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[mostlybars-blog]

I Didn’t Realize I’d Been Spelling Starlite Wrong This Whole Time

Located in the glamorous Haymarket, in the heart of downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, Starlite Lounge sits quietly in the basement of a place where you can get fried nuggets of gator meat. Starlite Lounge is probably one of the most Lincoln bars ever because it's the only bar with a retro, 50’s theme that also occasionally serves fried okra. A lot of people think this bar is for an older crowd, people who want to relive the Mad Men days and pretend an Old Fashioned is a good drink. I wholeheartedly disagree with that and I will ABSOLUTELY tell you why.

 First, I graduated college in May and am currently saving money to move to Chicago in August. The problem is, as soon as any sweet alcohol touches my lips, I think I’m the godamn queen of England and can have whatever I want. This leads to me buying a lot of expensive drinks and ultimately spending at least $10 at D’Leon’s. You could say I’m very bad at being broke. The reason I love Starlite so much, besides the giant sweaty booths, overall absence of light, and little to no cellphone reception, is their happy hour.

 When I walk into a Starlite’s happy hour, I know I’m going to leave happy with enough money to finally start a savings account. From 5-7pm every Friday, I thrive. When my dear friend, Ashley, and I hit up Starlite last Friday, we created a new kind of meal. Appetizer Soup. It’s where you take the small boat they provide for you, line the bottom with at least an inch-thick mix of ranch and hot cheese, make a layer of tortilla chips followed by a layer of fried mac and cheese balls, and finally, build a tower of mini corn dogs. You’re welcome to drizzle on another ladle of cheese/ranch mix (I usually do), but sometimes when the free app line is piling up because it has taken you a solid 10 minutes to create this mess, it’s best to just leave the ladles alone for a bit.

 When you get back to your table, you might be embarrassed that your boat is already leaking, but don’t be. That’s Starlite’s fault, not yours. I’ve offered to bring my own plastic Tupperware to save their tables from a milk-sauce mess, but they are not interested in my innovation.

 Make sure to order as many different drinks as you can because all their specialty martinis are $2 off during happy hour. Everything at this bar tastes good, especially the drinks that are made with ice cream or chocolate syrup, but honestly, I would eat grass covered in ice cream or chocolate syrup.

 My favorite drink is the orange push pop one. I don’t know what the actual drink’s name is, but you’ll know it when you see it on the menu. If not, just ask your server, “You know that girl that comes here every Friday and inhales half a tray of mini corn dogs? I want what SHE’S having!”

 Overall, I would rank this bar a: I can only bring my close friends and my mom here because no one else will let me consider this free-app-and-cheap-drink-combo my dinner without judgement.

[mostlybars-blog]

Why Am I Always At Duffy’s?

Duffy’s Tavern on O Street is a goddamn treasure. I go to this bar a lot because it’s dark, old, full of leather booths, and I like drinking outside, but every other bar in Lincoln, Nebraska that has an outside part is usually full of white men in golf polos. My last two reviews usually involve me being snarky and/or mean, I will be doing that in this review of Duffy’s, but with the utmost respect for one of my unironic loves in this city.

The most important thing about Duffy’s is its schedule. Let’s start at the beginning of the week, shall we?

Monday: You could say that what happens at Duffy’s on this day is comedy. You could also say that a bunch of sad people get together and tell some jokes for a few hours to whatever group of Midwestern moms happen to have the night off from their kids. Be there right at 7:30pm when the show starts for good seats and wait around until at least 8:15pm when the show actually ends up starting. Enjoy the show, unwind, treat the people on stage turning their trauma into art like white noise, we like it.

Tuesday: I’m sure a hip-looking tinder boy in an ironic baseball cap has invited you on a date here for the Dollar Dad Beers.

Wednesday: I’ve heard there’s live music, but I try to avoid activities that draw a crowd, that’s why I prefer doing stand-up comedy.

Thursday: You can bring your dog for happy hour. This is excellent because drinking alone out back next to the fire pit always seems like more of a purposeful choice when you have a puppy. Bonus fact about the fire pit, you can say ‘Fuck You’ to ashtrays and just throw your cigarette butts directly into it, miss, and pretend nothing happened.

Friday & Saturday (and maybe Sunday idk I don’t go to bars on Sunday, I am a woman of the Lord): These nights are for Duffy’s legendary fishbowls. Yah, you can pay $14, a little under an hour and a half of work if you make minimum wage (which most of the people who go to Duffy’s do), for a glass bowl full of mainly juice, ice, and 40,000 straws. Be careful though, there are always large men in button downs playing giant jenga, just waiting until you are walking slowly to your table with your wonder woman fishbowl, so they can knock the whole tower over and scare you into dropping it, ruining your precious plans to drink the whole bucket of alcohol by yourself through all 40,000 straws at once.

