[Editor's note: the latest in Phoenix Woman's series on making the most of Netroots Nation 2011 -- June 16-19, in her homeworktown of Minneapolis, Minnesota.]

Alright, so we left our pubcrawling Netrootsers leaving Kieran’s (though frankly, I’d rather stay at Kieran’s, but that’s me). Off to our next destinations!

Now, Kieran’s happens to be in what’s called the “Block E” complex, and its owners are pushing mightily for the state legislature to change the law so they can turn it into a giant casino. The pretext? Block E’s increasingly empty state. What they don’t mention is that at least one of the two most recent businesses to leave, Panchero’s, was doing land-office business — and was apparently told to leave by the landlord because they didn’t fit in with the landlord’s plans. (I’d heard something similar about Applebee’s when talking with an Applebee’s employee during the last week it was open.) In the meantime, Block E is home to a fancy bar and four-Zagat-star restaurant, Cosmos, and a somewhat less fancy and more alcohol-involved joint in the basement called Bradstreet Crafthouse, that are connected to the fancy Graves 601 hotel. It’s also home to the Minneapolis outlet of the SHOUT! House chain, which features “rock and roll duelling pianos”. I think I’ll pass. Oh, and there’s a Hard Rock Café in the complex as well. I think I’ll pass again.

As for the rest: Gluek’s is a lovely old bar that’s survived destruction by fire to stay in its original spot for nigh on a century, a remarkable feat in a developer-cursed city such as Minneapolis. (Ask me to tell you about the Conservatory follies sometime.) Nearby is Jetset, and I’m sure it’s OK — but I’m anxious to get you all across the river, to Nye’s Polonaise at 112 East Hennepin Avenue — aka, per Esquire magazine in October of 2006, The Best Bar in America:

THE BEST BAR IN AMERICA isn’t Irish. It isn’t in a strip mall. It isn’t the sort of place that charges an outrageous cover for people to stand around in black light pushing back shooters out of test tubes. It isn’t a fight club or a meat market. There is no snobbery, and there is no tonic-water drinking. There are gimlets and manhattans, bottles of Zywiec, and a first-rate pissoir.

The best bar in America occupies a corner where the path to righteousness and the road to perdition run parallel, east to west, perpendicular to the muddy river that cuts this country in two, north to south. The best bar in America has occupied this physical and spiritual intersection since 1950. The best bar in America lies across the Mississippi from downtown Minneapolis over a bridge named for Father Louis Hennepin, and it has a sign on its yellow-brick exterior that points the way to Our Lady of Lourdes, cast in the red-neon glow of another that reads LIQUORS. The best bar in America also saw one of its doormen murdered last summer.

The best bar in America is Nye’s Polonaise.

More accurately, it is the two best bars in America–Nye’s Bar, known as the “Old Side” to its ancient staff and unshifting regulars, and the upscale bordello kitsch of the Polonaise Room–connected through their shared fire wall by a pair of swinging doors. When it comes right down to it, you’re either Nye’s or you’re Polonaise, making this place a kind of crossroads inside and out.

It’s all that and more. Much more.