Thank You

This was just a quick blog to throw some thanks out to some of the people that have helped Every Bar in Lakewood reach its current successes.

First off, many of our readers find out about and read my blog through some of our local social media sites.

Lakewood's Patch.com has given me free will to put whatever I like up since I came up with this idea. As many as a quarter of my weekly readers read my latest adventures through them. Plus, I used their directory to help put together our original list of bars. Thanks Colin!

http://lakewood-oh.patch.com/

The Lakewood Buzz is a pretty cool site that lets people post about things going on around Lakewood in a text only format. I've found their readers to be amazingly friendly. Check them out you never know the random Lakewood knowledge that might pop up.

http://lakewoodbuzz.com/

The Lakewood Citizen has helped boost my new Lakewood readers on occasion and have quite the active twitter feed at @lkwdcitizen.

http://LakewoodCitizen.com/

The Lakewood Pillars and their annual wing crawl helped me get out in the community early.

Pillars of Lakewood

The Cleveland Scene Magazine's article about me during my first month definitely kept me from feeling like I was only writing for my family.

Scene Article

A couple of the bars have been a big help to the blog in both promotion and helping with other facets of my work. Coincidentally, they also are some of my personal favorite bars.

Bar #1, Mahall's 20 Lanes is always willing to spread the word and has been very open to helping out in other projects that I have been working on. I really enjoy their food and beer selection. Mahalls also offers a lot of different things to keep you occupied from bowling and games to benefits and concerts.

Bar #1

The Shamrock Tavern and Bane Boys was probably my biggest surprise of the blog. Not only is their food great and bar full of fun surprises but they are always willing to lend a hand to anything I might need of them. I look forward to returning over and over again, not to mention future projects they'll be involved in.

Bar #10

The Tarrymore Inn, especially their bartender Cheryl, have been one of my biggest cheerleaders. They are always spreading the word about my exploits. You should definitely check them out for their friendly staff and patrons along with having the best patio in Lakewood.

Bar #5

Donna Repasy, once the owner of the Screaming Rooster, was a promoter of the blog from the beginning and has helped out even after she lost her bird.  Thank you Donna, you've been a good friend.  Obituary

Special thanks also go out to Jammy Buggers, Mars Bar, World of Beer, The Patio , Bonnie and Clydes and the Harry Buffalo.

A bigger thank you goes out to all of you. 80% of my likes on Facebook are from you guys liking and sharing my articles and pictures. This has helped spread word about the blog around the city and even the country.

Also, thanks for helping me make a little money off the blog. For each blog that goes out around 5 hours of research, aka drinking and talking to bartenders, writing and social mediating. So, when you read the blog, if you see an ad that looks remotely interesting feel free to click it. This can help me make additions, pay my graphic designer, get shirts available at local bars and fund events.

Thank you to those of you who have bought my shirts. Most of the price goes to the actual materials. I have tried to offer shirts with ink and material that can survive being washed after wearing them to all 53 bars. They won't be as fun if when you're done the only thing you can see are the check marks. I am looking for a local printer, hopefully that will cut a couple bucks of the price.

Buy Shirts Here

Johnny and Katie Vanderford have been with me through most of the blog putting up with my crazy schedule and my picture taking. This wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without you both.

My biggest thanks of course goes to my wife Kelly. She has supported me throughout this process and is always excited to jump on the bandwagon of whatever crazy ideas I come up with for Every Bar in Lakewood. Plus, without her the shirts would look horrendous and everything would be covered in comic sans. Thank you, Kelly, for coming with me on this crazy journey.  I love you.

                                   Jewelry & Metal Smithing                        Wedding Photography & Stationary

Thank you beer.  You have been with me through all of this.  All full of frothy, alcoholicy goodness.  This blog couldn't happen without you.

I have a couple new things in the works, so by the time we hit the 1 year mark I'm probably going to have to put up another one of these. Till then thank you for reading. This has been a fun crawl so far and it makes it worth the work to know you're all enjoying it.

