Pitiful Santa Clara Bars

By Eric Bates

I'm sitting a few blocks away from campus in a grungy, unkempt bar that smells like bad decisions and lost dignity. I'm also furiously beating in the touch screen on my iPhone to write this because aside from the other obvious things college kids do at bars (i.e. drinking and generally acting like a raging idiots), I am deeply depressed. My misery is fostered by my belief that there is a lack of great bars around campus. Since I'm a little drunk, full of great ideas and bored like a freshman in a political science class, why don't I host my own personal gauntlet to determine which bar will be bestowed the coveted title of "Worst Bar In Santa Clara." My mother will be proud.

First up, we have Da Silva's Broncos and Blinky's. To explain how irrelevant these bars are to me: I have been going to both of these places for a year and a half, and I still have trouble figuring out which bar is which or why I go there. What I do know is that the only reason people go to Da Silva's is because Blinky's closes earlier. Unfortunately, that is the exact problem with Da Silva's: no one goes there until there is nowhere left to go. But to be fair to Da Silva's, my favorite part about Blinky's is remembering that I have just left.

Many people do show up to Blinky's on Thursday nights, but they tend to be the types of people that throw me into fits of indignant rage. Maybe if you like "bros," annoying sorority girls or frat boys who can't start a sentence without saying the word "dude," Blinky's is the place for you. Both of these bars are losers in my book, but with all considered, I think Da Silva's is worse because no one is ever there.

Next up we have The Hut and C&J's. I know what you're thinking, "But Eric, The Hut is a great dive bar! I see you there every Tuesday." Yes, I do attend two-dollar Tuesdays at the Hut, and yes, it may be the best bar in Santa Clara. But sadly, being the best dive bar in Santa Clara is equivalent to being the smartest child in the Palin family.

C&J's (or as I like to call it, My Last Resort) is like any other normal bar, if by normal bar you mean the place where deadbeat dads go to lubricate their broken souls with alcohol. If you have never seen their bathroom, trust me, you have just saved yourself from a night of grief. The first thing you think when you walk in to their lavatory is, "holy communicable diseases!" Sometimes I leave thinking I have just contracted conjunctivitis and the toilet looks like the radioactive waste zone where Godzilla was spawned. Turn to your left and you are bound to see urine stains as high as the ceiling. In a way, it is hard to not be impressed. Upon closer observation, the unknown bio-vandal left streaks that form an outline of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. It's the most disturbing, beautiful and purest form of art I have ever seen. The only upside to being at C&J's is that you can get drunk for cheap, which is the only reason I consider showing up.

I have decided that C&J's is the obvious hands down winner for 2012s "Worst Bar in Santa Clara" award, mainly because walking into there without a hazmat suit could be detrimental to your health. Now that I think about it, I'm writing this in C&J's. Another Wednesday night squandered I suppose.

Eric Bates is a senior political science major.