29. At Dawn - My Morning Jacket

One of the greatest Jacket stories I have, is that when they were touring for this album, and right before they released It Still Moves, they played at Tampa's beloved New World Brewery aka The Cash Bar aka the Hippie bar aka the Hipster bar aka the Lesbian bar. Anyway you look at it, when all is said and done, New World Brewery ... and yes, top 10 Bars of the Aughts iza comin' ... will most likely be remembered not only because Toast graced it with its presence, but because we played there the night after somebody got stabbed and their was still blood on the floor. Man, rock'n roll.

Anyways, TOP TEN BARS OF THE AUGHTS (and I guess this is for Tampa folk mostly ... mostly)

10. Ricks

I'm going to go ambiguous here. There's one on the river, and there's one that's Ay-talian. Neither is very good, and did only one have a friend of mine fall off the dock and into the Hillsborough river. They both serve food, but I've never eaten at one, and wish I had never eaten at the other. One had Jimmy Buffet/Sublime cover guy while the other contains memories from the abyss. Again, I really can't differentiate between the two when all is said and done even though they're really not similar aside from the fact that some prick named Rick owns boaf. So there ya go, the 10th best bar of the Aughts.

9. Crowbar

This is an up and comer. It didn't really get good until the past couple years, but you wanna see a great show nowadays at a great venue, and oddly this is where you're going to end up.

8. Reservoir Bar

Another up and comer. It may not have the actual music scene of Crowbar, but this is really more of a bar meaning, this is where ya go when you wanna have a drink, a bizarre conversation, and harass the shit out of some deformed hippie that thinks Green Day is the best anti-establishment band of his generation. God help all of us if that's true. Green Day sucks. I've been saying that for about 15 years now.

7. Skipper's Smokehouse

This is one of three bars on my list that would've qualified for the 90s as well. In fact, this would've been top 3 in the 90s. Sure, Grateful Dead Thursday night is no longer part of my repertoire as it was a decade ago, some great shows have come through here, and a Beatles fest, and most importantly, a Stones fest combined with a beer fest. Good times.

6. Chain Restaurant ... i.e. Chilis and/or Benningans

Happy Happy anniversary from

everyone at Benningans!

Chilis used to be the place for many of us Tampa folk in the early Aughts. People forget.

5. Four Green Fields

The only thing missing from this Irish pub is a Mc in the name.

4. The Emerald

I'm going to travel out of Tampa on this one. Maybe Brandon's Gators would have been appropriate, but I had 2 phenomenal experiences at the Emerald. One as the grandiose bass player for Toast getting to play in St. Petersburg's version of the Hub, and two, after a drunken Rays game with former Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Ville Siren. Yes.

3. The Hub

Speaking of the Hub, let's make it #3 for the Aughts, and #2 for the 90s, and #1 overall best bar in Tampa. Hands down.

2. Yeoman's Road

Maybe it should be #1 because it's sort of the mother to the life I have now. Could you imagine life without Yeoman's (if you're part of the original crew which started the same exact day that I joined)? Downside, it's fallen to the point where I no longer order beer off the tap and the no longer have a stand up urinal in the bathroom. That's a paddlin.

1. New World Brewery

The difference between this and Yeo's is sure, it may not have had the pivotal open mics, but fact is, I still go there, and Toast probably played here almost as many times as it did Yeos. Let's face it, it's a birrion times better of a bar. Birrion.

I want to stop now, so ... bars that just missed the cut i.e. just remembered them as i was doing the list

Tampa bay Brewing Company ... probably should be #4. In fact, it is, but I'm not revising anything.

Poomaballa ... or ... Phoomabella ... I'll never spell or pronounce it right. It's just not in the cards.