Wake Up! Productions wrote:bmxninja357 wrote:i remember when you were sober enough to spell Molson.
Call me "chicken", but I didn't want to be the one to point that out (lol).
Let's get serious here. Spelling Molsens instead of Molsons was just a screw-up from an incompetent, sadsack old man who can barely spell his own name anymore. Alcohol had nothing to do with it. I haven't touched Molsons' poison in years but when you go to the Balmoral you are left with a stark choice, Canadian or nothing. But I just couldn't gag down enough of that swill to get drunk.
I may not agree with WUP on many issues but his comment;
Ugg - Tastes horrible - very filling !!! My LAST beer of choice - LOL !!!
Was spot on.
There's a backstory. Vancouver's real estate pricing has gone insane. Wife and I bought our house for $70,000, it is now worth around a million; all tax free when we sell it. The house itself is valued at about the price of a second-hand Volkswagen after the news of the emission fraud came out. It's all in the land. So Skid Row, the untouched strip of Hastings Street from Cambie to Gore, which has valiantly repelled all assaults of developers in the past, is falling fast. An entire block, the south side of Hastings from Columbia to Main, is in the process of being torn down and gentrified. The rest will soon follow.
So my boozing buddy and I decided to do a night's pubbing in what's left of the old legendary Skid Row dives before they are gone forever. I'm back from that harrowing experience, The venues or the people didn't defeat me, it was the beer.
First stop the Balmoral. All they had was Canadian. I ordered a pint and wished I hadn't. I left most of it. I used the washroom and, after that experience, told my friend that if he had to take a leak to wait for a back alley. I was serious. Second was the Empress. A step up, a classic dive with the clientele mostly old men nodding off. Beer still crap so I got a bottle of Kokanee. Garbage beer again but I finished it.
Next the Savoy across the street. Friendly crowd but another unfinished beer. To put that in perspective my friend and I have been pubbing together over 40 years. In that time, up until today, I've only had three beers I've not finished. One was when I was so badly hung over I could barely focus where I was so not the beer's fault. Second was one called the Cheeky Monkey that I had at the Head of Steam in Liverpool. Tasted like rotting mushrooms with decaying rats in it. The third was a Smithwicks Ale at the American Bar in Waterford Ireland. It had gone bad in the keg. Tonight I didn't finish two of my beers and "accidentally" knocked a third one over. All Molsons and Labatts products.
Anyhow after the Savoy we went to Brandiz. I'd wanted to go to the Regent, a real dump, but redevelopment beat me to it. I needed some emergency relief anyhow so after the Brandiz we went to the Bitter Tasting Room;
http://www.bittertastingroom.com/
For a decent beer to revive me. A Backhand of God stout. Then on to the Grand Union pub. The less said the better. A reviewer on Google put it better than I could;
Have you ever wanted to know what an actual dive is? Where the natives all dress like cowboys and the cowboys like natives? Where the bar band goes up on a tiny stage and plays spirit of the sky with a midi-synth drummer on a cheap panasonic keyboard? Where youre GUARUNTEED to get a shoulder massage by someone much older and drunker than you are, to be sold a pair of bowling shoes, and to see a fight between two people who already look screwed up enough?
Walk in to the union. There's two doors and an arcade punching game in the front. The bar doesnt even smell like bleach because they dont clean up, and the smoking room still has it's windows up for the drug dealers to sell in privacy (DONT DRINK THERE BECAUSE SOMEONE WILL GET PISSED IF YOURE NOT IN THE TRADE). On a side note, the smoking room still feels quite smokey, even a year after the all inclusive smoking ban cleaned it up.
Beer is incredibly cheap here, and the crowd a dirty mix of street people and ex-construction workers. Pints are around $3 and pitchers float between $9 and $11 depending on "how much money you have." Jagerbombs (LOL) are $3.50! More on that later.
For all the horrid impoverished people drinking in the worst bar in Vancouver, there is an equal amount of objective humor. One time walking in we recieved a standing ovation! One time we ran in to a group of people our age (early 20s) who ACTUALLY claimed to have taught the bar how to make jagerbombs and that they're "paving the way" for hipsters to come right in.
HA.
THE WORST BAR YOU CAN EVER TAKE YOUR FRIENDS TO.
OTHER THAN THE WEST
We skipped the West tonight, not on the Agenda. Last stop Funky Winkerbeans, a legendary shithole that turned out to be not too bad at all. They had decent beer on tap. The only pub of the night (apart from the Bitter which doesn't count) that I'd go back to. Net result; home again from a night's pubbing about as sober as I was before I left.