Bar Heart

I thought of that the other day while talking with a friend of mine. Bar Heart. Seemed like a good book title or something. I had mentioned it to my good friend because a bar very close to my heart has re-opened in a slightly different incarnation. I spent a solid ten years at the old Red Lion Pub on Lincoln Avenue and it opened up a wonderful world of what a public house should be.  The owners closed it to begin some reconstruction projects a little more than three years ago and the regulars and I were tossed to the four winds.  Sadly that original bar has not been able to re-open.

Every other week the regulars would find themselves in a temporary bar thankfully provided by Joe and the Dank Haus. This helped keep our ragtag group of Red Lion Refugees together.  But it just wasn’t the same. We were together but still apart. As if the galaxy had somehow decided to leave us behind.

We had no choice but to find new locals to spend all of our time in. We were lost in a world of crowded and TV infused bars, crushed by overbearing sound systems and the screams of newly drunk 21 year olds. Not that these temporary bars are bad, they just weren’t The Red Lion. It’s difficult to have an intelligent conversation with someone over the blare of Lady Gaga or Journey for the eighth time in a night. (I’m sure my current bartender will not be too pleased to hear that, but like I told her, she has my head the Red Lion has my heart). I’m happy to have made the friends I have at the bars I’ve been to since The Red Lion’s closure. I don’t regret any of it and I’ll continue to go and laugh and joke and make a general nuisance of myself. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

But now, Joe of the old Red Lion has taken it upon himself to reinvigorate our souls with the opening of The Red Lion Lincoln Square. He opened mid-December and already the universe seems to have realigned somehow.  The first week the old regulars and I entered the new place we were filled with a peace and joy only that could only be compared to a homecoming after a long period of service overseas. (Not that I’m equating military service in Afghanistan or Iraq to missing a Pub, but I think you get my drift).  

We sat at the new bar, lamenting at the temporary (fingers crossed) BYOB status of the place, but eminently pleased with it reappearance. It was then the thought of a “Bar Heart” crept into my mind. A place where, no matter how many other places you’ve been is the one most special to you. It’s special to a lot of us for different reasons; some met their wives there, some grew up there, some people finally felt they had a place that they understood and understood them.  A place where conversation ruled and the worst thing you could do was get into a fist fight over former Senator Paul Simon.

We’ve always known it wasn’t the building that we loved, but it was the fact that we, as regulars, were together and it was always “US” that made it what it was. I’m happy that the building is back, but I’m happier we have a place to enjoy each other company again. “I’ll drink to that”, said my beating Bar Heart.  

http://www.urbandaddy.com/chi/food/12199/Red_Lion_Lincoln_Square_Red_Lion_Sets_Up_in_Lincoln_Square_Chicago_CHI_Ravenswood_Restaurant