The Cowtown Chronicles

Everyone’s favorite beer bar turns 13 this year — and they’re celebrating by throwing a party featuring a bunch of beverages that no 13-year-old should be drinking.

The party kicks off at 4PM this Saturday, the 7th. They’ll be tapping a new special keg every hour on the hour, starting with Avery Czar, and concluding with a cask-conditioned Avery Hog Heaven. (I’m excited to try the 2nd keg they’re tapping, the Avery Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest Lager.)

Maybe next year they can get JB at Rahr to brew them something special for their birthday…

This is a difficult list to compile, because the “best” place for a given thing depends greatly on what kind of drinkin’ mood I’m in. The best place to drink for martinis is different from the best place for a margarita, beer, etc. I’ll try to be as general as possible, but keep in mind that these are MY best places, so obviously they’re subjective and biased as all get-out.

5) Whiskey & Rye — Omni hotel, Downtown Surprised? Don’t be — this is a genuinely nice bar with good happy hour appetizer specials. Once I coached the bartenders and waitress on how I liked my martinis (i.e. with gin, not vodka), they were solid, if not great. W&R recently started carrying a special Rahr brew, as well, giving a hotel bar something you normally don’t find — a nod to the locals. I’m too young to remember the heyday of hotel bars, but this is one that I’d like to see succeed. Best drinks here: fancy signature drinks, Rahr Rusty Spur beer, one of the many rye whiskies on the wall, over rocks.

4) Baker St. Pub — Camp Bowie Probably another surprise, but I can explain this in three words: Bloody Mary Bar. On Sundays from 11-3, you can buy your favorite vodka at the bar, then choose from a huge selection of mixes, spices, salts & veggies, and mix it yourself. Food is passable, but not great. Decor is kinda fun in a cheesy sort of way. I particularly like the hidden private booths and wingback chairs. Best drinks here: DIY Bloody Marys on Sunday, simple mixed drinks, draft beers from the big 3 or Guinness.

3) 7th Haven — W. 7th St., across from Montgomery Plaza You know it for the pithy sayings on the sign out front — I know it as the place where I got massively ripped on the rooftop deck for my birthday last year. The deck is truly awesome, even though the view isn’t necessarily spectacular. I expect it will soon be packed, once things start to warm up. Best drinks here: shots, shooters, bottled beer, and simple (two ingredient) mixed drinks.

2) The Chat Room Pub — W. Magnolia, down the block and across from Spiral Diner. Smoky as hell (I mean that literally), but Brad and his crew are the best bartenders in town, hands down. They’ll ask you your name once, and remember it and your drink from that point forward. It’s also THE hub for the struggling filmmaker/musician/photographer/artist scene on the South Side. Great jukebox, but also a great patio for escaping the smoke inside. Bring your friends and create your own entertainment. Best drinks here: This is the place to try out all those classic drinks you’ve wanted to try but couldn’t summon the balls to order at Chili’s — the Moscow Mule, The Sidecar, Manhattans, Sazerac, etc. Pretty much anything you get will be expertly made.

1) The Flying Saucer — 4th St., on Sundance Square diagonal from Bass Hall Smoke free since the beginning of last year, the Saucer’s business has actually IMPROVED, despite the smoking ban and the fact that they only serve beer and wine. Friday and Saturday nights are “scenester” nightmares, but go on any night during the week on a regular basis and you’ll start seeing the same folks over and over, a testament to the loyalty Flying Saucers create. The food is good (not as good as it used to be, but still good bar food), the staff knows more about beer than any human should know, and you’ll always find something worth drinking. Did I mention that the inside is smoke-free? Best drinks here: Any beer not from the big 3. If you’re feeling adventurous, try Delirium Tremens if they have it on tap, or Tripple Karmeliet. (If you’re feeling REALLY adventurous, ask for an Oskar Blue’s Ten Fidy.) Otherwise, tell the beertender what you normally drink and have them bring you something new to try.

Bonus spot: Chadra Mezza & Grill — Park Place Ave., off 8th Ave. The food is simply incredible, but they’ve also got a surprisingly good (although SLOW) bar. Chadra is the home of my absolute favorite drink of the moment — the Chadra Mezzatini, a dirty martini garnished with (and dirtied by) the brine that Nehme uses to make his pickles and pickled radishes. It’s pink, but I don’t care, I love it! Go on Friday for the buffet, sit out on the patio surrounded by the herb garden, and throw back a few Mezzatinis — if you only had a hookah, you’d swear you were in Lebanon. Best drinks here: Mezzatini, dammit! Otherwise, they have all the Rahr offerings on draft, and their well liquors are most other places’ premium pours.

Well, really I think it’s more than a bit full of itself, but I do appreciate and respect its position as a(the?) premier world city.

I also LOVE the NY Times. I read it as often as I can. Lately that’s been pretty often due to the student readership program at TCU — which puts stacks of The Gray Lady in bins all over campus, free for the taking.

Imagine my surprise today when “all the news that’s fit to print” included an op-ed on Judge Sharon Keller, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge who refused to keep her clerk’s office open an extra 20 minutes to allow a death row inmate’s legal team to file new motions based on a pending Supreme Court review of lethal injection.

