The B-Side is closing

Time was, I used to go to the B-Side every Monday night for drinks and dinner, a weekly ritual with my roommate. We’d sit at the bar and eat and get drunk and chat with the bartenders. Dave, Rob, Joe, owner Patrick — consummate bartenders all: warm, charming, and highly skilled cocktail concoctors. The food — the pizzas of the day, the salad with blue cheese and pears and walnuts, the steak tips, those heaping plates of blue cheese fries — was awesome, always. And the drinks – whatever you could think of, and if you couldn’t you’d get a dead-on suggestion from one of the people behind the bar — were made not only with skill, but with a casual passion and attention to detail. It’s a great bar. One of the best. And it’s closing. It’s not yet been disclosed who’s bought up the place, but for a lot of longtime fans, this is sad — and surprising — news. Sure, it sits in that no-man’s land in Cambridge, outside Inman, before Kendall. But the barstools have been filled, and the booths packed all the recent times I’ve been in, weeknights. It got to the point where I wouldn’t go on weekends because it was always just so packed. RIP B-Side. We’ll miss you — the horseshoe bar, those perfect pizzas, the sparkling banks of ice, your benevolent bartenders — very, very much.