Somebody recently asked me the seemingly mundane, throw-away question: “Jeff, what’s your favorite bar you’ve ever been in?” The question ruined a week of my life. I made a top ten. Then top 25, 50. It just spiraled out of control. I’d have a list I liked and then remember ten more places. So I decided to just sit down and make my top 100. You’re welcome, world.

This list was so much fun to compile. It made me rigorously sift through what has been twenty years of drinking and travel. It made me remember nights I’d long forgotten and text friends I hadn’t spoken with in years. This list is, in many ways, a young man’s travel memoir.

Of course it is also subjective. I have lived all 37 of my years in New Jersey and New York so those states are everywhere on this list. I’ve been to Chicago and Ireland nearly twenty times each so they are too. I’ve never been to Spain…or Kansas City…or most of Texas, so they’re not in the mix. I probably had a shit time in a bar you love and a great time in a bar you think is shit. That’s drinking.

Some of the bars I’ve been in once. Some hundreds of times. It doesn’t matter. A great bar is like a great piece of art. You never forget it.

And I didn’t write up a description of every place because I didn’t think there’d be enough interest. So it’s a compilation of write-ups, photographs and just plain, old-fashioned lists. But just Google any of the establishments if you want more information.

This post will live at the top of the blog until Monday, July 8th as we take a little break for the holiday. Enjoy the 4th. Stay safe. If you drink, don’t drive. See ya’ll next week!

#100 The Black Cat Bar & Grill – Absecon, NJ

#99 Exit/In – Nashville, TN

Half this joint is a rock club. The other half a black-painted punk bar that is a welcome departure from the tourist scene on Lower Broadway.

#98 Bostwick’s Chowder House – East Hampton, NY

It’s a small bar. But it’s intensely local in an area where finding a local human being in the summertime is harder than finding a beer for less than $8. But they have both here. (A bartender once asked my friend Pat how many people were responsible for his drink tab. The answer was one.)

#97 The Newman Arms – London, England (Closed 2017, Reopened 2018!)

I tried to convince the bartender to let me do a one-man production of Sweeney Todd in this combo pub/pie house one night. He seemed into it. Maybe it will happen in October. #DBBinLondon

#96 Odd Couples – Harrison, NJ (Closed 2014)

The worst bar on this list. Whatever you think a dive bar is, it doesn’t hold a candle to this shit hole. But it provided me the proper hiding spot when I needed it.

#95 Willi’s Wine Bar – Paris, France

#94 Heidelberg Restaurant – NY, NY

#93 La Gitane – Bayeux, France

#92 Cafe Vlissinghe – Bruges, Belgium

#91 The Green Mill – Chicago, IL

The opening of the excellent Green Mill oral history from the Chicago Reader:

“It’s not uncommon to walk into a bar in Chicago these days and feel like the present is the past: drinkers belly up to polished wood, sipping drinks concocted from small-batch whiskies and admiring each other in the soft glow of exposed Edison lightbulbs. We’re living in a cocktail renaissance, a period when authenticity and history, even if the bar only opened last month, mean something. And that’s a good thing.”

#90 Pub Mars – Kazimierz Dolny, Poland

Only one other person on earth – Mr. Noah Brier himself – understands the surreal experience of this beauty of a bar in one of the perfect villages of Poland. There were too many pints and something with a painting.

#89 Lakeside Lounge – NY, NY (Closed 2012)

It’s in-bar photo booth, the first I remember in NYC, was legendarily weird. I had several strips with me and people I have no recollection of meeting. And we seem verrrrrrry friendly.

#88 Dick Mack’s Pub – Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland

My uncle once played Eleanor Rigby on the piano in the back for a local rugby team. I sang my own lyrics: “Eleanor Rigby, worked in the shop, down the block, and she sold lots of cheese. No one said please.”

#87 The Stag’s Head – Dublin, Ireland

With it’s stunning woodwork, this might be the most beautiful bar in the world.

#86 Parkside Lounge – NY, NY

The bar version of a Tom Waits tune. (Go get a corned beef from Katz’ up the street and eat it at the bar.)

#85 East L.A. – Hoboken, NJ

The three margarita limit is serious business.

#84 Doc Holliday’s – Glenwood Springs, CO

There are a lot of old cowboy joints on this beautiful stretch of Colorado. Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville. Woody Creek Tavern. And if I got more time in either, I’m sure they’d have landed on this list. I got time in Doc’s. So it’s here.

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Give Matt Nagy credit for saying he wants to use a committee approach when it comes to the running back position, but don’t be surprised if rookie David Montgomery is the bell cow before long. While the Bears have generally been trying to keep their depth chart a secret (and not allowing media members to report on the topic) it seems the rookie has already been getting playing time with the first team, a rarity for any mid-round running back.

Montgomery will still have to earn the job. Running backs, especially those in the 220-pound range, generally don’t show much until the pads come on; it’s impossible to display power and contact balance when the defense can’t hit. But by all accounts, Montgomery has looked the part, opening eyes the same way Tarik Cohen did two years ago, per Adam Jahns on the Hoge & Jahns Podcast.

Montgomery’s currently tied fifth favorite to be Offensive Rookie of the Year. Third among non-QBs.

The Bears signed Mike Davis and it seems that he has gotten most of the reps with the first team offense this offseason. But in the most recent clips released by the team on their website, you can see Montgomery sneaking out of the backfield with Mitch Trubisky playing quarterback. Maybe those are just misleading shots, but they didn’t exist at the start of the offseason program, when even Ryan Nall was shown with the starters in one of the clips.