Bar #15: Jammy Buggers (Deceased)

How do you pick a bar when your only deciding factor is that you haven't been there?  My first time picking a random bar I just used a random number generator website and counted my way to O'Donnel's Pub.  This week I decided not to leave it to chance by instead leaving it to you, the readers.  Two bars were neck and neck till the final hour but Thor's voters rallied hard tripling his votes.  I owe Thor Platter a beer for picking bar #15, Jammy Buggars.

My friends couldn't wait for me to be done with work at 8 so I met them.  When I told the hostess I was meeting people she sadly told me that trivia had just been canceled (the trivial man had a flat tire and wasn't willing to run his equipment to the bar.)  Jammy Buggars was nicely arranged with brick and wood work. There are three sections, the bar, dining, and game room.  Since trivia was unanswerable, we were in the dining room.  I let our waitress pick my meal as I couldn't make up my mind.  She was also able to both pronounce my second beer and understand my horrible mispronunciation of it. I also didn't write it down so if you know it, put it in the comments below.

 The owner came by and introduced himself.  Soon afterwards, my food showed up.  I ordered the fish and chips.  The fish was good, the breading was different than any I have had before, but in a good way. The overall report of the food from my table mates, that had mainly had the bbq, was that it was good but not spectacular. Jammy Buggers does have my favorite buffalo wings from the wing crawl. The sauce was a little thicker and had a good flavor. Plus the meat was definitely the highest quality of the crawl as well.  Obviously, better quality food has a higher quality price tag, but Jammy Buggars is striving for more than cheap bar food.

They of course have a higher quality beer list then just beers that you see during the Super Bowl.  My first beer was a Victoria Golden Monkey.  Its full of alcohol and tastes like good beer.  Basically it's as awesome as it sounds. But like this beer I think it is better if you've had a beer before you meet a gold monkey in steam punk attire. 

As normal, when I went off to take pictures of the bar I got sidetracked for a half hour. This time it was talking to the owner, Jim. Highlights of our talks were: gossip about the future of Sullivan’s (and no I'm not telling,) why doesn't anyone know that the Shamrock is awesome (we don't know,) Jim's worked real hard trying to make a great and unique bar, and yes, I do accept free beer.

The women departed. Johnny and I moved to the bar for free beer and to root on the Orioles. The beer was good I had another Weneaidfslahifhieaojflisjhfioe. We then got to try a new beer from Akron's Hoppin' Frog, “Natasha Rocks” America. It is a chocolate rye imperial stout. I don't like chocolate, rye or stout beers for the most part but this beer was pretty damn good.

The Orioles were not good but kept up a healthy amount of denial into overtime.  A worse baseball team was brought up, from one of the other bar patrons.  This one from Cleveland. No not that one, I'm talking about the one from the National League. The Spiders were Cleveland's professional baseball team in the late 1800s. During their final year in the NL they were so bad, partially their owner that both owned a second NL team and referred to them as a side show attraction.  That meant teams couldn't make money playing in Cleveland because of the extremely low attendance. The Spiders ended up playing most of their games at the opposing stadiums. The Spiders lost most of their games, officially achieving more away losses than any other professional baseball team ever will. No matter how bad your favorite team is, they will never be as bad as the Cleveland Spiders. That was also the Spider's last season and they are in no way connected to the AL's Indians.

The game was over and the bar was empty it was time for us to go. It was also the first time Every Bar in Lakewood closed down a bar. Jammy Buggers was voted as the bar on Detroit Avenue that we needed to go to and for good reason. Many different establishments have resided in the JB location: Nikos, Route 6, and Nikos to name a few. Jammy Buggers has endeavored to break the mold of the terminally closing bars of 15625. It's not simply a nice looking bar with good food and beer. Jammy Buggars is constantly working at making the food and experience better. You can tell they put effort into finding quality ingredients and a unique taste. I had a great time at bar #15. They won't have to be jammy Buggars to be open a year from now and you'll feel like one if you give them a visit.

Awesome: Customer Service, Craft Beer, Gastropub Food, Wings

15625 Detroit Ave

216-767-5922

sprenger1355@yahoo.com

Facebook

 www.jammybuggars.com