Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Bar Belle from 4/9/08 LEO

BY SARA HAVENS

West Virginia on a whim

West Virginia isn’t the first place you think of when planning a weekend getaway with friends. New Orleans, Vegas, Ashville, Chicago and Memphis all land much higher on my list than Morgantown. But I wasn’t the one celebrating my birthday last weekend, so I had no say. Instead, my friends Courtney and Matt were the Aries in the bunch, and they decided to throw a dart at the map of the United States to pick our destination. Hence Morgantown, W.Va., home of the WVU Mountaineers. Apparently, Courtney doesn’t have good aim.

Not to say we didn’t have a good time. We drank our way up and down High Street and tried not to offend our sometimes-sports-rivals. The bar food was phenomenal — I had wings at three of the four pubs where we dined. The favorites were Gibbie’s, The Fish Bowl, Bugsy’s and Boston Beanery. And we couldn’t help ourselves from stopping by The Back Door both nights. Sure, it hardly had any similarities to our own beloved Back Door, but it just felt right being there. And they had $2 drafts and pizza by the slice.

Our gang of seven even managed to squeeze in a visit to the local winery, called Fork of the Cheat. I’ll admit Huber’s is far superior, but FOC had its charms from being tucked away on a windy, narrow mountain road. That’s where we met FOC owner Jerry Deal, “The only Deal in town,” he said, after advising us to buy Powerball tickets before we left the Mountain State.


Bushmills Update
For those asking about the results of the “Twin City of Bushmills” contest held in March — the counting is still under way, but the website promises they’ll have a winner (between Louisville, Boston and Portland, Maine) this month. I voted one last time on March 16, and we were clearly in the lead. Keep your fingers crossed.

Here’s to passing out before the fireworks Saturday! Boom me at shavens@leoweekly.com or leobarbelle.blogspot.com

1 comment:

Woodford Man said...

boom me? wow, that leaves the door open for translation.