{"id":6374,"date":"2013-08-26T09:18:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T16:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/?p=6374"},"modified":"2013-08-26T09:18:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T16:18:43","slug":"a-day-in-bridgeport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/?p=6374","title":{"rendered":"A Day in Bridgeport"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThis past Saturday (the final Saturday before Football Season) Julie<\/a> and I decided to spend the day in the Bridgeport<\/a> neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. We jumped on the Halsted bus and headed South for the better part of an hour. If you’ve spent some time on the CTA buses during non-rush hour times they’re relatively convenient. Our plan was to have breakfast, stop at a root beer factory and then hit up one of the better beer bars in the city while eating meat pies.<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

Nana<\/strong>
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\nOur first stop in Bridgeport was at\u00a0Nana<\/a>\u00a0for breakfast. I can’t recall where I read about this place but it seemed good from the website. The food was great. I could probably just live off of their empanadas. We weren’t sure if there’d be a long wait or not, but we were seated right away. Julie and I definitely plan to check out their dinner some time.<\/p>\n

Filbert’s Root Beer<\/strong>
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\nAfter breakfast we grabbed the 35th Street bus and headed over to\u00a0Filbert’s Old Time Draft Root Beer<\/a> on Ashland Avenue. Filbert’s is a locally owned soda production facility that caters to a lot of restaurants and local food markets throughout the city. One of the managers gave us an impromptu tour and a couple of free bottles for the road. I had actually had some of their root beer on draft earlier in the year at Paulina Meat Market’s<\/a> tent during Sausage Fest.<\/p>\n

Maria’s Packaged Goods<\/strong>
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\nMaria’s Packaged Good<\/a> was pretty much the anchor of this little trip. When we started we were just looking for places within walking distance or a short bus ride from Maria’s. When we arrived they were just opening up and were preparing for some kind of Charter School fundraiser.<\/p>\n

For a little background on Maria’s, the place is a liquor store in the front and a bar in the back. I think this used to be a somewhat common occurrence in Chicago. The liquor store in the front has a great selection of six packs and an entire wall of 22oz bombers including a lot of 3 Floyds<\/a> bottles. The bar in the back has an equally good selection of drafts.<\/p>\n

Combining the beer selection with the food options next door makes this one of the best bars in the city.<\/p>\n

Pleasant House Bakery<\/strong>
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\nPlease House Bakery<\/a> is located directly next door to Maria’s and I believe is BYOB. You can also order food there and they will deliver it to you at the bar in Maria’s which is what we did. Julie and I shared the Steak & Ale Pie and it was unreal. I can’t image going to Maria’s and not eating a meat pie from Pleasant House ever again.<\/p>\n

Skylark<\/strong>
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\nSkylark<\/a> is probably a mile north of Bridgeport but it definitely was on the way home so it warranted a stop. Huge beer selection, by far the largest dive bar I’ve ever been in. From the outside the place looks much shadier than it is. We actually walked past the entrance at first thinking there’s no way that the place was open.<\/p>\n

Greekfest<\/strong>
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\nOn our way back home we stopped at Greekfest<\/a> for a bite to eat. As Street Festivals go, Greekfest was one of the best. No ‘Suggested Donation’\/shakedown. A lot of vendors actually had something to do with Greek food instead of just random fair stuff.<\/p>\n

Sidenotes:<\/strong>
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\n* Good Luck Auto Repair. \u00a0I would like to help out with Good Luck Auto Repair’s marketing plan but according to Yelp<\/a> they’re doing just fine.
\n\"Things<\/a>
\n** While at Maria’s a couple in drag stopped by to take a photograph in front of the bar. I think they own a costume shop or something. It all seemed perfectly normal at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday (the final Saturday before Football Season) Julie and I decided to spend the day in the Bridgeport neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. We jumped on the Halsted bus and headed South for the better part of an hour. If you’ve spent some time on the CTA buses during non-rush hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer","category-common-man","category-food"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pazIS5-1EO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6374"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6382,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions\/6382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackhandproductions.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}