Beer Bars.

The opinions of my friends to the contrary notwithstanding, I actually do not spend all of my spare time drinking in beer bars. So it was with a bit of surprise to find that I have, none the less, been in a number of the best ones, at least as determined by a poll on Beer Advocate. Yes, yes, I understand: This kind of rigor-free poll is nothing more than a popularity contest and a bar’s rating may reflect little more than how many people have heard of the bar or how many people live in the same city as it.

A couple of the ones listed are in Richmond, and I’ve been to them. Fairly frequently. (The Capital Ale House ranked # 30 is about a 10-minute drive from home and the one ranked #19 is a block-and-a-half from my place of daytime despair [ah, I mean “work”].) I’ve also been to # 16, the Great White Bear in Portland ME, and to # 17, the Toronado in San Francisco (although not to its trademark annual barleywine festival)

One of the advantages of a ranking like this, created with no objective comparative measurements, is that it leaves plenty of room for discussion and debate, for suggesting that your favorite place which isn't listed in the top 50 is actually better than ones in the top 10 or that those in the list are clearly in the wrong order. And to that end, I would suggest that the Mellow Mushroom in Charlottesville is better than the Toronado, and the rankings of the two Capital Ale Houses ought to be reversed.