Located right on the square, Bert's Pub & Grub occupies a former Gamble's department store. With wood floors and high ceilings, Bert's showcases its ornate, leather-wrapped bar proudly. We had just settled in with our bottles of Bud Light and Miller Lite when the bartender offered to show us around the place.

The most striking feature of the main bar area is its antique elevator. Originally used by the department store, it is still used today for bring in cases of beer and taking out the trash. This unique elevator is hand-operated, using an intricate system of pulleys to allow the operator to raise and lower themselves and a heavy load of merchandise with ease by simply pulling a rope. Our bartender demonstrated how simple it was to use.

As we toured the bar we were surprised to find a dance room in back, complete with setups for pole dancing and cage dancing. (The camera we had with us on this visit had no flash, hence the "night vision" photo below.) The owner, Jeff Zeits, had the stage and dance area constructed in 2004 and had plans to bring in exotic dancers from time to time to "bring a little life" to town. But City Hall got wind of the idea and put a stop to it before it ever took off. Nonetheless is still makes a good stage for local and touring bands.

Afton is located at the junction of US-34 and US-169, about 19 miles west of I-35 in south-central Iowa. Bert's is located 1 block east of US-169 in downtown Afton at 175 E. Kansas St.

Zoo Bar is a place that so few people know about and is so hard to find, that oftentimes first-time visitors have no idea what to expect and may feel a little nervous. Instead they are surprised to find themselves inside what is probably the friendliest and most laid-back place in town. I would venture to call it the best dive bar in Kansas City. And that can't be far from the truth, to be thriving after nearly 26 years and counting in a location where none of its neighbors have lasted.

The bar is very small... in fact the bar itself takes about half of the usable space. There are seats for maybe about 25, but no one seems to mind standing when they have to.

The most striking feature of Zoo Bar is the graffiti covering its walls, ceiling, and nearly every other accessible permanent surface other than the bar itself. In the mid 1980s the bar was repainted and patrons threw such a fit about loss of the scrawlings that it has never been painted since. More than 20 years of Zoo Bar history is now inscribed upon the walls. Many people just leave their name and the date, while others draw pictures or write a sentence or two about the visit. Markers are left out on the bar for anyone who wants to add themselves to the ink-on-paint tapestry.

Another feature Zoo Bar is very proud of is its old flip-style CD jukebox. The owner and bartenders have spent years editing and refining the mix of selections, literally agonizing over what CD to remove if a new one is added. The result is such a well-balanced mix of music that almost any visitor can find music they like, yet no matter what gets played it fits the style of the bar perfectly. Occasionally spontaneous bar dancing has been known to break out.

Zoo Bar has no beer taps, but it does have nearly 30 varieties of beer in bottles and cans. This includes several premium and foreign beers as well. And as long as it doesn't require a blender (which no real drink ever should... especially a drink in a dive bar), the bartenders can mix up just about anything else you may want. Most importantly, this is one the cheapest places to drink in downtown Kansas City.

The bartenders are all a fun bunch. Ronnie or Ellen (who was the first bartender I met there back in 2006) will take care if you during the daytime, while Carol, the Sarahs, Cameron, Samantha, or Shizzy will be happy to serve you at night. Collectively the bartending staff call themselves the Zooettes. Except for Cameron, of course.

On Saturday the bar offers a free lunch buffet. All of the food is home cooked, usually by the owner and often with a bit of a kick of spices. The menu changes each weekend and is usually written on the whiteboard inside the front door a day or two in advance.

The owner, Preston Cain, is a friendly guy who often will stop in at some point in the evening. An attorney who practices out of the law office above the bar, Preston runs the bar almost as a hobby. Preston took over operation after the original owner, prosecuting attorney Ray Webb, passed away. A ceiling tile commemorating Webb sits behind the bar, while Preston is showcased in magic marker on the opposite wall.

When I made my first visit to Zoo in June 2006, a friend and I were looking for a place that we did not know for certain even still existed. We had only a name and a general idea of the location that I had picked up from a 2-year-old list of businesses mentioned in a bicycle blog. Indeed, the Zoo Bar was so hard to find that we looked directly at it several times, from right across the street, and did not see it. The only signage was a small engraved wooden sign inside the window. Somehow I caught this sign out of the corner of my eye as we were giving up the hunt and walking away.

When we stepped inside, everyone inside stared at us and we realized we were intruders in a very private, close-knit community. So we was surprised when the moment of silence was broken with "Welcome to the Zoo!" as a woman moved her coat in order to offer us a place to sit.

