Walking the fine line between Jimmy Carter sober and Billy Carter drunk, Barrespondent Drew keeps on keepin’ on, puts the hammer down and gets this convoy truckin’. After that, he asks himself why he felt the need to watch all of Smokey and The Bandit when it was on AMC the other day. In the case of most businesses, the outside appearance can greatly assist you in figuring out what it’s like inside. For... [continue]

Full of more holiday cheer than Santa Claus after a weekend bender in Vegas, Barrespondent Drew returns with more reasons to put down that A-Team DVD your friends gave you for Christmas as a joke and head out to the local. A huge mistake is made by people all over the place every single day. From the largest metropolis to the smallest little craphole in western New Mexico, people are constantly confusing what makes... [continue]

It’s about that time again (for the first time). Time to heap a whole year’s worth of praise on to several lucky and talented establishments that did us the kind service of getting us drunk. Yes indeed, ‘tis the season for recognizing the best of the best, the places that don’t settle for second place, that realize life is a marathon not a sprint, and any other clichéd ‘successories’ slogans you can think of. Crack-a-lack-a!!... [continue]

Relaxed from spending a week off in order to spike the Thanksgiving gravy with enough bourbon to kill Dennis Hopper, Barrespondent Drew dives right back into the San Francisco bar scene just in time for the peak drinking season. Alas, yet another old familiar bar has changed hands, been gutted of everything but the support beams and been completely redone. Following in the footsteps of places like Doctor Bombay’s, The Albion and Hush Hush... [continue]

Eager to remind all the kids out there that drunk driving is a whole lot more fun when the car is imaginary, Barrespondent Drew spends another night honking and shaking his fist at bike messengers while the other BART passengers give him funny looks. Have sober people ever played pool? Darned if we know, but perhaps more so than any other ‘sport’ (except maybe darts), billiards is one that we’re sure is meant only... [continue]

Blurring the line between… uh… that thing and another thing… well, ok, blurring everything lines and all, Barrespondent Drew sets out to prove once again that going out drinking can be fun (who knew?). At the risk of stating something monumentally obvious that everyone’s known for years, Downtown San Francisco is really becoming quite the happening place to be. We guess years and years of absolute pitiful nothingness made us shy away from it... [continue]

Does drinking kill brain cells? Sure, but only the weak ones. Once again, Barrespondent Drew does the dirty work of getting rid of the less important parts of his mind, like the part that reminds you to eat every once in awhile, or the part that makes you write all good... Every once in blue moon, some friend of ours will begrudgingly invite us along to some hip, happening club in town. They always... [continue]

Trying to find the happy medium between sitting in the corner quietly discussing French poetry and loudly demanding to know who stole his pants while the cops drag him away, Barrespondent Drew gets settled in for more good old fashioned drinkin’. Maybe it’s because we’re about halfway between St. Patrick’s Days, but we seem to have been going to a lot of Irish bars lately. There’s just something about a good Irish pub in... [continue]

Because the only thing more fun than telling yourself that you’ve "got to stop drinking so much" is trying to remember why you would ever say such a thing when you’re blind drunk 12 hours later. So without further ado, Barrespondent Drew takes another local bar for some test spins. In order to protect our reputations as 'Equal Opportunity Drunks,' we decided to forgo dive bars this week and hit some place swanky. You... [continue]

Looking forward to the Winter drinking season, Barrespondent Drew crawls inside another dark hideaway to get away from the cold (even if it’s still just an imagined chill caused by having the shakes). Continuing on with the theme of authentic Irish Pubs, we thought it would only be fair to visit the other end of the spectrum. Last week’s praising of Martin Mack’s genuine Irishness made us remember a place we’ve been recently that... [continue]

Finding out the hard way that most San Francisco bars frown upon paying for your drinks in pennies, Barrespondent Drew continues his quest to find the best taverns, saloons and speakeasys in the city. Being the drinking snobs we are, authenticity is certainly important when considering an Irish pub. No one likes the feeling of being cheated that washes over you when you enter some place called 'Kilty McBagpipes' and see nothing but NFL... [continue]

Offsetting the high cost of Bay Area drinking by just skipping dinner all together (sometimes the simplest solutions are the best!), Barrespondent Drew meets another liquor dispensing establishment head on. As was mentioned a few weeks ago, our new favorite part of town is the outer Mission/ Glen Park/ Bernal Heights. Actually, that’s one of the things we’ve come to love about the area where Mission meets Valencia, its refusal to be easily categorized.... [continue]

A big believer in the notion that what you drink determines who you are much more than nature or nurture, Barrespondent Drew nurtures a few more pints while discussing the nature of something or other. Take that Darwin! Creating a great dive bar isn’t nearly as easy as you might think. After all, there’s no shortage of bars in this city or anywhere around the world that could be classified as ‘dive’. Anywhere vaguely... [continue]

Following his doctor’s strict advice, Barrespondent Drew continues to get all lit up a few times a week and sober up long enough to scribble out a review of the only place he remembers going. At least we think it was a doctor. He had a white coat on… People are always telling us to ‘Get out and see the world.”. Or at least telling us to ‘get out’. So following that advice, we... [continue]

Even though this column’s supposed to be about the bars of San Francisco, given the unbelievably tragic events of the last couple of weeks, we simply must pay due respect to the drinkin’-est city this side of Bavaria. Of course we're talkin' bout New Orleans. Things may look bad now, but we know that you’ll rise again and take back your rightful place at the throne of Fat Tuesday’s mayhem. Even though we’ve never... [continue]

In the ongoing fight between sobriety and drunken mayhem, Barrespondent Drew whispers to sobriety that it really never had a chance and should probably give up. Oh Inner Mission, we can never stay mad at you. Every time we get fed up waiting for a drink and vow never to frequent your bars ever again, we do so knowing full well that we’ll be back at the trough soon enough. After all, where else... [continue]

Blurring the line between casual and problematic drinking, Barrespondent Drew does the ‘hard work’ of walking into unfamiliar bars of the bay area. That way if he gets nearly beaten to death for not being a local, you’ll at least have a negative review to serve as a heads up. My, what noble work! Coming to the slightly shocking realization that there just aren’t that many parts of town we haven’t completely worn out... [continue]

Clutching his photo of his one and only true hero, Henry Chinaski, Barrespondent Drew makes it through another week of imbibing to let you know which booze-holes are worth a Muni ride. The Irish/English bars of San Francisco are just great in our opinion. Sure, other cities may have a lot more 'across the pond' immigrants (N.Y., Boston), but just having more doesn’t equate directly to a better bar scene. We’ve been to a... [continue]

Likely to start throwing chairs if he hears the words ‘Virgin Pina Colada’, Barrespondent Drew continues his quest to find a bar so seedy and unscrupulous that they’d spike your kid’s Shirley Temple given half a chance. Whether it’s because of a deep seeded and constantly flip-flopping jealousy or our subconscious desire to pigeonhole every person in the city into predefined little categories, we continue to hold on to the belief that San Francisco... [continue]

They say that ‘Beer is dear but liquor is quicker’. Well, Barrespondent Drew has found that if you just combine the two it becomes an express train with no brakes, careening through stations leaving your fellow passengers bewildered and late for work. Commuting problem solved! Being a city full of more transients than your average Greyhound station, San Francisco needs places that you can count on. After all, if you’re coming back from a... [continue]