Top 5 Posts of 2017 (and a big thank you)

We Walk out of 2017
I’ve often talked to bartenders and wait staff about the most effective way to say “Thank You” for good service, and the overwhelming response has always been, “With a good tip.” Sure, it’s nice for people to say a heartfelt verbal “Thank you.” A handshake or even a hug can be appreciated. But they’re working to pay the bills, and nothing says, “Job well done” like a little extra cash.

As this year comes to an end, we’d love to thank all of you who follow this blog with a lovely check or pieces of silver or even bitcoins, but that isn’t going to happen. We wish we could send a pat on the back or hearty handshake over the interwebs, but it just can’t be done.

So we hope you’ll settle for this written thank you. You walked into a bar to relax and have a good time, you weren’t expecting to have your words taken down and put out for potentially dozens of people to read. So many of you welcomed us like friends on our initial meeting. Thank you to all of you who talked to us in bars and answered our questions.

Thank you also to those of you who read this blog regularly -- or even on occasion. We started this adventure so we could understand community a little better. Part of that understanding came from those bar visits, but part of it has come from your responses to this blog.

We'd also like to remind you of your five favorite posts of the year.

We walk into a bar to see former classmates
We walk into 2017

We walk into a bar to see old friends

We walk into The Bar

We walk into a tavern

And then there's this: We walk into our favorite bar

We Walk into 2017

Some of you have asked, “Will Dean and Mindy still walk into bars in 2017?”

The answer is “Yup!” But we won’t be going to a different bar in a different state every week this year. It’s already been done.

We’ll continue to visit bars that seem interesting and talk to people we meet there, because we’ve found people in bars have interesting things to say. We have a number of friends who work in (and even own) bars, so we plan to spend January catching up with some of those friends and writing about those visits.

For the remainder of this year, we plan to have themes each month and to write about bars that fit those themes. For instance, we might take a month for dive bars, or a month for distilleries. We’re also considering a month of Applebee’s bars -- but first we’ll check with our cardiologist to see if we’re up for that level of excitement.

Meanwhile, we’ll will be working to write a book about our year of visiting churches and bars in every state. So if you don’t feel like talking to people at a bar, you can just go back into a corner booth and read a book about it.

We’d really appreciate if you read our book about it.