The Glass is Half Empty…

San Marcos

By Ryan Delaney

As I even think of writing about this place I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stick up and my blood start to boil with rage. Nephew’s. Where to begin? I think that a good indication of how awful this bar is can be found when you first walk in and you see the creepy and lecherous old man who owns Nephew’s, usually perched atop his bar stool near the entrance, leering at women a quarter of his age as they walk in like some kind of depraved vulture. The building is large and usually very cramped, with a main room, dance floor, side room, and even an upstairs area. Each room has its own bar and there are actually plenty of areas to get drinks, including several beer troughs. Also, there are two pool tables, although good luck getting on them.

The main attraction that I find people have to Nephew’s is the incredibly cheap drinks. There is a reason that the drinks are so cheap, they’re absolute shit. I would actually pay $20 for a chance to get behind the bar and show the inept bartenders how to make a proper drink. My standard test for determining whether a bar is decent or not is to order my favorite cocktail, a gin and tonic. Sounds simple enough, yes? Gin, tonic water, and a lime. A child could make this drink, although I don’t advocate having children mix drinks. Well, apparently it isn’t so simple because at Nephew’s every time I order this moronically simple cocktail I get gin, check, lime, check, and….club soda??? What the fuck? It’s called a gin and tonic, not a gin and club soda. The ingredient list is in the name of the fucking drink! Every time this happens it infuriates me so much that I want to jump over the bar and start bashing people over the head with bottles of gin, not that I advocate doing that either. Anyways, Nephew’s almost always fails my test.

When you walk into Nephew’s your senses are immediately insulted. First, your sense of sight is insulted when you see a shitty dive full of knuckle dragging douche bags and sorority skanks, no offense to any douche bags or skanks reading this (you know who you are). Further, your sense of smell is horribly offended by the ungodly stench in the place. I like to describe it as a combination of vomit, stale beer, sweat, and urine. Mmmmm, sounds pleasing doesn’t it? I’m just glad they don’t serve food. Finally, your sense of hearing is lambasted as you are beat up side the head with some idiotic popular rap song effectively lowering your IQ with each hideous thump thump thump of the bass. Nephew’s does have a rather large dance floor that is usually heavily crowded, which I believe is one of the other main draws to the place. It actually is one of the most popular bars in San Marcos, and the constantly packed dance floor is a good indicator of that.

Okay, maybe not everything is bad at Nephew’s, I mean it couldn’t be all bad could it? Yes, it could and it can and it is. Like most bars in San Marcos, on certain nights they have $2 you-call-it’s. I believe it is Thursdays at Nephew’s and this might be the only day worth coming into Nephew’s because, let’s face it, $2 for any alcohol you want is a pretty damn good bargain. However, it can’t serve as Nephews’ only saving grace because almost all the bars in San Marcos have $2 you-call-it’s on Thursdays. So, sorry Nephew’s you fail once again, I’d rather have my Tanqueray at some other slightly less shitty bar. The music is pretty much standard dance floor fair and towards the last 20 minutes or so of EVERY NIGHT they play the same two songs. I believe it’s “Shout” by the Isley Brothers, followed by “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. Yes, that’s Journey, the last song every night. They say hell is repetition, and I think that if there were a bar in hell you would probably hear “Don’t Stop Believing” pumping out of it, and it would look a lot like Nephew’s.

100 N. Guadalupe St. (512) 558-2337.

San Marcos

By Ryan Delaney

Anyone who knows me understands that I have a great and terrible hatred of San Marcos. Various vitriolic late night rants I have conducted to any poor sap willing to listen to me usually include such points as: “a college town where the bars CLOSE AT 12:00??? What the fuck? What am I doing here? Every time I go to a party it gets busted within 15 minutes, it’s like fucking clockwork”. You get the idea. Having spent 6 of my more formidable years in the horrible fun vacuum that is San Marcos has actually allowed me to form a great appreciation of the few things in San Marcos that are good. One of those things is The Tap Room, which is located just off of “the square”, a god awful collection of hideous college bars. Ah, The Tap Room. Anyone who has spent considerable time in San Marcos will more than likely start salivating and recollecting fond drunken memories at the mention of the place. Why all of the hyperbole, you ask? Could it possibly be justified? The answer is a resounding yes.

A testament to the high quality pub food and great beer selection is the fact that The Tap Room is almost always crowded. It would be wise to arrive before 8:00 to have your best shot at securing a table with no wait, and it can become very cramped when the evening crowd rushes in to get their fix. The Tap Room is small with plenty of large flat screen televisions on the walls and you always have a view of the game from any table in the room. The Tap Room serves pub food, and they serve it well. The menu is your standard pub fare: hamburgers, wings, ribs, various fried vegetables, etc. My absolute favorite is the baby back ribs. The ribs are so tender that the meat practically launches off of the bone. The smoky flavor and sauce are delicious and the ribs melt in your mouth. The hamburgers are monsters, perfectly cooked, and served on surprisingly sweet and outrageously delicious buns. The menu offers a wide variety of specialty burgers, but I usually stick to the mushroom swiss burger, topped with a very generous amount of fresh mushrooms and tasty melted swiss cheese. The burgers are accompanied by a massive pile of French fries or onion rings, large wedges of potatoes and healthy slices of onion, which are perfectly breaded and quite tasty. The portions are huge, and consuming an entire Tap Room burger and fries in one sitting is not recommended before a night out as it will really kill a person’s ability to function and cause a powerful desire to take a nap.

The beer selection is easily the best in San Marcos. Again, in a town dominated by kegs of Bud Ice and 24 packs of Keystone, The Tap Room is a welcome sight and a virtual utopia for those of us who like real beer. The selection is not the best I’ve seen in a bar or restaurant (see Gingerman in Austin), but it blows any other place in San Marcos out of the water. Not only do they have 30 + beers on tap, but they have an excellent selection of Belgian beer, including the 750 ml bottles of Chimay (white and blue), Duvel, and all of the beers from Unibroue. The bartenders and friendly and knowledgeable about beer, and will gladly make beer suggestions, if you can catch them at a time when they aren’t so busy. The wait staff is made up of attractive college girls who are friendly and flirtatious. My only complaint is that service can be slow sometimes, which is understandable given the popularity of The Tap Room and the large amount of people packed into the place every night. All in all, if you ever have the misfortune of being in San Marcos, do yourself a favor and salvage your night with a trip to The Tap Room.

129 E. Hopkins St., (512) 392-9824.