Drink in the Best Pun Bar and Pub Names

(Photos: Eric Woodard (Picnic Tap); Adam Fagen (What Ales You); Ben (Paddy O’Beers))

See our ultimate crowdsourced map of punny businesses in America.

It will probably surprise no one that bar and pub names tend to be a little bawdy. Sacramento’s LowBrau acknowledges this tendency while itself being a punny name. But believe it or not, there are plenty of literary and movie references too. And Neil’s Bahr of Houston, Texas stands alone in our map as a bar named after a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

No, bar names aren’t all Hungry Beaver or Dick’s Halfway Inn. You could nod to U.S. history like Abe’s on Lincoln in Savannah, GA. You could appeal to people who care more about pop culture than semantics like Portland’s tortuously-named The Big Legrowlski. Or, as two bars on different coasts discovered, you can woo suave literary types with the perfect book/martini pun: Olive Or Twist. Dickens halfway in.

Here’s what we’d like to publicize about these punny pubs:

—There are eight bars called Pour House, which is eight more than the number of poorhouses in the United States. One wonders whether these businesses even know their name is a pun.

—The literary references come mostly out of the high school classics canon—Olive or Twist, Tequila Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye—but Omaha, Nebraska’s Beer and Loathing in Dundee is a little more counterculture.

—You can’t go wrong with a classic: there are at least four pubs called the Dew Drop Inn.

—Some of these puns seem to have been devised by someone who was already half drunk. Is there another explanation for Fumducks, Sir Vezas, or Winegasm?

—Like a dozen of these names are puns you wouldn’t want to have to explain to your grandma.

Editor’s picks:

Anchor Management Bar and Grill  (Lake Oroville, CA)

Bar None (San Francisco, CA)

Brews Brothers (Galveston, TX)

Brews Brothers Taproom, Murphysboro, IL)

Neil’s Bahr (Houston, TX)

Olive Or Twist (Portland, OR and Pittsburgh, PA)

Stocks and Blondes (Chicago, IL)

Tequila Mockingbird (Ocean City, MD)

The Red, White, and Brew (Hammond, LA)

The Wurst Bar (Ypsilanti, MI)

Thirst N’ Howl (Little Rock, AK)

Wish You Were Beer (Madison, AL)

Here are the other categories:

Coffee shops

Other (including retail stores, vape shops and lots of yarn stores)

Doctors and Dentists

Food Trucks

Pet Care

Restaurants

Cleaning Businesses/Flower Shops/Portable Bathrooms

Hair/Nail Salons

The full list: