Yesterday, I walked the length of Barretto on the National Highway, from the 7/11 on Baloy Beach road to the Arizona Resort at Rizal Street. That’s a distance of 1.15 kilometers. Then I crossed the highway and walked back in the opposite direction. The purpose of this walk was to document all the bars in preparation for creating a series of posts here at LTG suggesting various “bar crawls,” as requested by some of my readers. That sounds like a fun idea; I’m especially looking forward to the test drives.
One tool I’m going to need for this endeavor is a good map of the bar district area in order to show the location of various bars. I tracked the bar trek on the “Map My Walk” app, and it gave me this:
Not a lot of detail.
So, I converted it to a satellite image:
Hello down there! Seems too far away for my purposes.
Another app I sometimes use is Relive. It creates a video from the data recorded at Map My Walk.
https://www.relive.cc/view/vRO7gELekKO
This particular video is not all that useful since it doesn’t show all the bars I photographed (for more than eight images, I have to pay for the premium service). It should be nice for the actual bar crawls, though. But when you scroll down below the photos under the video, it shows “activity on map” that looks like this:I think this is something I could work with. Now I just need to figure out a way to show individual bars on the map. Does anyone out there have any suggestions for the best way to do that?
Anyway, I’m making progress. Here are the photos I took of the bars:
Snackbar (aka “Snatchbar) is next to the 7/11 at Baloy road and the National highway. This is where Barretto begins as you move in the direction of Olongapo City.Kamto Restobar, or as some of us like to call it, Cameltoe.The Outback Billabong bar.Next up was Whiskey Girl Bar.Then comes Adam’s.Literally right below Adam’s (see the steps on the right) is Lux bar. This is one of the newer bars I haven’t reviewed yet. I’ll get to it soon, I promise!Palm Tree is a hotel, but also features a large bar on the second floor.Rock Lobster is one of the hotel bars at Mango’s.Mango’s also has a beach bar in the back that I sometimes frequent.Next comes Thumbstar, a girly bar with rooms available upstairs.I’m a frequent visitor to Cheap Charlies, up on the third floor.Then you have the Annex bar, one of only two bars that were open during my early morning (around 9 a.m.) jaunt.The recently reviewed Chill bar.Mugshots, the newest bar in town.And then another new venue, Bar Barretto.Blue Butterfly.MacArthur’sThe other early opening bar is Dynamite Dick’s.The Hideaway bar is halfway up this alley on the left. And then you have Redz Pub at the Arizona Resort hotel.
That’s the end of the road in this direction as far as Barretto bars go. Now it is time to cross the highway and head back in the opposite direction towards Subic.
First up is John’s Sushi and Steak. I frequently post about my dining experiences here, but John also has an open-air bar upstairs on the third floor. I still need to review that one too.Not as many bars on this side of the road, three or four blocks up from John’s is It Doesn’t Matter, currently #1 on my bar ranking list.Then you have Voodoo.And right next door, Bottoms Up.Hot Zone, which advertises itself as being “somewhere between purgatory and hell.”The Green Room, one of reader Dave’s bars.And Wet Spot is the other one Dave owns.Not a bar, but smack dab in the middle of the bar district. Sit-n-Bull also has a waitress on patrol in Wet Spot and Green Room, so hungry drinkers don’t have to leave the bar for grub.Alaska Club is next on the road.And right next door to Alaska is Sloppy Joe’s, another bar pending review.Alley HIdeout, where I used to play darts before going on hiatus.Then you have Rosie’s.Johansson’s recently re-opened after a two-year closure. Still no signage to photograph, so I settled for this shy waitress.And finally, the last bar on this side of the road, Queen Victoria.
Whew. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. I honestly can’t imagine anyone doing a “one drink” in every bar thing. Maybe one until you drop, and whoever gets the furthest is the winner. That sounds a little dangerous, though.
My thinking is to craft some themed bar crawls that will emphasize having a good time doing what you enjoy. Stay tuned; it’s a work in progress.
2 thoughts on “Barretto bar walk”
With a program like Photoshop, you can put together a physically large document that shows a lot of detail. When you put it on your blog, there’s probably a “thumbnail” option (like on my blog) that will show the image at a scaled-down size. Click on the image to see it full-size. Come to think of it, I do that on your blog already: I can click any of your uploaded photos to see it at a larger size.
