Texas T Pub

Years ago, I went to a little spot named Ronny's in Chicago to see the Screaming Females play (good band). Ronny's was a capital-S Shit hole. Its vibe can best be described as the fall of Rome mixed with a nuclear meltdown. Pretty much everything about this place sucked. The bartenders were assholes. The walls were literally unpainted drywall. There was no stage; the band played right on the concrete floor. The men's bathroom was a Normandy trench. The sink was perpetually clogged and full of dirty water. To flush the toilet, you had to reach into the tank water and yank the chain. It smelled like piss and fetid ditchwater. To top it all off, on my visit, there was a slow cooker filled with nacho cheese near the entrance. The world's grossest nachos served up hotter than a stolen Ferrari. Bon appetit.

It had been a long while since I thought of Ronny's. But when I walked into Texas T Pub and the pungent smell of water damage and vagrancy greeted me like five fingers to the face, it all came back at once. I wouldn't put Texas T in the same category as Ronny's—it has actual charm and devoted clientele. But it's definitely dumpy in a way that will alienate some people. One Yelp reviewer put it succinctly: "The bar itself is undoubtedly the crappiest I've ever been to but the prices weren't too shabby."

Besides the cheap drinks and diverse crowd, there are two things that stand out at Texas T. The first is owner Adela Loera-Fuller, who is the 75-year-old, cowboy-hat-toting queen of this domain. Terry, her younger sister, is the bar manager. But everyone around here knows who the real head honcho is.

The second is Kitty Cat (clever name), the longtime feline resident of this establishment. Apparently, Kitty Cat recently experienced a kidnapping from a local but was returned a few days later.

Texas T also gets bonus points for being a true Downtown dive. These are increasingly harder to find as property values go up. Sure, the place may smell like a felony jail sentence, but that also keeps the bachelorette parties and corporate lawyers out. And for many San Antonians, that’s exactly the right vibe.