Strikers Sports Bar: The Empire (some of it) returns, with pool tables, fried pickle fries and bowling (or not)

Strikers: Plenty of beer

The hairy guy’s report:

Some bars have a great view. It’s hard to go wrong with a rooftop bar atop a skyscraper. But we don’t have that. Or a beach bar aside a clear blue lake. We don’t have that either. 

 

We do have downtown’s Strikers Sports Bar, which has a fine view across Washington Avenue of the county courts and health department and their parking lot. If you had a legal issue to resolve, Strikers is the closest place to drink it off or celebrate, depending on how things went.

 

But face it: Even if you hold the local courts in high regard (and maybe you don’t), we’re talking about a building that’s a former strip mall -- not a grand architectural gem. So you wouldn’t go to Strikers for the view.

 

You might go there, though, to shoot pool, have a beer and a burger and a conversation – the sort of pleasant things people do in bars.

Thoughts on life at Strikers, with a bit of Robert Frost

Doc’s report: 

 

It was only a year ago that Harry, the G-Man and I were visiting the newly launched MI Table.

I noted then that it’s funny how the scents, sights and sounds of nature take you home, especially, for me, in autumn:

• The yellow mums crowning in the pots downtown on Washington,
• The musky scent of sugar beets refining in the crisp autumn air from the southwest.
• The rumble of the 18-wheelers up Center, Columbus and Kosciuszko hauling those beets over the Lafayette Bridge to the refinery on our still-unfixed damn roads.

It’s comforting to know, in uncertain times, that some things never change.