Saloon No 10

They had a great band playing and the sawdust on the floor gave it  anice touch. If I were a better poker player i would probably give it five stars.

Warning: the Saloon No 10 apparently issues a $50 hold-charge to your card, despite the actual price of your drinks.  When a patron, for instance, sidles up to the bar only twice, and for a total of only ~$15 worth of drinks, this is annoying, to say the least.  Exacerbating that annoyance is the lack of any posted statement to this effect, despite its being the No 10's putative policy (at least according to the individual with whom I spoke over the phone the next day); the flippancy of the No 10's staff when questioned regarding this policy compounds the problem, and drives annoyance into the realm outright anger.

Mitigating this anger, however, are positive attributes herein reminisced, which reduce mostly down to atmosphere.  The saw-dusted wood-plank flooring, obviously, and the collection of historically-invested objects - such as the pièce de résistance: Wild Bill's Death-Chair - are the primary atmospheric facets of the place; but I also immensely enjoyed the simple fact that they've sequestered their neon-bright futuristic slot-machines in a room separate from the main bar, which is not the case with most of the bars Deadwood (all of which are likewise gaming establishments, something that seems fairly categorical in South Dakota and something that renders No 10 a bit of an oasis).  An oddly pleasant cover band was also playing that night (dubbed 'Cover Me Badd'); they outdid their usual ilk by playing the shitty songs of the 80s and 90s in well-formulated medleys, instead of the expected stale and/or spiritless straight-up renditions that are commonplace.  And both beer and whisky was fairly cheap.  The crowd moreover seemed ever-so-slightly more local than that of the other watering-holes of the Deadwood downtown strip, which was nice, but may be accounted by mentioning it was a midnight Sunday with Monday (Deadwood's seeming day-of-rest) fast on the horizon.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that I was forced to loan the No 10 ~$35 for the better part of a week, simply because I paid with digital (as opposed to physical) greenbacks.  Their being remorseless regarding this fact makes it very easy for me to rate them so low, with likewise little remorse.

On our Black Hills vacation we stopped at Saloon #10.  I've been there many times over the years, starting in the 1960's  The atompsphere is the same as it has always been. This time we also had a burger, which was very good.  Its a place to be sure to visit anytime I'm in Deadwood.