5/21/2014 Update: 5 years, plus Beach Bars

May 1^st marked the 5th anniversary of counting the Quad Cities bars I've visited. My original goal was to get to 300 (then 400, 500, 600) over the roughly 17 years I’ve lived in the area, but if you’ve been following along at home, you’ve read that I’ve had a secondary goal lately of trying to hit 400 QCA bars within the 5 years I’ve been tracking my progress. This is part of what prompted me to go back to the Dew Drop Inn; that, plus based on our only other visit some 12 years ago, I had them on my Top 10 Worst Dives list and thought they should be afforded a chance to defend themselves. As it turns out, my initial assessment was correct; it smells like a hundred yards of ass in there.

I also revisited The Meat Market, the place that got me started thinking about all this. Two changes in the 5 plus years since I went last: they no longer smoke in the bar (the law went into effect some 9 months prior to my last visit, but that only seemed to cause them to use empty Mountain Dew cans instead of ashtrays), and they no longer have sandwiches. “Meat Market Saloon & Deli”. Hmmmm. Those two, plus a swing by New Opendore got me to 400 in 5 years with a day to spare.

What looked like might not happen is adding a new bar to my overall total. If I hadn’t went for lunch to The Venue (new name for Twenty), I would have been aced out of April (last time I didn’t hit at least one new bar in a month was February 2010). Whew! As far as the bar itself, no changes inside yet, same staff, same menu for now, but with new ownership and a new name, it counts.

I also dropped by the newly opened Maloney’s Pub (last post I inadvertently called it Mahoney’s) in Eldridge, which should nicely help fill the gap caused by the fire at Del’s and the closing of The Buzz. Nice place, good staff, and they make a pretty good reuben. My new total is 522, and my What’s Left list is reduced to 14.

Other bar news:

- Though they serve craft beers, Bellasofia has no actual bar and is therefore ineligible to be added to my list. Pity.

- Los Portales II has opened at the former Davenport location of Carlos O’Kelley’s. I thought I might make it there for this post, but I need something to write about next month, too.

- Actually, next month is shaping up to be a good one for new inventory. Aside from Los Portales II, Brix is now hiring and may be open for Memorial Day, and Ubriaco Trattoria (formerly Mound Street Landing) may already be open as I write this. As a side note, I asked the owner what Ubriaco translates to. It is actually a cheese that is bathed in Prosecco wine, and known as ‘drunken cheese’. From that, it has also become a synonym for a drunk.

- Bad news for what was to become another iteration of Augie’s on 20^th in Rock Island (most recently the Lucky Shamrock): they apparently never got their liquor license (even though they did have Miller Lite signs in the window for a brief time), and is now up for sale again.

- Found out through a Facebook post that there is a karaoke club on 4^th Street in Davenport, named Passion Karaoke Club. Besides the guy who attacked his babymama with a meat cleaver (and a bystander that tried to help), I haven’t heard much. Though am known to take the mike now and again, this place is not high on my priority list

- Del’s In The District is becoming a restaurant, but I don’t have a name yet.

- Hy-Vee will be opening (or might have already opened) its first Market Bar & Grille in the Quad Cities at their Davenport W. Locust store.

- Rumor has it that Doc’s Inn in Silvis will expand, turning the neighboring fitness center into an addition that creates a more viable music venue plus a banquet room.

My wife and I were able to spend a few days in St Maarten early in May, and though I knew we weren’t going to be hitting the bars at the torrid pace that is normal for our Key West / New Orleans / Las Vegas trips, we still managed to get in a couple rather well-known ones. One was the Sunset Beach Bar, made famous on History Channel’s Extreme Airports, due to the airport runway that begins practically right on the beach, and listed in the top ten best Caribbean beach bars by many publications (one here: http://www.caribjournal.com/2013/05/09/the-10-best-caribbean-beach-bars-2013/10/). I stayed at the bar and didn’t venture the 100 yards down the beach to experience a 747 fly 50 feet over my head, but there were a few that did – not that I’m not adventurous, it was just too hot leave the bar and make the trek.

I actually preferred Guy’s Driftwood Boat Bar at the opposite end of the beach. Apparently Sunset had been rebuilt after the two hurricanes of 2008, and what used to be a true beach shack bar with no stools and no floor, lost some of its character when rebuilt and modernized. Plus, house and techno is not really what I want to hear when I’m in the Caribbean. The Driftwood Boat gave me more of the feel of a true beach bar, and I still got to feel the jetwash of an A320.

Even better was the Dune Preserve on the island of Anguilla, ranked by CNN as the #1 Beach Bar in the WORLD (http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/drink/worlds-50-best-beach-bars-709433). After seeing the ranking and finding out an old Reggae artist named Bankie Banx was the owner, Dune Preserve was a place we had to stop. The place conjured visions of the Swiss Family Robinson’s treehouse, meandering from the trees down to the shore. The main bar is a boat flipped over, and Bankie himself was pulling my Coors Light out of a Coleman cooler. The rambling multi-level structure had random small stages in various places, culminating with the main stage we apparently didn’t see in the parking lot, where Buffett played in 2007. Maybe the highlight was when Bankie called us over to see the Sea Turtle intermittently poking her head out of the surf, looking for a spot to build a nest.

And now, photos: