Classic Content: An Ode to Clifton … From the Past

A sunny day on Frankfort Avenue. Photo courtesy of Angry Aspie/Wikimedia

I moved to the Clifton neighborhood in 2006, and I’ve seen it change in many ways over the past 15 years. But recently I ran across this piece, which I wrote March 27, 2007, and it was striking just how many businesses have come and gone. I don’t believe this piece was ever published, although I could be wrong. At any rate, here is a blast from Clifton’s past, seen through the eyes of a Cliftonite.

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When I moved to Clifton last year, a friend and fellow Cliftonite (is that a word?) told me via e-mail, “You’ll love Clifton; it’s the new Highlands!”

Kind of cheesy, but Clifton certainly does seem to be a recent focal point of the city thanks to its restaurants, real estate and the Trolley Hop. Still, Clifton as a place to drink is quite a different creature from the Highlands. There’s no Phoenix Hill. There’s no Bambi Walk. And comparing the Highlands’ Molly Malone’s and O’Shea’s – which draw raucous crowds of college-age revelers every weekend – to Clifton’s Irish Rover is an apples-to-oranges proposition.

Basically, if the Highlands is where the “action” is, Clifton is the place to have a few drinks with friends and chill.

“It’s a pub atmosphere,” Irish Rover bar manager Erin McCormack said, “not just a bunch of kids getting drunk. That’s why we have so many regulars – they can sit and talk.”

It’s a Clifton thing, actually. At one end of the neighborhood, on Mellwood Avenue, you’ve got the quaint Rush Inn, with its incredible chili and Old Milwaukee on tap (not to mention pool tables, a juke box, and Yankees memorabilia all over the walls); Mac’s Point, a tiny watering hole that also serves up barbecue and has a beer garden, along with L&N Wine Bistro, an elegant spot for wine-tasting, and the artsy/upscale North End Cafe.

At the other end, it’s the Rover, El Mundo, Clifton Pizza, Bourbon’s Bistro – you get the idea. It’s primarily restaurants that also double as bars if you want to slip in and have a drink or two unnoticed, and without having a band drilling big, crunchy Creed covers into your brain until 2:30 a.m.

El Mundo, for instance, is best known for its food, but check out the tequila list there – and prepare to call City Scoot when you’re finished, as the roster is more than 40 strong. And like a true Irish pub, the Rover has a great selection of import beer on draft, not to mention my personal favorite Irish Rover Red, the house ale.

Longshots Tavern is about as “bar” as Clifton gets, and even it is basically a neighborhood watering hole, a place where visitors and regulars alike can play a few rounds of pool and sip their drinks in relative peace – at least until the bands start. But even on live-music nights, like most of Clifton’s pubs, it’s a place regulars can call their own.

“I love them to death,” McCormack said of her estimated 30 to 35 Irish Rover regulars. “But sometimes it’s like, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, don’t you have homes?”

They’ve found their homes – in their favorite Clifton watering hole.