When I saw they had changed the Friday fried pork chop special to fried fish for Lent, I just had to check it out. That’s their picture on top. Mine below. I guess I’m always looking for an excuse to hit Phil Brady’s for lunch because it reminds me of going over to the Bayou as soon as the lunch shift was over at The Gumbo Place (whether I was on schedule for a double that night or not} and just hanging at the bar with a Bud, or High Life, or PBR waiting for someone else to show so we could shoot pool. Back when I used to work at The Chimes, people would come in and talk about how they remembered going to The Chimes back in ’68 or ’69. I’d never bother to tell them that it was still a drugstore then, that they were conflating Chimes with Magoo’s or The Library or The Bayou or The Gumbo Place. Maybe even The Brass Rail and The Bengal and The White Horse. In a way, all those cool dark bars are portals to the past. Times we’re desperate to remember, and also times we’re glad are long gone. Hard to think of any place better to deep dive into nostalgia than a bar stool in a bar that reminds you of a bar that you used to know.