1. They sell Cooper’s Extra Stout at The Linkery!!! How did I not know this, when The Linkery is so close to my apartment? Cooper’s was by far my favorite beer when I was in Australia (followed distantly by VB), and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else. Except in the occasional “Beers of the World” kit that you sometimes can get at Costco. But that’s just not the same.

2. Apparantly the games at the Whistlestop are now reserved solely for Tuesday nights. This kind of blows. The bartender last night explained it to me as I was pulling Jenga out of their cabinet – I guess the games are their “draw” for Tuesday nights, so they’re not supposed to make them available on other nights. Personally, I always thought that the big draw on Tuesdays was the Nintendo games up on the projection screen. Maybe if they’re having problems getting people in on Tuesdays, it’s because the DJ is too loud (or at least they were the last two times I was there, when I left after finishing my first drink). But my question is, then what’s the draw for Monday nights? There was no DJ, no Debaser, nothing going on. The reason I went to the Whistlestop last night was because I knew it would be low-key, and, as I told my visiting friends, “They have board games that you can play whenever, which makes it just about the coolest bar ever.”