Here’s the thing: I am bound by the tradition of two generations to be a San Francisco Giants fan, but given the distance and their first-week win-loss record, well, let’s just say it’s easier to pay attention to the Rangers. It’s not like it’s hard. Unlike Giants games, which require a bar, a friend’s house, or an old folks’ home with some kind of all-encompassing MLB satellite package, Rangers games are almost inescapable. Especially at Frankie’s Sports Bar.
Seriously, the only place that might have more TVs than Frankie’s is Best Buy, and that’s only because Best Buy has boxes of boob-tubes stacked in a warehouse. If we’re talking TVs that are plugged in and flashing sports, Frankie’s might have more than Jesus’ mansion. There are even TV sets behind the bathroom mirrors. If you get a beer at Frankie’s and somehow manage not to see any moving two-dimensional pictures, you probably came in with a seeing-eye dog.
Sports bars aren’t really my thing, but Frankie’s gets a high five for its solid service, cold beer, sheer earnestness, and singularity of purpose. Barring a national tragedy, I doubt anything not involving a ball or a stopwatch will ever occupy a screen in there, and when you read the menu, you’re blasted with copy that’s pretty much 100 percent GO FIGHT WIN AMERICA! That the sandwich list includes a Freedom Dip (because French Dips are for pansies, essentially) should tell you all you need to know.
Still, I’ve always had fun when I’ve been there, even when it’s so crowded it’s hard to get a seat. I came during a couple of Cowboys disasters and ended up clinging to the edge of the bar, watching fans’ faces melt in disappointment as their team disintegrated before their very eyes. Again. While I never truly feel sorry for Cowboys fans, I imagined that watching the slaughter on a screen bigger than my living room must be pretty disheartening. Hopefully I won’t have Cowboys-fan-sad-face when I drop by Frankie’s to watch the Giants. –– Steve Steward
A Capital Affair
Remember Texas Women? You know, that CMT reality show about a quartet of Fort Worth-area dingbats partying it up in what the show’s producers must have assumed were the city’s hotspots? I watched this for about five episodes, amused by the cast’s mostly unlikable personalities and the show’s hilariously sloppy editing. In case you didn’t know, the Stockyards, downtown, and West 7th are Fort Worth. (Sorry, Near South Side. Sorry, Cultural District. Sorry, TCU area.)
I was sort of dismayed that this show might be giving a lot of people the wrong idea about Fort Worth. If you’ve ever been to any of the three TV-anointed hotspots and gritted your teeth at all the cow-bling walking around, you would have hated Texas Women. Obviously, the producers wanted to hype the “cow” in Cowtown, ignoring anything else that might make someone say or think something different about Fort Worth, let alone want to set foot in the town. The whole time I watched these chicks bebop around our three entertainment districts, I kept thinking, “Nobody does that there” or “When would that ever happen?” And then there was this one moment, when two of the women (the blonde who sold rodeo bulls and the brunette who sounded like she ate Xanax all day) were planning a night out. In unison, they said, in the most annoying voices possible, “Cap barrrrr!”
Is the Capital Bar a hotspot? I don’t really know, because I haven’t been there on a weekend — if I hit up that part of town on a Friday or Saturday night, I usually don’t make it beyond Magnolia Motor Lounge, except for last Thursday, when Big Mike’s Box of Rock was in the Backyard, a.k.a. Capital Bar’s patio. I think they were playing “Moby Dick” when I arrived.
Honestly, they could’ve been playing anything, because I’d gotten into some shots, and everything was pretty blurry, though I left with the impression the Cap Barrrrr offers a male-to-female ratio that skews heavily toward the fairer sex. Bedazzled cowgirls, though, were few and far between — in other words, a bunch of regular people were rocking a weeknight party, rather than some kind of invented-for-television, dressed-to-the-shitkicking-nines girls’ night out. Undoubtedly, the producers got the scene at the Capital Bar wrong too. Or maybe it’s that people will go anywhere to hear Zeppelin songs performed well live. Except Texas Women. — SS
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Frankie’s Sports Bar
425 W 3rd St, FW, 817-870-9090
Capital Bar
3017 Morton St, FW, 817-820-0049
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Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
