Pub 46   

Huge bars on highways that can't be reached except by car tend to be soulless chains staffed by chirpy people in striped uniforms, suspenders, and close-fitting shorts. Worse, the geographic isolation threatens to necessitate drunk driving. Pub 46, named for the dreary and congested stretch of sprawl on which it sits, can't help with the DWI problem, but it does manage to evade the former issue by having its own personality: lots of televised sports, wingers, pervasive, dingy, amber-colored light and live rock 'n' roll almost every night. The recurring cover bands draw a regular and youthful crowd with a mixture of punk-inflected radio hits. Here you'll find that sort of pretty, lonely girl that left for college but is now back with her folks in town and working that crappy job at that store. She has this kind of haunted look in her eyes all the time, and at Pub 46 you can buy her a drink as the band tears into a cover version of Nirvana's cover version of Bowie's 'The Man Who Sold the World.'