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| - When I was a kid growing up in Squirrel Hill, the Cage was a place of mystery for us. Who knew what went on behind those dark windows? It was probably a den of iniquity where things too terrible to talk about went on. You weren't allowed to go in and use the BATHROOM. WHY WEREN'T YOU ALLOWED TO WALK IN OFF THE STREET AND USE THE BATHROOM??? IT MUST BE A TERRIBLE PLACE.
When I went to art high school (this was before they started carding), all the coolest teachers used to drink there, and sometimes we'd come in to talk to them on Friday nights and pretend we were cool and old enough to be sitting in the old wooden booths smoking cigarettes. And then suddenly, we *were* old enough to be in the booths smoking and drinking enormous pitchers of Yuengling (or double old-fashioneds for those of us who still had pretensions towards being literary) and stumble out at the end of the night heading for Eat n' Park and smelling like the inside of a cigarette (though my allergies have gotten a lot worse of late and I'm actually starting to wish you couldn't smoke in here--I am getting old!) This is a good bar to come to on a pre-Christmas December night to hang out with friends you haven't seen in ages, and know that tons of people you know will be drifting in and out as the night goes on. This is a good bar to come to when you don't really know where you want to go on a Friday but you know you want to just relax. This is a good bar for women to not get grossly hit on in. This is a good bar to people-watch in--it's always a crowd of middle-aged drunks, university intellectuals, and other fun neighborhood types hanging around in here. It's not the cleanest bar in the world, nor the friendliest (though the bartender with the ZZ Top beard whose name I can't remember is pretty damn great), but it's just a straightforward place where what you see is what you get.
It's not for everyone. It's definitely for me.
(Also, I hear their burgers are good, but I've never eaten here, lol)
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