The regulars were a mix of lawyers, government workers, and construction workers. Ellen, our bartender, opened our cans of beer while we began talking with the gang about topics ranging from a tragic bicycle accident that had occurred around the corner an hour earlier, to KCTV's Katie Horner, to people having sex at a nearby bus stop. One Zoo fixture, a man named Les, gave us a lesson on the health benefits of drinking Goldschlager.

Zoo Bar opened on October 24, 1982, in the southeast corner of a 2-story law office building at 12th & McGee. It was the direct descendant of Up The Street, a bar that had opened in 1977 on the 12th Street side of the same building. It was a lawyer hangout and featured pool tables in its back room (a room that today is the wig shop next door). In 1984 a fire closed the bar for a few months.

In the late 1990s downtown went into a slide and most of the bars along what was once a mighty dive bar row closed. Eventually only Zoo Bar remained. It operated as a daytime-only bar for years, supported by the daily visits of a small but very dedicated group of regulars. (Many of whom are still regulars today.) The larger back room was walled off, becoming retail space that today serves as the wig shop operating next door. What remained was the tiny sliver of a bar that we see today, with the cutouts that used to allow access to the back room still obvious at both ends of the bar.

In early 2007, anticipating increased foot traffic from the new Sprint Center and Power & Light District, additional bartenders were hired and a night shift was added. Lighted beer signs were added for the first time, and exterior signage was put up. The gamble paid off, and Zoo Bar's patronage has increased tremendously. At night Zoo becomes a favorite hangout of downtown residents and visitors to the new entertainment venues.

Today Zoo is a place where adults of all ages and all walks of life enjoy relaxing. There's never a band -- only the jukebox -- and the TVs are rarely on (usually just for Royals games) so it's a good place for conversation. And with the small space, conversations usually end up spreading to include diverse groups of people who would otherwise normally never likely cross paths. It's the kind of place where everyone treats each other right and looks out for each other.

Because of the new signs Zoo Bar isn't as hard to find today as it was when I first visited, but it can still be a bit of a challenge. It is located on McGee, immediately north of the Sprint Center, about halfway up the block. It is directly across the street from the McGee Street entrance to the Board of Education building. If you are driving, note that McGee is one-way northbound, and accessible only from 13th Street which is one-way westbound. There is no parking lot but the metered spaces out front are free evenings and weekends. Still, being adjacent to the Sprint center and only 1 block from the Power & Light District, many visitors walk there from other downtown destinations.

Note: the map pointer below is incorrect. It is pointing to the correct building but the 12th Street side. Zoo Bar is on the southeast corner of that building, on the McGee side. (Ironically, the pointer is pointing to the original 1977 incarnation that was called Up The Street.)

We ended up making it to 35, but one place we made absolutely sure we visited was Sully's. After all, how could we pass up a place that gets online reviews like these?

• "As a young woman, I was crazy to go in there alone. I am lucky I made it out of there not drugged or something. The staff is not very pleasant either."


• "It's way below a DIVE bar. Don't bother checking it out."


• "Watch your back while tossing down the real cheap beer"


• "Danger! Danger! Watch yourself! For those who crave excitement, check this place out. Drug deals in bathroom are a constant. "


• "I wish giving this bar zero stars was an option. "


• "Don't wear your nice clothes, as you might get a little blood on them in the scrap you'll find yourself in after a few too many rounds of Jim Beam."


• "So put on your steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and head on down to Sully's. Where the men are men, and so are the women."


• "Sully's, where livers go to die. Truly a manifestation of end-stage alcoholism, this is the spot from whence the four horsemen of the apocalypse shall arrive to wreak havoc upon the earth as judgment day draws nigh."


• "I simply cannot stress to you how god awful this place is. Horrific traumatic memories flood my mind and my senses are transported to its urine scented pint glasses and feces stained walls just thinking about it."


• "A scummy dump. Every "patron" in here looks like a meth user/dealer. If you're looking to get harassed or assaulted, this is the place for you."

There was no way we were passing this up!

We arrived at Sully's at 2:55 on an overcast Saturday afternoon. Like most places in Minneapolis (and I wish more places in Kansas City), parking was in the rear so we entered through the back door.

Because of the Minneapolis smoking ban there was no tobacco smell to mask the base odor of stale urine, faint remnants of vomit, and a faint but sharp odor that was reminiscent of the spray of a male cat.

