Chase Sports Bar: 60 Minutes, pool and stock cars

The Chase Sports Bar is located a 105 E. Michigan Ave.
in Jackson, Michigan 

Returning back to your roots, definitely more romantic in theory than in practice.

Last Sunday my parents took a trip up to Grand Rapids to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (which I highly recommend), so I was left in Jackson to watch over my puppy. (Which is always a plus).

As evening was approaching I decided to head to downtown Jackson and visit on of the ‘newer’ bars in downtown Jackson, The Chase Sports Bar, located here. .

When I say ‘newer’, I mean a bar that was built after I left Jackson for Grand Rapids, so it was built after 2008.

And given it was a Sunday night, I have to say I had a positive experience at Chase. Sure there were not a whole lot of people at the bar, which I rather prefer for the sake of reviewing a place, but the place has everything a sports bar could ask for and more.

There were plenty of TVs, with the days NFL games and one dedicated to 60 Minutes, great thing about small-town bars, one TV is always dedicated to the news.

Also the large stock car hanging over the bar is a plus.

And that is the important thing when you dedicate yourself as a sports bar, or any other type of bar for that matter, if you have a theme-stick to it, damit.

I’m not going to name names, **cough, cough Eastown SportsBar**, but if you are going to go with a sports bar theme, go with a sports bar theme.

Have a lot of TVs, have cheap specials on cheap beer, make sure you have a few good pool tables. Embrace who you are and don’t apologize for it.

And to this standard, Chase Sports Bar lives up the measure.

Being a Sunday night, the bar wasn’t too full, but there were a few football fans enjoying this week’s slate of action, including a win by the surprising Lions (who knew, they can win in December after all).

I grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered Sam Adams Winter Larger (insert obligatory Ned Stark ‘Winter Is Coming’ joke here).

There were about five other people at the bar, which seats around 20, so I plenty of room to sit by myself.

So I used my free range to take in the scene of the bar. It was mostly full of Lions fans and other people getting together to sneak in a late-night, Sunday night drink (if you can call 7:30 p.m. late night).

I drank my Winter Lager in peace while watching the Seattle Seakhawks dispatch the Philadelphia Eagles, remember when the ‘experts’ thought college coaches couldn’t coach in the NFL, yeah, neither do I.

I finished my beer when I heard the all too familiar ‘crack’ of a cue ball hitting a rack of ball.

Yep, I’m drinking alone in Jackson, and pool is playing, there is only one place this is going. I orchard a Fat Tire and took my beer upstairs to the tables and began my night of pool playing in Jackson.

A quick thesis on pool in Michigan. Jackson, for all the post-industrial waste that it is, is a poolhall junkies dream. Just about every half decent bar in Jackson has a table, and just about every bar has its own pool shark to play with.

I only found this out when I moved to Grand Rapids, where I found the competition was…..’Friendly, but not talented’. But being back home, I knew there were a few who knew their way around a table. (Warning: this is where this post will more or less turn into a pool blog, sorry, it’s Jackson—not much that I can do).

I met a nice gentlemen named Laurence, and him and I began playing eight-ball (that’s stripes and solids to the uninitiated). Being a Sunday, pool was free at Chase, so that’s always a plus.

Laurence and I played a game, it happened to be a night where I was on my game (no seriously, I was making bank shots and everything. My friends tell me that when I’m ‘on’, I’m borderline scary. Sorry to brag, but I’m just trying to set the scene).

Luckily for Laurence, we weren’t playing for money—which I rarely like doing anyway. We played two games of eight ball before we switched up to nine ball, the official pool game of the United States (according to ESPN, so it must be true).

Chase has two tables, and next to us was a group of four to five people.

Initially, they came up to us and asked if they could take on winners.

Normally, I would be all over this (I love playing strangers, best way to meet new people---it’s a wonder I’m still single), but I found out that they wanted to play doubles, so Laurence and I said no thanks.

A general rule of thumb to everybody out there: If you see two people you don’t know playing pool, and you want to play in the next game, it is considered rude to ask to play for doubles.

Not that there is anything wrong with playing doubles, it’s fun when you are in a group of people and you really don’t care about winning the game. But in singles, you get to set up your opponent’s next shot, and you don’t have to worry about how your partner plays or feels—kind of like how people are single in life, it’s too much of an emotional strain to worry about how others are thinking.

Eventually, the table other table at the bar opened up, so the group took over the other table while I continued to play with Laurence.

After the second round of NFL games ended, the bar switched to rock music for the rest of the night, which is always a great for playing pool (I’m not afraid to admit to pretending to play guitar with a  cue stick while being drunk, but I only had two beers, so that was not too much of a worry).

After a few games of nine ball, I bought Laurence a beer, it was the least I could do after taking a majority of the games from him.

It was just after 9 p.m., and I’m guessing that is when the bar closes on a Sunday, because the bartender came up to rudely ‘remind’ us that we needed to close our taps.

I say rudely because I understand that people want to close up shop when it time to close up shop. 

But when you have a job where your pay is affected by how nice you are to other people, the least you can do is throw in a smile and a ‘hey’ before giving people marching orders.

Eventually, I made my way back to the bar, where the bartender remarked that I was ‘finally’ ready to settle my tab (keep in mind that it was only 9:15, Sunday night or not, I don’t think it was time make snarky remarks to the patrons, that saved for after 11 p.m.---at least.

I hate to admit it, but I did not leave the best of tips ($2), because the service was not that great for a bar that was not that busy.

And I always hate to leave a bad tip, it makes me feel like a judgmental jerk (Mostly because I am, but I don’t need reminding). But then I had a longer thought about it. Bad tips exists to make better tips be more valuable.

I’m not a regular at Chase’s, even though by all merit it was a solid bar, but the service I got left a lot to be desired.

Now granted, I’m not a regular, so it is possible that the service is warmer to the regular patrons (and rightfully so). But it just wasn’t that great tonight—eh, maybe I just caught them on an off night.

I said good night to my new pool friend, Laurence, who was in town from Louisiana, visiting his brother up in Jackson. (Yes, I realize there is a good chance Laurence’s brother could quite possibly in the JacksonState Penitentiary and Correctional Facility. But in Jackson, we surprisingly don’t care about that. Which is much to the amazement of people not from Jackson, who can’t seem to comprehend that the prison is nowhere near city limits---because building a prison in the middle of a city is a dumbidea).  

I did take a peek at their food menu (my parents’ kitchen was open to me, so I was more than settled in the food department). The menu offers a wide variety of food and burger options as well as other (affordable) entrees, pretty much what you would expect from a sports bar.

Overall, I had a positive experience from Chase’s, service aside.

I wish there some more people at the bar to get a better feel for the bar’s two-story atmosphere. But I did have an opportunity to play pool on a quality table, which is always a plus. (And yes, it is a stereotype to assume all Jackson bars have great pool tables and all Jackson folk know how to play good pool…..but most of them do, so it isn’t much of a stereotype as it is common local knowledge).

I settled my tab and headed out into the rather warm December night.  Great thing about downtown Jackson bars, free downtown parking. (Obligatory Caddyshack ‘so we gotthat going for us’ reference).

I got back in my car and heading back home to my puppy. Happy I got the chance to visit a neighborhood bar that I hope becomes a staple of my hometown.

And play around eight games of pool for free—seriously, that always makes for a good night.

Chase Sports Bar, not half-assing it when it comes to sports bars. TVs, food specials, pool tables, they got it all.

Hell, they have a stock car hanging over the bar. They’re not messing around.