If Montgomery has already been as impressive as most have said without the pads, the general expectation is that he’ll be even better once they start hitting. After all, his strength is supposed to be his ability to play through contact.

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As a unit, the Bears defense finished 3rd in the NFL in yards, 1st in points, and 1st in turnovers. Now I want to look at the impact each individual player had on the defense, as much as is possible. To do so, I’m using stats from The Quant Edge.

Defensive Line

Let’s start on the defensive line, where we can get a look at how often each player was on the field and how successful the defense was when they were in or out of the game. This can be measured through yards per carry (YPC), yards per pass attempt (YPA), and success rate, which is generally a measure of how effectively offenses stay ahead of the chains. Higher success rate

The table below shows data for defensive linemen who both played and missed 100 or more snaps, and is set up such that numbers for each category are in game/out of game for an easy comparison. Notable differences are highlighted in green (good) or red (bad).

A few thoughts:

• First, note that this data does not necessarily mean a player was good or bad, especially when we get to the smaller sample sizes (in terms of snaps played or snaps missed). But it can be really useful for players in the middle, who both played a lot of snaps and rotated out for plenty as well.
• Speaking of those players, hello Eddie Goldman and Akiem Hicks! Look at those splits against the run. Those two make up a formidable duo up front for the Bears, and allow them to be stout against the run even in nickel looks when they only have two defensive linemen on the field. If you’re looking for more specifics here, Jack Soble of The Loop Sports did a great film breakdown of Goldman’s impact on the run game.
• Roy Robertson-Harris had some flash plays this year, but the data suggests he didn’t really have a positive impact on the defense as a whole. That’s plenty understandable in the run game, because he’s not really a typical 3-4 defensive lineman and doesn’t 2-gap as well as the rest of these players.
• Sometimes the differences between yards/play and success rate can be confusing. Let’s look at Jonathan Bullard as an example. In the run game, teams averaged a lower yards/carry when he was on the field, which is good, but had a higher success rate, which is bad. That tells us that the Bears gave up fewer long runs, but still let teams stay with or ahead of the chains a bit more when he played. That could mean he played in a lot of short-yardage situations, where a 1-2 yard run is a success but keeps the average gain low. On the flip side, teams averaged more yards/pass when he was on the field, but had a lower success rate. That means the Bears didn’t give up completions as much, but gave up more big plays.

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The Josie Woods era is effectively over. But the beginning was glorious. Here’s the story.

A short pod explaining how arriving late to my grandfather’s funeral in 2005 was the moment I realized I had a “Bears problem”.

Mitch Trubisky joins Bears Banter and talks about his domination of youth football, when he knew the NFL was a possibility, how the rookies and new free agents have looked, plus, is Matt Nagy really showing them the Parkey miss over and over? Plus, Bill Zimmerman explains why the defense won’t regress because Vic Fangio is… overrated!?!?

The Vikings kept bringing the heat, and Mitch Trubisky kept beating it.

Minnesota was playing for everything in Week 17 and all they needed was a stop and a score. They brought the heat and Trubisky dissected them, despite playing without his top three wide receivers.

After a Vikings touchdown made the score 13-10, the Bears young QB took over.

Third and five, the QB runs for 12.

Third-and-six, Javon Wims for 16.

Third-and-six again, Burton for nine.

Third-and-seven, Wims for nine and a first down at the eight.

Two plays later, Cohen runs in a touchdown before Trubisky drills a pass into the chest of linebacker Nick Kwiatkowski for the two-point conversion.

Ball game.

Trubisky’s 2018 season has been dissected over and over and those doing the dissecting have always been able to find enough evidence to come to their pre-reached conclusion. The season was enough of a roller coaster for Trubisky that almost anybody can find evidence to prove any opinion correct. What isn’t debatable, however, is the mastery Trubisky showed at the end of the season, specifically that final regular season Sunday against one of the three best defenses in the league.

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Chicago’s defense was awesome in 2018. We all know this. They finished 3rd in yards, 1st in points, and 1st in turnovers. So let’s take the same approach we did with the offense and look at how they did defending different areas of the field. All statistics come from the NFL Game Statistics and Information System or Pro Football Reference’s Game Play Finder.

Run Defense

Chicago’s run defense was fantastic in 2018, finishing 1st in yards against, 4th in yards/carry allowed, and 1st in touchdowns given up. Now let’s break it down by different areas of the field to see if there were any weak links.

Here’s the data for Chicago’s rushing defense in 2017.

• The line at the bottom is the line of scrimmage, runs are split into 7 zones, and attempts and yards per carry are listed for each zone, with ranks relative to the rest of the NFL in parentheses.
• The height of the bar is proportional to yards per carry, and bars are colored green for top 10, red for bottom 10, and yellow for middle 12.
• Note expected yards per carry varies by region, so the colors are relative to their peers in that region.

A few thoughts:

• My goodness, that is beautiful. Their run defense was consistently among the best in the NFL pretty much everywhere. It didn’t matter where teams tried running on the Bears, they weren’t going far.

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It’s the latest Bears Banter Podcast and Dick Butkus is the featured guest! Bill Zimmerman and Dick discuss a variety of topics including the #Bears100, his thoughts on the current team and Matt Nagy, playing in his era, his acting career and the current struggles of his friend and teammate Gale Sayers.

DBB’s Jeff Hughes on the lack of a kicker, his lack of interest in throwback jersey and general post-OTA opinions.