As a former religious-studies student, I think in terms of mythology, and it occurred to me that, with your ranking system that goes from the best bars to the worst, you could create a series of “Dante”-themed pub crawls based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. You may recall that Dante’s Divine Comedy was written in three parts: all the high-school kids know Inferno, but there’s also Purgatorio and, finally, Paradiso. It’s a journey upwards from hell to glory. So by my thinking, Inferno would be a crawl of all the lowest-ranking bars—a bona fide trip through hell. Purgatorio would then be all the second-tier bars, and last but not least, Paradiso would be the top-tier bars, ending with whichever of the top tier is your most-most favorite.
You don’t have to do an orthodox Dante, of course. Heck , with about 30 bars on your list, you could do a series of mini-Dantes—one crawl could be a set of ten bars from worst to best, then there’d be a second crawl on a different day, and then a third crawl on a third day—three trips from hell to heaven. Or you could reverse everything and do a humorous “journey into hell,” starting with the best bars and moving down, down to the very worst. (I guess you’d probably want to keep this information away from the bar owners: no one wants to know you think their bar’s among the worst.)
Or forgo the Dante idea altogether and create crawls that are linked by theme, by best drink, by hottest bar girls, etc. (For you, though, it’s pretty much San Mig Zero or gin wherever you go, eh? I don’t recall ever seeing you acting like a beer connoisseur.)
Anyway, the sky’s the limit, but I’m partial to the Dante idea for a pub crawl. That’s just me, though. I’ll be curious to see what sort of adventure you end up planning.
I’ve never worked with Photoshop, and I see I have to pay to get it, but if that’s the best option, I’ll explore doing so. Thanks for the tip.
My initial thoughts on the bar crawl themes were pretty basic: girly bars with dancers, bars with takeout, regular drinking hangouts, etc. The Dante idea variations are good food for thought, and I’ll see about doing something along those lines as well. I mentioned that the Hot Zone motto is “Between purgatory and hell,” so that would be a good fit on the way down (or up).
The rankings are just my opinion, and as we know, opinions are like assholes, so I don’t expect an owner at the bottom of the list would take it personally. For every asshole like me, there’s another asshole who would love his place, I’m sure.
With a program like Photoshop, you can put together a physically large document that shows a lot of detail. When you put it on your blog, there’s probably a “thumbnail” option (like on my blog) that will show the image at a scaled-down size. Click on the image to see it full-size. Come to think of it, I do that on your blog already: I can click any of your uploaded photos to see it at a larger size.
As a former religious-studies student, I think in terms of mythology, and it occurred to me that, with your ranking system that goes from the best bars to the worst, you could create a series of “Dante”-themed pub crawls based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. You may recall that Dante’s Divine Comedy was written in three parts: all the high-school kids know Inferno, but there’s also Purgatorio and, finally, Paradiso. It’s a journey upwards from hell to glory. So by my thinking, Inferno would be a crawl of all the lowest-ranking bars—a bona fide trip through hell. Purgatorio would then be all the second-tier bars, and last but not least, Paradiso would be the top-tier bars, ending with whichever of the top tier is your most-most favorite.
You don’t have to do an orthodox Dante, of course. Heck , with about 30 bars on your list, you could do a series of mini-Dantes—one crawl could be a set of ten bars from worst to best, then there’d be a second crawl on a different day, and then a third crawl on a third day—three trips from hell to heaven. Or you could reverse everything and do a humorous “journey into hell,” starting with the best bars and moving down, down to the very worst. (I guess you’d probably want to keep this information away from the bar owners: no one wants to know you think their bar’s among the worst.)
Or forgo the Dante idea altogether and create crawls that are linked by theme, by best drink, by hottest bar girls, etc. (For you, though, it’s pretty much San Mig Zero or gin wherever you go, eh? I don’t recall ever seeing you acting like a beer connoisseur.)
Anyway, the sky’s the limit, but I’m partial to the Dante idea for a pub crawl. That’s just me, though. I’ll be curious to see what sort of adventure you end up planning.
I’ve never worked with Photoshop, and I see I have to pay to get it, but if that’s the best option, I’ll explore doing so. Thanks for the tip.
My initial thoughts on the bar crawl themes were pretty basic: girly bars with dancers, bars with takeout, regular drinking hangouts, etc. The Dante idea variations are good food for thought, and I’ll see about doing something along those lines as well. I mentioned that the Hot Zone motto is “Between purgatory and hell,” so that would be a good fit on the way down (or up).
The rankings are just my opinion, and as we know, opinions are like assholes, so I don’t expect an owner at the bottom of the list would take it personally. For every asshole like me, there’s another asshole who would love his place, I’m sure.