- Similarities to the lead photo in last week’s Lagunitas post are entirely intentional.
When I first started getting press releases for Lake View “beer cafe” Beermiscuous, which formally opened on Saturday, I didn’t feel too sanguine about it. I mean, that name! At least the folks who run the place have committed to it: the cafe’s slogan is “Drink around.”
Beermiscuous doesn’t have a kitchen, just packaged snacks at the bar, but it allows outside food and maintains a collection of menus from restaurants that will deliver to the cafe—and Gyros on the Spit is just a few doors north on Lincoln. (Sometimes food trucks show up too.) Capacity is 79 in the main space, which leaves plenty of room for people to circulate, and the basement (with its own pair of restrooms) holds 20. Each floor has a single flat-screen TV, which seems like a reasonable compromise between, say, the Hopleaf (tasteful vintage tunes only) and Piece (cable sports everywhere you look). There’s no outdoor seating, but there is free Wi-Fi, so that’s sort of a wash.
As far as the stuff in the coolers, though, I’d stick to drinking on the premises. Bottles and cans have two different prices, the higher for in-house consumption and the lower for to-go sales, and while the former stacks up well against most bars, the latter can’t begin to compete with any of the liquor stores I frequent. Sure, you can build mixed six-packs out of any appropriately sized bottle or can that Beermiscuous sells (most shops, including Binny’s, limit your options in that area), but you’ll pay a steep premium for the privilege: it’s tough to end up with a sixer that’s cheaper than 12 bucks, and it’s easy to top 15. I’m not even talking Three Floyds either.
Bassist and front man Chris Black is also in High Spirits, who play at the eighth Alehorn of Power festival on Saturday, July 12, at Reggie’s Rock Club; the mighty Slough Feg headline.
