Butch McGuire's

Typically called out as a Division Street favorite amongst my peers, Butch McGuire's appears to be a place all make their way to at some point. The bar is usually packed, so be prepared to stand and mingle. During Christmas, they have some great decorations-with a train lining the bar.

There's a strip of Irish pubs along this stretch of Division Street, and Butch McGuire's stands out from the rest by being louder, drunker, and greener than the rest. And that goes for the staff as well as the patrons. I don't think I'll ever go there after sundown again. That being said, the brunch is great. I had eggs benedict and a bloody mary and it was everything I could have dreamed of. Mid-mornings and early afternoons at Butch McGuire's are a world away from the nights there and I would definitely recommend that. Plus, they do pull a good pint of Guinness.

Along the wild, ridiculous, and perhaps slightly disturbing strip of Gold Coast late night spots, Butch McGuire's is just another one of those terrifying bars. It's loud, it's raucus, it smells like stale beer and shame, and it's filled with the type of crowd you thought you would never spend time with after you graduated college. But somehow I ended up there again a few weeks later, but this time on a Sunday morning. I actually really wish I had been hungover, because the brunch is just screaming "eat me if you're hungover." It's ridiculously delicious. Huge omelets and scrambles overflowing with cheese and vegetables, several kinds of eggs benedict, and the BEST FRENCH TOAST I have ever eaten in my entire life. The toast is soaked in an egg-milk mixture that's spiked with Bailey's and Guinness, and the syrup is spiked with Jameson. Talk about hair of the dog. So no, I don't recommend it for nighttime fun (shame?), but I do highly recommend it for brunch. Yes indeed.

It's that time of night: three of your friends have already gone home out of drunkenness, and while you're nowhere near as drunk as you should be, but you aren't ready to give up on your night. You exchange glances with your remaining friends with hesitant expressions, as if to implicitly ask "Are we really going to do this"? And wordlessly, you all pile into a cab and head to Butch's. Butch's is a late night bar with all the charm of the frat on your campus that was always almost getting kicked off campus. This almost kitschy Irish saloon is home, around 3am, to the drunkest and those who aspire to become the drunkest. The crowd itself is almost evenly split between twentysomethings looking to postpone bed time as long as possible, and older folk who are somewhat busted but very ready to buy drinks (keep an eye out for cougars in unnecessarily tight dresses as well as fifty year old dudes in Canadian tuxedos, they are most likely to buy rounds). The drinks are so strong as to be almost insulting. Here's where you find the dregs of the night; people looking to get laid, who aren't quite desperate but, at the very least, open to suggestion. By 5am, when Butch's finally closes, you're liable to be already home with someone, or dancing-fighting the bouncers. In a sentence, Butch's is an extremely boozy choose-your-own-adventure, ending mostly with either sex or injury, sometimes both.