Okay, so what? The good, Christian, peaceful, other-cheek-turning people of Texas ritualistically kill retards and foreigners on the taxpayer’s dime all the time — why is this worthy of an opinion piece by the Editorial Board of the NY Times?

It’s news because Fort Worth State Representative Lon Burnam has filed a resolution to impeach Judge Keller for “…gross neglect of duty and conducting her official duties with willful disregard for human life.”

Good on ya, Lon, for calling for an investigation into this Judge’s actions. As the opinion piece in the Times says, if the facts of the matter are as the condemned man’s lawyers have said, then Judge Keller should be removed from office, relieved of her state retirement benefits and disbarred. (Maybe even tried for negligent homicide? I’m sure there are legal indemnifications for judges acting in their official capacity, even if they’re acting improperly.)

If the allegations are false and the attorneys just didn’t get their paperwork done in time without talking to anyone at the court, then no harm, no foul, and Judge Keller keeps her job, etc., and we can let the voters decide in 2012 if she gets to come back.

Oddly enough, I also read the S-T today. I usually stay off the opinion page, because the letters to the editor are usually so stereotypically “White Bible-Belt ‘Conservative’ Texan” as to be embarrassing for the rest of y’all. One of the letters, predictably, calls for Rep. Burnam to “…go do the job he was elected to do and let the judges run the courts.” Well, Mr. Walter Degner of Arlington, perhaps you should go back and read that trivial slip of paper called The Constitution. Each branch of government exercises some degree of oversight and control of the other — Mr. Burnam is doing EXACTLY the job he was elected to do, and should be applauded for that.

I’m pretty sure I remember reading that new menus at Ol’ South was one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Right after J&J’s Hideaway closing and before TCU winning a football National Championship.

It looks like someone over at the Fort Worth Real Estate Blog has some issues with W&C. Methinks maybe they have issues with our commenters and maybe can’t tell the difference between editorial content and comments.

Anyway, here’s a comment that I wanted to leave (but couldn’t, due to their commenting system being hosed up) in response to their most recent post about something they didn’t like on W&C — something that I think they’re misinterpreting or reading into Steve’s post on injection wells.

Thanks for the link!

I’m sorry if you think that we at West and Clear are ungrateful for any kind of commercial investment in Fort Worth. I can assure you that exactly the opposite is true — we want Fort Worth to succeed and grow, but we want it to be smart and reasoned growth, taking into account more than just the financial benefits.

I’m not interested in rebutting your comments point by point, except to say this:

If you only look at Barnett Shale activity from the economic perspective, then yes, it has certainly been a good thing in the short term. But the true leaders in this City should be looking at the LONG term and how ALL of the drilling activities will affect things. It’s unacceptable to just push risks off onto future generations so that we (by “we” I mean a small number of people, myself included) can make a few bucks today. What happens when all those wells are drilled and the thousands of jobs are gone, off to another “play”? The same thing that happened to places like Ranger and countless other towns in West and central Texas that prospered during the oil boom in the early 20th Century, albeit on a smaller scale. The Barnett Shale may be tiding us over during the greater economic downturn, but is it preparing us for the coming rebound? I don’t think so.

Carl at behavior gap — a blog on investing, for average investors, has written the most sensible thing I’ve read yet about the “economic downturn.”

He sums up my feelings exactly in this blog post: The Great Reset.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sustainability. I realize that “sustainability” is a VERY broad concept, and that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about it, because I’m really good at big picture things and not so good at detailed, incremental things.

Anyway, expect more posts on this topic over the coming months.

I’m going to stop posting to the blog every time I record a video (unless it’s a particularly good one). You’ll notice at the top that I’ve added a page called “Pete’s YouTube Channel,” that’s where you should go to see and subscribe to the video blog.

As to why I haven’t recorded a video in a while — zits. Seriously. I broke out ridiculously bad this week when I tried a fancy shaving method, and I’m vain enough to not want to broadcast myself like that.

I hope to resume regular transmissions next week.

Thanks to everyone who’s been including me in their roundups lately! I don’t hate or ignore you, I’m just too scatterbrained to sit down and write something.

Steve got to eat at Eddie V’s. It was a soft opening, so maybe the food was free, but if I know Steve, he racked up a booze tab rivaling the national debt.

Kevin takes us for a tour of a new-construction Bungalow style home in Fairmount. Proof that modern materials can make classic architecture better, not worse. As expensive as this thing is, though, I’m surprised that there aren’t any overt “green” features.

BTW, Bernie likes a Booty Goo. I’m just sayin’.

Sonja — Yes, we’re more hip (as you have no doubt noticed by now, since you are now one of us), and yes, even an old Apple Notebook makes you cool.

FW Foodie rants about resolutions — I like the “Keep, Stop, Start” philosophy of resolving!

Jarid Manos, the Ghetto Plainsman, is also in a resolving/reflective mood because of the New Year.

Thimblewicket gives us some insight into why oppressive governments are threatened by a well-educated populace.

Allen at The Whited Sepulchre finally posts his “Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Me” entry.

And now I’m tired. No more linkies from me for a while. If you’re good, you’ll get a video tonight.