Drinking in bars is a big part of my travel to new cities. It's not really all about the act of drinking or inebriation but, rather, drinking in bars provides two things I enjoy: talking to random people who are mostly perfectly happy to chat with you, and trying different and often local beers.
My Omaha arrival began in the Benson neighborhood, which sits on the northwest side of the city, centered around 56th and Maple. Benson was once a separate city, built as a streetcar suburb at the end of the 19th century, but was annexed into Omaha in 1917. Despite being a part of Omaha for almost 100 years, the neighborhood still maintains a distinct sense of community that differs from the rest of the city. It's not Omaha; it's Benson, and people will tell you that very plainly. The central business district of Benson stretches along Maple, lined with bars, restaurants and a few small shops. I had read about some recent openings in Benson, including a brewery, so I just had to get down there to see how the neighborhood looked. Infusion Brewing had only been open a few months. It sits inside of what was, for many years, a butcher shop, but then turned into a silversmith's storefront. The interior is all new and mostly wood, except for a subway tile floor that was part of the original butcher shop. Quite a bit of love, care and money has been put into the design and construction, and the results are a comfortable, neighborhood sort of place. This is not a big brewery that can handle 200 people, but it does have a long bar, at least ten house beers on tap, and a surprisingly good bourbon selection. Two of the beers were what they called their "Refrigerator Series," and were from taps connected to a 1950's-era refrigerator. Possibly as an homage to the butcher shop past, the only food available at the brewery was local meats and cheeses, sold whole, but served with a knife.
At one point while sitting at the bar, the bartender left and came back to complain about a line at the pizza place next door. Now one of the things I mention to people about Omaha that they probably do not realize is that, largely due to its large Italian-American population, Omaha has fantastic pizza. I have my favorite place picked out, but I'm always asking Omahans about their own favorites. On this last trip, one of them mentioned that this was really largely a neighborhood thing, as Omaha is a very insular city, where people tend to stay in their own neighborhoods, and I think this is actually pretty true. But, being in Benson and talking to a Benson resident there, I was told that this pizza, at Baxter's, was the best around. I waited in a now shorter short line to order their slice and salad special, which came with a soda and ran around $7. I chatted with the girl working the register, and was able to consume quite a large free sample of their house beer, which turned out to be brewed at a restaurant just down the street (again, an insular city, especially in Benson) owned by the same person who owned the pizza place. The salad was amazing, really one of the better salads I've had in the last few years (though that's largely owed to living in Indiana, where salads are mostly awful), but the pizza was not too much to my liking. I didn't like the cheese consistency too much, and there was barely any sauce on it. For that New York-esque style of pizza, I realize that sauce is typically minimal, but this had virtually no sauce, and I have my own ideas of what I like in pizza, and that's not it. Sorry, Benson.
The early start and early drinking meant that I needed a quick nap at the hotel before starting up again. The early sunset got me an early start on the town. The first stop was Page Turner's, a bar at Dodge (US 6) & 50th Street in the Dundee neighborhood, owned by Conor Oberst, an Omaha native best known for fronting the group Bright Eyes during the 2000's. Page Turner's was a long-time and well-loved bookstore in the same location before closing in 2011, then reopening as the bar in early 2013. As I entered from the rear door, I found a small, lowly-lit bar with dim lounge music overhead, and two patrons several seats apart at the bar, deeply engaged in conversation. I chose a rolling chair two seats down from one of them and started to review the menu, which featured several signature cocktails, a good but small tap selection, and a comprehensive beer bottle list. One patron was a middle-aged man in jeans, sneakers and a KC Chiefs ball cap, while the other was a 20-something in a suede jacket with black horned-rim glasses. And they were talking about music. The Mamas and the Papas. Eventually, they started requesting music be played, which could only be played via a laptop and via YouTube videos, possibly for some sort of way around public performance laws (but I don't think that's how that works). Eventually, the older man left, and the bartender, who was dressed similarly to the hipster 20-something, began talking to him about a mutual friend who had somehow offended a member of a fairly well-known but local Omaha band, Cursive. The whole experience was indicative of the sort of interactions I've had with the Omaha hipsters in the past. And, the fact is, it would be nice if they've adopted Page Turner's as their new home, after the 49er, just a block away, was razed in 2011 to make way for a new CVS pharmacy. Page Turner's makes so much sense, if only because it's run by a relatively famous Omaha musician.
After Page Turner's, I decided I wanted to hit another bar on US 6, so I chose the Holiday Lounge, which I had passed countless times in my visits to Omaha. The Holiday Lounge sits next two iconic Omaha restaurants: BG's Loose Meat Sandwiches and Zio's Pizza (my aforementioned favorite). The Holiday Lounge featured a couple in their late 20's engrossed in their cell phones, an older man cursing at the Chiefs game on the TV above, and a loud party of off-shift (maybe) nurses as the only patrons at a table. The latter would periodically request shots or some complex drink order, visibly pushing the bartender to a more surly mood. Other patrons would come in, and the bartender would greet them unenthusiastically by name. Despite being in a strip mall on the busiest street in Omaha, this was a neighborhood bar. I was invading, but I was not really made to feel as an invader. The bartender was attentive, but I was otherwise left to myself. I could have struck up a conversation about the Chiefs game but, for me, football is tough, because I only know so much about it and really have no knowledge of any particular players, except if they played at some point in the late 80's. So if a discussion moved to the quarterback of a particular team, I can only fain interest and knowledge to an extent before feeling exposed as somewhat of a fraud. So I sat at the bar as a wallflower; a "barflower" if you will. I had two Lucky Bucket Lagers - a solid Omaha beer - and left, happy with the evening.
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