(Downtown, Paris, IL)
Scooter’s 823rd bar, first visited in 2010.
We walked into this bar at 10:00am to find about half a dozen customers already seated. We ordered Bud Lights, and three people converged to hunt for them. The owner then mentioned the the distributor hadn’t brought them any yet. The bartender apologized profusely as he had to give us regular Budweiser, but we were perfectly fine with that.
Behind us, the owner had the old CD jukebox completely opened up and he was making repairs to it. We were impressed that he had the know-how to do that.
The L-shaped bar is huge, unusually long for this type of bar. The owner later informed us it is 54 feet long.
We got to talking with the owner, and we were surprised to learn that he had been in poor health until recently and as a result the bar had actually been closed for the past 5 months. In fact, we walked in just minutes after he opened the doors for their first day back open! Indeed, we soon heard another customer excitedly call a friend to say “You’ll never believe where I am right now!”
The owner took us around on a short tour of the bar, showing us all the things he was having to put back together and showing us the artwork and paintings his son had made as decor for the bar. We told him all about our travels, and I began openly taking pictures.
In a flash (literally, except falsely so as you’ll see in a moment), the bartender dashed over. “Are you okay?” he asked the owner. “I saw the flash go off and saw these guys taking pictures of you.” The owner calmed him down and told him everything was okay. The funny part, though, I didn’t even have the flash turned on.
After the walk-through we went back to our seats and we noticed a siren light mounted on the bar in front of B. The owner noticed us notice it and flipped a switch, causing us both to leap from our seats due to the extremely loud buzzer sound it made.
We always love finding bars where we actually get to meet and talk with the owner. It was a really nice stroke of luck that we happened to walking in here first thing on re-opening day.
139 East Court Street
Paris, IL 61944
US
[launch map]
(217) 465-3202
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