Whisky Barrel Saloon

Lame crappy bar.  Lame people, UGLY bartenders and bargoers.  Do yourself a favor and don't bother.

The amount of fun you have at this bar seems to be solely dependent on how much you like country music, but it's actually a factor of how drunk you are. The drunker you are here, the more fun.  Wednesdays can be annoying if you don't like 18 year olds.

During the later years of my undergrad and my start graduate student years this was my bar of choice.  Why you ask?  Was it because I got to ride Dick? Yes, I mean who doesn't?!  Was it because of the country music?  Yes, I enjoyed that quite a bit too.  The affordable drinks? Eh, they are the same price as many other college town bars.  Because I love to line dance? Absolutely!  After all I am originally from North Dakota. But my number one reason I loved it?  Because the place was clean, friendly bouncers, waitresses, and bartenders and because they were REALLY good at weeding out all of the under 21ers.  

While I love some plastered 19 year old hitting on me completely sloshed and trying to impress me with his political science major while I'm mentally determining if 90 pages for my thesis is good enough, I enjoyed the fact that the people who hung out there weren't completely schwasted from the minute they stepped foot in the place because they're too young to order drinks.

Wednesday nights was great because the cover was only $2.00.  They played great new and classic country music and people were dancing to every song.  The DJ took requests and it was pretty fantastic.  Especially if you got there at 7:30 they gave line dancing lessons.  The bull rides were also free.  Which is good because after a few drinks riding a mechanical bull usually always sounds like a good idea.

The reason I now downgraded my favorite bar to 3 stars is because of a change sometime in '07-08.  They decided to open Wednesday nights to 18+.  The country music became less and less.  There's something inherently wrong about going to a country bar and hearing Led Zepplin or "Pour Some Sugar On Me."  Any other bar?  Yeah sure why not.  Whiskey Barrel? Yeahhhhh how about no.

If you are over +21 and love country music, or at least can stand it and like line dancing, then make sure you hit up this bar.  Just not on Wednesdays.