He marvels at the boiled eggs that go for 35 cents apiece at Billy's Chili Pot on Frankford Avenue. He discovers that Big Charlie's Saloon, in the midst of Eagle-green South Philly, is a Kansas City Chiefs shrine. And he's only marginally disgusted by the smokers at City Line Bar & Horseshoe Pits in the Northeast, where instead of ashtrays patrons drop their butts into tiny plastic cups half-filled with water.
The 25-cent bowling machines, the black-and-white photos of old boxers, the cheap drinks, the saucy barmaids and the drunken, sometimes brilliant banter of the regulars - they're all worthy of praise. There's something to be said for a place like the Cresson Inn, beneath the SEPTA rail trestle in Manayunk. While college kids wearing backward baseball caps get into fistfights on Main Street, McManus writes, "The bar has retained all of its blue-collar dive-y charm." The sign behind the bar emphasizes it: This is 'Where the Real Yunkers Drink.' "