Challenge Accepted, Quiet Man...

(And yes, I totally stole your pic.)

So, I noticed that Rick's Grill on 1st Avenue had been replaced by 2 Dogs Pub a couple of days ago in the Press-Citizen and the thought came to me... has anyone actually done a comprehensive review of Iowa City's Townie Bars? All we hear about in our fair city is the vomit encrusted menace of the binge drinking culture downtown. We tend to overlook the watering holes at our periphery- the ones safely out of reach of the college students- so Quiet Man, I say let's saddle up and do this thing!

Personally, I would say any bar outside the accepted boundaries of downtown would probably safely qualify. Socio-economic status to me is irrelevant- and while I hadn't thought to include Coralville and North Liberty, a truly thorough examination should probably include our neighbors. The real question we've got to wrestle with is an interesting one: what actually defines downtown Iowa City?

I think (roughly) everything south of Iowa Avenue and north of Burlington Street- but this poses a problem. I've never really considered the bars in the North Side Neighborhood (The Foxhead, IC Ugly's, George's) to be 'downtown bars.' They weren't totally Townie Bars, but they were, I don't know- 'frontier bars' on the border of downtown and Townie-land. And I guess if those bars aren't 'downtown bars' then what I've decided to dub 'The Gilbert Street Experience' (Sanctuary, Orchard Green, Sam's Pizza, The Piano Lounge, Hawkeye Hideway and Old Capitol Brewworks) fell into the same category. We'll have to see if The Quiet Man agrees, but perhaps 'frontier bars' could be reviewed as their own groups- or perhaps a starting point?

Off the top of my head, in Iowa City we've got:
Blackstone
Wildwood
Hilltop Tavern
Shakespeare's
2 Dogs Pub
American Legion
Eagle's
Caliente

...any more?

I'm not all that familiar with Coralville and North Liberty- but I know Red's Ale House in North Liberty gets a lot of positive buzz.

Let's do this thing!