend, 18 years ago, right at the entrance on her way in. Plenty of people can tell you where they first met, but fewer can tell you the exact spot they were standing in, to a 12-inch-or less margin of error. I went to the new bar, and it’s like Bizarro World. It’s like when you have a dream and you’re somewhere familiar, yet everything is different. The first bar I mentioned too, many memories there as well, with other ladies, lmao. Lots of funny stories, and friends you think will always be around, but it turns out they’re just someone you know for a couple years. But great friends and memories all the same, life is just like that. I actually have a whole file of pictures from our 2004 holiday party with employees and our favorite regulars, so I have pictures of pretty much everyone, a day frozen in time…

I should really Photoshop that pit sweat out😅 Distracts from me getting my ass kicked in the Carbomb race though🤣

[WhiteSteve]

Additional thing I just thought of…. there was a section of one of the bars I frequented known as “The Dugout”, a long narrow room that was about three steps down from the main area of the bar.

Dennis Haskins, aka “Mr. Belding” from Saved By The Bell, once came to my school to speak. Afterwards, he took to the town, and was mingling with college kids. And one unflattering candid picture of him made for one of my all time favorite memes, taken in “The Dugout”….

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

I had two bars, one is still open, a pub, after 25 years, the other one, a sort of metal bar, had its ceiling crumble a few years after I deserted lol.

Really good memories, this is where I learnt of how atypical people can be, and how their lives can be scattered in all directions, because I befriended people from any age, sex or gender. This is quite a movie cast I remember, there was:

• One 60yo former anarchist (the intellectual type) converted to a depressed coder wasting his life working for a random corp he hated
• One 30yo alcoholic and eccentric guy thinking he was a vampire, especially when he was drunk
• Two 25yo proto-feminist students, with a mild hippie lifestyle
• One 50yo seropositive gay having a particularly optimistic look at life, that was before triple therapy became a thing
• One super redhead Irish bartender I secretly liked but her patchouli scent was really throwing me off lol
• One 40yo hick who actually looked and behaved like your average G@G user
• One 70yo schizophrenic, the non-verbal type, who was quite the mascot of the place, asking everyone for coffee and cigarettes
• One 30yo intense girl lost in a romantic quest, chasing a painter who happened to not really give a damn about her
• ...

Thanks for bringing back the memories, Doc. I didn't forget that period, but I didn't know I could remember it so vividly, nor did I realize how all these guys and girls had an impact on my future life 🫡

[DrPepper12]

Beautiful ain't it?

[Screenwriter]

No idea since it's 85 miles away from here in my college town and that was 50 years ago! Doubtful.

BUt I have found memories of drinking Rusty Nails, scotch and drambuie! Really sweet!, and dancing to loud disco music and sweating heavily!

Was a titular "gay" bar where loads of women went to dance with men who were fine with having them there and where women went with gay men who were friends.

A safe place where women weren't hit on by obnoxious men, except to get out and dance!

[Crimsyjo]

It's changed names several times but yes my bar from my youth... bar I lost my virginity in... is still open and running as a bar. I don't really go there though. Just handful of times this past year.

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

Virginity in a bar? Damn you had a wild start over there lol

[DrPepper12]

Not in the stock room? Please say it wasn't in the stock room!!!

OMG!!! It was the POOL TABLE after hours wasn't it?

Wait. No. Hold on. Ok. I'm good now. Sorry. Those were my memories...

[AyChingao]

That would have been Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland CA down on Martin Luther King Blvd. formerly Grove. This was the diviest of blues dives. I was in a 5 piece rock n blues band at that moment in time, and that bar was owned by our drummers dad. We invaded it regularly and jammed out, and on Thursday nights you could walk in with ya instrument or ya voice and sign the blackboard under your specialty. When the one above you on the list came offstage and crossed his name off up ya went no matter who was up there on the other instruments. Scare the beJeezus outta ya the first time but soon got comfy, and some of those guys had radio play about 30 years before. Awesome place. Still got fond memorie of thr good times at Eli's.

[DJB72]

Only pub I went to was called "The Vaults". It's about 20 years since I was in the town I grew up in but I gather it's now some trendy wine bar filled with fuckwits who couldn't find their ass with both hands drinking crap my mates as a teenager wouldn't have cleaned our toilets with - weak as piss

[BonzoInBitburg]

They are and they were really seedy back then but now they both only serve craft beer and cocktails with incredibly good food. They still look like bars with bands on Friday and Saturday nights but it's more like fine dining now.

[exitseven]

no, it has been closed for many years and was bulldozed 4 years ago.

[DrPepper12]

Sorry

[exitseven]

oddly enough i now live in the same town where this place was.

[Dongie]

There was a place in Longview called Fast Freddy's. It had a square bar that was big and about 20 pool tables. Along the front there were video games and 2 or 3 Foosball tables. Very cool place. It was packed every weekend.

[Dongie]

It's been closed for I guess 12-15 years.

[WonderingManII]

The model airplane flying club is still open. I only was in it one year, to learn how to fly R/C. It is an expensive club to be in.

[Likes2drive]

I really didn’t go to clubs or bars much back then but the ones that I did go to don’t exist anymore or changed names, but I don’t go to bars or clubs anyway

[RedInnocent69]

Nope. It also had a strip club next door