The internet is a great thing. Thanks to the internet we have such fun things as twitter and facebook and of course - blogging. Over the past few days, I have gotten various messages from friends thru facebook and they reminded me of one of the best places that ever stood. For people in the Cleveland area - on the east side of Cleveland located between Willoughby and Mentor was what many of us consider to be one of the best, all-time classic bars. It is in the establishment that the concept of the Beer Drinkers Appreciation Club started to become an idea in my head. That establishment will be forever in our beer drinking hearts, and it is the place where Hops the Moose will being his first travel blog. (And it is also a place that I have deemed as being a Beer Drinkers Appreciation Club Sponsor - they cannot give discounts because they are no longer standing - but we will always have great memories of it.)
Hops the Moose first travel takes us to Johnny's Tap Room 24. Johnny's was a place where a lot of my friends and I got our start with under-aged drinking in a bar. I can remember going there when I was 18 years old (Beer Drinking age in Ohio was 19), I can remember bring other people - under aged - to Johnny's Tap Room. For those people that never experienced Johnny's, let me try to describe it to you:
Take an old Motel - single floor building in an L-shape. The Hotel office served as the Office for Johnny's. Then take the row of 20 rooms and and knock out all the walls that separated the rooms. Keep the old shag red carpeting on the floor - and of course make sure you can connect all of so it matches. Keep the original ceiling lights in each room - so that the bar is nice and dimly lit. And then take bricks and cover up all the room windows - leave all the doors on the outside, eventhough they do not open or if they did open, they opened into the back of dry-wall. Put a nice long, dark wood bar that runs the lenght of 3 rooms - with 5 big stand-up coolers behind the bar and a few other floor coolers behind the bar. Put in an old fashioned popcorn machine and a jukebox that has all old frank sinatra songs, keep the parking lot all stones, no black-top, oh and add in a 5-star restaurant next to the office that could seat something like 50 people at most - and you have one of the GREATEST bars in the world - Johnny's Tap Room 24. The Tap Room 24 comes from the fact that the motel had 24 rooms total and Johnny also made sure that he had 24 taps behind the bar.
Johnny's Tap Room became famous not only for their 5-star restaurant - where some of the biggest names in the Cleveland area - Art Model, Bernie Kosar, Jim Brown, etc - use to come and eat from time to time. It became famous for the infamous Johnny's Beer List. A list of 207 beers from around the world. Every Tuesday night was Beer List Night - we would go to Johnny's on a Tuesday night and get our lists and as we would drink a beer, it would get crossed off the list. The goal was simple - you had 1 year to finish your list. As you drank a beer you would cross it off and move on to the next beer on the list. After you drank 50 beers off the list - you got a Johnny's Tap Room Tee-Shirt, after 75 beers - you got a Johnny's Tap Room cozie. Finish the list and you got a Free Steak Dinner from Johnny's Restaurant with all the trimmings. Nothing like a $75 steak dinner from a 5-star restaurant for drinking 207 beer. The rule for the steak dinner that we all made up was that you had to save your last beer for the following week - (some of us would not eat the entire day waiting for tuesday night at Johnny's with our steak dinner) - you would show up on Tuesday night, order your last beer, and then put in your order for you steak dinner. The dinner came with salad with homemade gorgonzola dressing, potatoes, veggies, bread, and an unbelievable T-Bone steak that had to weigh in excess of 5 lbs it seemed. As your dinner arrived, you would get the first bite of the steak, and then pass the plate around to your friends sitting there and share a little of your meal with everyone.
When we all first started going to Johnny's Room, there were maybe 6 of us - and then as the time went on, more and more people started showing up and it seemed by that last steak dinner, the plate got passed around to 25 people. We would all get there sometime around 8 - 830 pm and the barmaid usually kicked us out by 1030-1100. There were many a tuesday night where when we went to leave, we would have 6 tables pushed together and all 6 tables would be filled with bottles from our various tasting. However I will also say that the group I traveled with to Johnny's - we were a very classy group - at the end of the night when the barmaid would tell us it was time to go - we would all stay and help clean up our mess - I can remember several times carrying the trash bags out to the dumpster. Johnny's was a classic.
While at Johnny's there were certain rules one had to follow:
1. No one could go to the bathroom before Dave had to go - Dave - King of the walnut sized bladder. If you went before Dave - you were the target of much abuse for the rest of the night.
2. Once you got up to go to the bathroom, expect to come back to a mug full of your beer topped with popcorn - why???? Dont know but once someone got up from the table - everyone else started throwing popcorn in their beer - so you could expect popcorn in your beer upon your return.
3. You were not allowed to scoop the popcorn out of your beer - you had to drink it out.
4. If you brought someone new to Johnny's Room - before they could even sit down or have a beer - they had to be introduced to everyone going around the table - and yes there was a quiz at the end of the night.
5. If you were going to put money in the jukebox, you had to select at least one Frank Sinatra Song.
6. No cheating on the list - you were allowed to cross off a beer after two weeks in a row of asking if they had the beer. If Johnny's did not have a certain beer on the list for two weeks in a row, you were allowed to cross it off.
7. The last beer on your list for your steak dinner - usually had to be something that everyone pretty much agreed on being the worse beer ever.
8. The final rule - just have fun hanging out with your first, be respectful of the barmaids, and help clean-up afterwards.
After some 10 years of going to Johnny's and finishing off 6 lists - Johnny got very old and sold the place off and the new owners were not as friendly as Johnny was to us - so we eventually moved on and found a new place - but it was never the same as Johnny's. Another great memory of Johnny's was the time when our small group of close friends - 6 of us in all - all got jobs - to celebrate - what else - we all went to Johnny's Room - to the restaurant - and had surf and turf and drinks to celebrate our employment in the full-time career working world. I think by the end of the night with meal, appetizers, drinkers, and tip - that little celebration cost each of us $225. And it was all worth it.
To this day - anytime I am in the Cleveland area - I still find myself driving past were JOhnny's use to be and give a little nod to the space that is there - I guess part of me hopes that the next time I drive by that Johnny's Room will somehow be standing there.
So Hops the Moose is now getting ready to head out on a true journey and not one down memory lane. Happy belated Imperial Stout Day and cheers to Johnny's Tap Room 24.
Tip your glass and have a drink with me.
Hops The Moose - Enjoying Life One Beer at a Time.
