MINNEAPOLIS IS A CITY built on its institutions-the falls at Minnehaha, the Institute of Arts, Kirby Puckett, and Fran Tarkenton-but the best and sturdiest of them hang out here, wrapped in the darkness and surroundings that have remained perfectly preserved since the 1960s.
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Apart from a few stained-glass lanterns and a small TV with the Twins game on, the only light that penetrates this joint's darkest corners comes from the accordion display over those swinging doors.Įverybody says that stepping into Nye's Polonaise is like stepping back in time, and, for once, it's true-to a time before even electricity. Nye's has the only window in the entire complex, but it has turned opaque with time and pierogi smoke. On this summer night, it feels as if all that ties the two halves together is their shared floral carpet and their nearly pitch-blackness. 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. 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.
The best bar in America is Nye's Polonaise. The best bar in America also saw one of its doormen murdered last summer.
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 has occupied this physical and spiritual intersection since 1950. 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.
There are gimlets and manhattans, bottles of Zywiec, and a first-rate pissoir. There is no snobbery, and there is no tonic-water drinking. 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.