Thanks for the point of view, Jack, but I guess I just want to hold out with a different view of bars : )

Alabama is littered with way too many churches and not enough good bars, as far as I’m concerned.

Actually, The Rogue Tavern looks like a place with some promise. They had a keg of Sweet Water Georgia Brown on tap, which you won’t find anywhere else in Alabama.

As for the food, the Mini-Blues Burgers with blue cheese were quite tasty.

The problem with Alabama and Bob’s Take Back the Highways campaign is that it only exists in three southern states, the very same states with the least mass transit options of anywhere in the country. The only way to leave your homes in the suburbs after dark to go out and do anything is by car. Nobody uses the taxis or buses here, and they don’t run after dark in the suburbs anyway. And of course there are no passenger trains, no metro or subway system like DC and New York and other real cities. New Orleans still has its antique electric street cars. Portland has new ones!

My problem with the Free the Hops bill and stronger beer is that it should have been coupled with a bill rolling back the MAD mother’s ridiculously low threshold for intoxication. There is no reason why a grown person with a built up tolerance for a certain amount of beer or wine or whiskey or vodka can’t have a few drinks and still drive safely home, in the absence of a real mass transit option.

My problem with the tavern is with the light man.

My problems with this place are too numerous to mention in a blog comment. I’ve laid them all out many times before. Some people in Alabama are just now getting online and finding out that a different world exists in here than the one they are used to.

As I wrote back in December, it will be another 10 years before real, lasting change comes to this place. I don’t have that long to wait around to see if it happens.

In any event, I won’t endure it. Let the brain drain continue…

Approximately twice as much! And people will drink about the same number of beers as before. Booze Bob won’t have to worry about the highways soon, since all the drivers will be dead, rear-ended by drunken speeders.

It’s not just downtown Birmingham, but throughout the country, that bars and restaurants are getting darker and darker. Try to read the menu at Surin West some night. They need to serve flashlights with the Fish Tikka!

My impression of Rogue Tavern a month or so ago is that it is way too loud (bars like that, too) and the food was not very good. But it had just opened and the food may improve.

But let people see and talk!

I’m sorry it happened too. I was on the verge of having a very good time on an incredibly beautiful evening and planned to give you a great writeup with photos.

Take that, morons. Competent people of the world unite!