Bar#9 Dog’s bollix

Dog’s Bollix is an Irish bar that we just stumbled into at the end of a night. now, this wasn’t your cheezy “hang some shamrocks on the wall” kind of Irish bar. this place was hardcore Irish with war posters on the wall, old flags, coat of arms, jerseys, etc. the bartender had an Irish accent. this was the real deal. we had come here fairly late, only half an hour till closing, so there weren’t a ton of people there or anything, but the place still had a warm friendly vibe. it totally seems like the kind of place where you could come all the time after work and chat with the bartenders. also, unlike the crappy Rockit room next door which had “last call” fairly early and jerks were yelling at me to leave as I closed out my tab, this place served us drinks practically right up until 2am. nice!!

The Dog’s Bollix is at 408 Clement St in San Francisco

*v

Bar#8 Rockit Room

Li suggested we try out this place called the Rockit Room in the Richmond. despite it’s lame name, we decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. I guess the place is a concert venue so the bands there “rock it” or something. from the outside, this place looked all sleek like it was going to be all fancy inside, but once you get through the door, the inside just looks like a lodge or something with everything made of wood. service was slow and not particularly friendly either. there were a bunch of flat screen TVs all over the place. now, my opinion has always been that if you want to watch TV, just stay home. TVs don’t really belong in bars. bars are places where you are meant to be social. you should be drinking, talking to your friends, and possibly playing pool… not zoning out and staring at a screen. to make things worse, TVs have a way of grabbing your attention, so even if you don’t want to watch, you end up getting sucked in.

I’ve been trying to try drink specials as much as I can at the bars I’ve been going to, so caryn and I each chose a drink (she had some key lime thingy and I picked a chocolate raspberry concoction) and I went to go order them. the bartender warns me that the specialty drinks are 14$. fourteen dollars?!?!?! for *one* drink?? that’s way too much. he goes on to say that the drinks are really really big though, and taste great. I end up agreeing, and when he makes the drinks, they come in just regular martini glasses. huh? how are these “really big”?? that’s how big *all* drinks are. at this point, I started thinking that maybe I misheard and it was actually 14$ for two.. but no. when I got my bill, it cost me $28 for two drinks. yeah, sure they ended up tasting pretty damn good, but this was the biggest rip-off of all time. even the nice drinks at Voda , which is way more fancy of a place, cost much less than that. no wonder they don’t list the prices of their drinks on their menu… it’s because no one would want to get ripped off by paying their ridiculous prices.

one of the main reasons why Li wanted to come to this place was that it had a foosball table. he is pretty damn good, and really awed the people at the bar with his skills. one guy at the table could not stop yelling about how impressed he was. well, li, caryn, and josh went on to keep massacring people at foosball for a while, but then they finally met their match and got beaten.

so, overall, I wasn’t really impressed by this place. kind of a rip off. plus, it seemed like it really wished it could be pretentious, but couldn’t really pull it off.

Rockit Room is at 406 Clement Street in San Francisco