Home Base

There are very few occasions that cannot be made better by the inclusion of attendance at an Irish Pub.

I’m downtown tonight, as Sasha and Katya are out at the Macklemore concert, which will end sometime around 11pm to 1am. We can’t be sure, as it has been tweeted, apparently, that since tonight is the final day of a three-day set, that he plans to run some kind of mega-encore. We shall see.

Since I didn’t want to leave the girls outside after the concert, I chose to stay nearby so once they call I can pick them up right away. My default location for hanging out in downtown is our boat. I have free parking, and it is nearby to most of the city center. Unfortunately, it is fucking freezing out here, and even with heat on the boat, it is just too damn cold to get comfortable.

I went out, fixed the cover on top of the boat (which is coming apart, and I need to build a new one) and made sure the place was ok. Looking down the lake, I remembered that a new pub “A Terrible Beauty” has just opened this summer, and that sounded like a much better home base for the next few hours than a freezing boat.

While I like going out anywhere to drink, few things beat an Irish (or British) pub. My first main hangout in college was the Unicorn pub. When I moved to Russia, I had Rosie O’Grady’s, and Irish House. My former test manager at Microsoft retired and opened a pub/microbrewery just off campus. When that was sold, We found Three Lions in Redmond was our best source for Premier League Football, with a good dartboard to boot.

We literally lived in Pubs on our trip through Great Britain. (Note: I mean literally in the literal sense. Our first room was above a pub called The Blathwyat)

I’m not sure, but I imagine that a lot of Americans enjoy sports bars in the same way that I love pubs. Perhaps growing up with British Cars influenced my bar tastes as well. In any case, I’d rather avoid the bright, loud American bars and burrow into the dank, dark pubs. A smell of boiling cabbage and bangers, and perhaps a baking kidney pie doesn’t hurt either.

Guinness is always on tap. Guinness for Strength.