Sidelines

This Wilton Drive watering hole, opened just over a year ago by Laurie Whittaker and Marty Kildea, is unique in that part of the world. Gay sports bars are not the most common things, and this one takes the contrariness of the concept to wild, delirious heights. Not only is it a gay sports bar (rare) but it's age-integrated (bizarre), gender-integrated (unheard of), and clean and unsleazy (WTF?). On a recent Thursday, this Pubstalker was sitting at the bar nearest the entrance, sucking on a Johnny Walker Black, when he realized he was being pelted with peanuts. Oh fuck, he thought, for getting pelted with peanuts in a sports bar usually means you're about 45 seconds from losing a tooth, a few pints of blood, and any dignity you ever thought you possessed. Not so here: The peanut thrower was a lovely young lady by the name of Roselle (though she preferred to be called Brett), and she'd been aiming for somebody else. There were many apologies, much hugging, and Roselle insisted on buying Pubstalker a drink. Bless her. Thursdays being $3-Skye-martinis-and-cosmos night, that drink wasn't too pricey, but bless her anyway. Sidelines has a helluva lot of funky little specials — the usual 2 to 8 p.m. two-for-one, the all-night two-for-ones for folks in the hospitality biz on Mondays, free pool on Tuesdays, all-day two-for-ones on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and $8 beer buckets on Sundays ($12 for imports). If there's a sport on, from football to figure skating, Sidelines is showing it on one of its 16 massive bar- and wall-mounted flat screens, and Whittaker and Kildea compound their sportish karma by sponsoring local athletics, including a bowling league, four pool teams, and very soon a darts league.