Last night my friend Jordana and I met for dinner at the Jolly Roger in Urbana. The Jolly Roger is, well, a unique place. First of all, it features a pirate theme. The walls are covered with giant swordfish, ships, and pirate heads. The door to the women's bathroom says "Wenches." The woodwork is dark, the vinyl on the booths is blood red, and the safest thing on the menu for a vegetarian is pizza. It's the kind of place where the house salad is iceberg lettuce with thousand island dressing and the waitresses (not servers) call you "hon."
Most cities or towns have restaurants or bars like this, locally beloved places that have been around forever, maybe even run by the same family. Such businesses are weirdly and wonderfully frozen in time. In the "real" Twin Cities, one example would definitely be Nye's Polonaise Room in Minneapolis, where the claim to fame is polka, not pirates.
Places like the Jolly Roger are important because they remind people here that we do not live in Chicago, and that this is okay. Since I moved here in 1999, the other twin cities (especially downtown Champaign) has exploded with new bars and restaurants. This is really great, because it makes for a variety of fun places to hang out. But at the same time, lately it feels like the developers are going too far. Some of these new places insist on a kind of constructed "Chicago-ness" that I find irritating. The decor screams urban, the lighting is coy, the drinks are overpriced. After eating at one of these new places last fall, I said to my companions, "Why do I feel right now like I need to drive two and a half hours to get home ?" In other words, sometimes the coolness is just too forced.
Ahoy, maties! We aren't Chicago. And that's okay.
Oh, yeah. JR's blue cheese dressing is awesome. We recently got a $50. gift certificate and couldn't even use the whole thing between the two of us, wine and all!
Posted by: dhawhee | 28 January 2006 at 03:06 PM