We made our way down the narrow corridor to the large rectangular bar, where I ordered an Icehouse and my friend ordered a Bud.

We spied a Silver Strike machine and decided to play. My friend accidentally chose a female character so he made sure I did as well. I had never actually played before, so after losing the first game he gave me some pointers. I came back to defeat him for the next two games.

Meanwhile an intoxicated biker was trying to make song selections on the adjacent Internet jukebox but could not figure out how to use it. He asked for our help, so my cohort helped him find and play Still Loving You by the Scorpions as well as some Helloween, Metallica, and Black Sabbath. Eventually he decided he no longer needed help, and expressed this by grabbing my pal's arm and pushing him away.

Despite this minor scuffle we were a little let down. This was not the diviest dive we have been to, and it wouldn't even come close to being our scariest bar experience that day. (That would come about 3-1/2 hours later and will be the subject of a future post.) Still, this was a place that definitely met every single one of our dive bar criteria and was well worth the trip.

As we left the bar we were cornered by a pair of drug dealers in the parking lot. They were selling prescription drugs and were especially pimping their Vicodin.

"How much is that going for?" my friend asked.

"$2 a pill," replied one of the dealers.

"Hmmmm....." my friend paused as he feigned interest, "Naw, I'll have to pass. I can get them much cheaper from the hospital I work at."

As we climbed into the car I took a picture of the drug dealers to remember them by.

Sully's was located in the Nord East area of Minneapolis, on the east side of Central just north of Lowry. Unfortunately it has closed, the smoking ban has been cited as the reason for it's demise. As of this time we have been unable to confirm if another bar has re-opened in its place, and there is information that a neighboring food processing facility may have expanded into this location. It appears Sully's is now just a memory.

Luckily for us, this neighborhood included a strip dotted with several little watering holes-in-the-wall. Having time for only one, we picked the first place we spotted. It turned out to be the diviest dive of the day.

We parked in front of the Twilighter Country Club and were actually a little skittish about walking in. We worked up the nerve and heading on inside.

We took our seats at the double-L shaped bar. To our right, an older gentleman on oxygen was chain smoking while nursing his whiskey. Catty-corner to us, two leathered older women gossiped over bottled beer. (Except that the ladies were not older after all, we later learned from context that they were in fact in their mid 20s.)

Our bartender was a heavily pierced young woman who was watching daytime television and munching on onion rings. She glared at us for a moment when we sat down before sighing, setting down her onion ring, and coming over to see what we wanted.

After pouring us each a 12 oz draw of Bud Light ($1.25 each) she huffed, grabbed her onion rings, and sat back down to watch TV.

Now when you've had a few beers it's inevitable that nature will come calling, and in our profession that means you grow accustomed to relieving yourself under a wide variety of conditions. Which is fortunate, because the men's room here was swarming with flying insects and even featured urinal millipedes -- a first for us!

As we reached about the mid-way point in our beers, the front door opened. The bartender, previously focused only on her television and onion rings, jumped to her feet.

"NO! You cannot come in here!" she barked.

"Why not?!?," growled a gravely voice from behind us. "I have money, I want a drink!"

Slowly we turned around in our barstools to see a dirty, haggard man wearing absolutely nothing except a pair of tattered jeans. No shirt, no shoes, no socks.

"No, you have to have a shirt to be in here!" the bartender yelled. "It's the law!"

"I come in here shirtless all the time! The owner lets me!" he insisted.

"Well number 1 I don't believe you, and number 2 he's not here so I'm the law. Now get out!"

"Well I'll just go to any of these other bars down the street since you don't want my money," he threatened.

"Fine! Go right ahead! They'll all tell you the same thing!" Our bartender was now shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Well I don't give a fat f*ck!" he screamed.

"Fine! Now get the f*ck out of here!" she yelled back.

"I will! F*ck this place, you f*cking bitch!". And with that, he surrendered and stormed out.

The bartender took a deep breath, looked at us, and said "I'm so sorry about that, guys."

"Oh no, don't worry about it," we said, "that was the highlight of our day!"

We all laughed and from that point on she warmed up to us.

When we left the bar we discovered that shirtlessness is apparently common attire in this particular part of town. Next to our car a beer-bellied shirtless dude was sitting in the bed of a pickup truck oggling women walking past.

The Twilighter Country Club features free poker tournaments on Sundays at 12:30pm and 3:00pm. It is located on the east side of N. Kansas Avenue, just north of the river and the railroad tracks. But beyond that, we honestly have no earthly idea how we got there.