Belford Tavern

Not much I can add to the few other reviews here.  A big schooner of domestic whatever (Miller Lite in my case) and a shot of Cuervo=$4.50 (and you may even get a free shot if you hang out long enough).  Perfect.  Opens at 7 a.m., if you must drink that early.  They have a lottery machine, lots of Slavic-y languages spoken, liquor and smokes to go (mostly reasonable), a friendly owner in Jimmy, and a parking lot, or the easiest access if you're waiting around for either bus.  The douchey night kids don't come here, it closes usually by 10:00 or so.

The extreme dive bar.  $2.00 MGD's everyday come in a giant fishbowl glass.  If you enjoy people watching and cheap adult beverages this is the place to be.  The lottery machine has a line all the time and they could build a house with all the loser tickets that get thrown out.  

I didn't go in there until the smoking ban passed because you couldn't even see in the windows and I'm a partial smoker.  The bartender is a young guy and seems pretty legit.  It's never crowded and you can always get a seat at the counter.  

I once saw a guy come in there in his boxers and no socks or pants.  He got a bottle of liquor and left.  Funniest thing ever.  A real person bar.  No yuppies allowed.

This place looks just like a Greyhound station with one exception- they serve beer.  The beer is served in giant goblets, and is so inexpensive that a homeless guy living under a bridge could buy a couple of drinks to wile away his time staying in from the cold.  I actually had a really nice conversation with the guy, apparently a sincere hardworking fellow who happened to be out of a job.

You might say a Yelpster has no business being here, but I disagree.  Maybe not a good place to meet other Yelpsters, but there's something this place holds on to that is gradually fading in trendier neighborhoods closer to the lake.  There's some truth in the notion that lower class are genuinely more friendly (now science has proven it!  See <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.windsorstar.com%2FTechnology%2FRich%2Bmore%2Baloof%2Bthan%2Bpoor%2BStudy%2F1262344%2Fstory.html&s=491767c16b5dd88be3bce70b39e7a5fd9fded87de321a7e6db69e265c711e19a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.windsorstar.c…</a>).  Case in point- there's another regular here, commemorated in a Lucky Lottery poster, who won over a million bucks- and still drinks here.  Unlike my homeless friend, he has a reputation for tipping poorly.

With Busch at $1.50, millionaires could buy 600,000 cans of this for just a million bucks.  But if you're here you might as well chat with your neighbors, who are just as likely as anyone to launch into a philosophical discussion, minus the Ivy-League vocabulary, about life itself.  When debates get tense, at the end of the day this is a bar where the regulars all know each other by name- they forgive and welcome you back the next day with a new nickname.  We're all human, after all- you may be worried about starting your car, I may worry about whether my CTA bus will ever show up, my homeless friend just hopes it's not too icy to roll his shopping cart back to his bridge.

With all the open windows and the location at a major intersection, this place is consistently safe and friendly, especially compared to dives just south in Avondale.

I drank out their supply of Zamkowe so they don't got that Polish classic anymore, but this place isn't running out of beer anytime soon.