Duffy’s is great, truly. One time I asked this guy out back for a cigarette and immediately broke it in half and still tried to smoke it. You could probably have that good of a time there. Overall, I would rank Duffy’s a: it’s the only bar that someone has actually hit on me at so Duffy’s is automatically the number one bar in Lincoln for me.

[mostlybars-blog]

Rogers Park Social, But I Went Alone

First things first, if you are singing in a bar with less than nine people at 10pm on a Monday, you need to turn down your amp. I get it, you’ve got some jazzy tunes coursing through your veins, but scatting carries without a microphone.

Besides the hip girl with bangs and an obviously vintage dress serenading me for a few hours, Rogers Park Social in Chicago, IL is a pretty fun bar. They had a drink that referenced Drew Barrymore and any bar that pays homage to my God and reminds me that I need to finish Santa Clarita Diet, wins a few bonus points. It’s definitely more pricey than most bars I drink at, but most bars I drink at have flooring made of only cigarette butts and dogs without leashes, just those metal chains that you’re supposed to stake into the ground, running around.

Although I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, I’m moving to Chicago in August so I wanted to start exploring bars near my new apartment that I could use for all of my inevitable “hi, my friend gave me your number and I was wondering if I could pick your brain!!!!” networking meetings. Rogers Park Social is the perfect place for these types of meetings. The best part about this bar is they serve cheese plates and baguettes that are too expensive to hope they are filling enough to be dinner. The other best part about this bar is that it’s a two minute walk from a pizza by the slice place and a sports bar that will give you something called a “personal pitcher.”

I ordered a fancy grapefruit-beer-cocktail that was tasty and got me drunk enough that I had enough confidence to start journaling right there at the bar! No one asked what I was writing so it seemed like ‘girls with bangs who journal alone at the bar’ isn’t something new to the patrons.

The crowd was a bunch of real adults that could smell the recently graduated college student on me, but I also feel like this is the crowd everywhere I go now.

Overall, I would give this bar a: I’m going to give the name of this bar to every person who posts on Facebook for a good trip-to-Chicago bar recommendation and spend most of my drinking time in my bedroom so I can fall asleep whenever I want.

[mostlybars-blog]

Alchemy: Get Drunk Like a Princess with Mercury Poisoning

The first bar I want to talk about is Alchemy, but you may know it by the name that no one knows it by ‘Alchemy Aqua Vitae’. I typed this name into google translate and it translates to ‘Alchemy Aqua Vitae’ so I have no idea what the name means and we are going to have to live with that. I was excited for this bar because I love every and all things campy. I read the review in the Daily Nebraskan and a few quotes from the owners got me pumped to get drunk in this bougie place. My favorite was,

“We decided on an 18th-century gothic feel, like Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter.”

And Alchemy did NOT disappoint, mainly because 18th-century Harry Potter does not exist so my standards were incredibly low when I walked through the doors. When I went to Alchemy in early April, I was shocked to learn that it had been open for months. It turns out this bar had a ‘soft open’ which actually means that they just cracked open the doors a tiny bit and whispered ‘come here’ to passerbys until someone tried their $14 cocktail.

The decor is what you’d expect from a bar that takes itself entirely too seriously. The walls are covered in Home Goods trinkets and they only play string quartet covers of pop songs. The space is large and there’s plenty of seating, both very easy things to accomplish as a bar. The atmosphere is casual so you won’t have too many flashbacks to getting shushed at the Other Room and all of the servers are kind. Our server was actually the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen wearing a burlap apron and talked to us for at least 20 minutes about Queer Eye.

Oh, you noticed that I said ‘us’ in that last paragraph, meaning that I went to the bar with someone or multiple someones.

We each got a Tom Collins because it was the only thing under $10 and this is Lincoln, Nebraska and no drink should cost more than a good stack of pancakes. The drinks were great, but I used to make punch with Everclear and Bacardi. What I’m truly excited for is to have enough money to afford their cookies and cream boozy milkshake because like all good midwestern girls, those are my two favorite things; booze and defending drinking milk milk until I die.

The crowd was mainly older people, but also hot younger people who came to the bar to meet older people so I guess it’s one of those bars. Overall, I would give this bar a rating of: I would take my racist aunt here because no one would recognize me if she said some shit.