Before recommending one to travel to lovely Baltimore to visit The Owl Bar, a few caveats. 

I love Baltimore, always have, dating back to before I moved from Arizona to Washington, D.C., and my uninformed but enthusiastic embrace of the NBC television show Homicide: Life on the Street. Weird, I know, to fall in love with a place based on a show about murder, but what the hell. I also liked Diner. And with the passage of years and the release of The Wire, subsequent Barry Levinson movies, plus my own move back East, my affection for Charm City just grew. 

I also love The Belvedere, the historic building where the Owl Bar resides. I love it outside and inside, even if I can’t tell you if it is primarily an example of Beaux Arts, Second Empire or Art Deco. Suffice to say: It’s really cool. Lots of marble, brass and glass, especially in the Owl Bar. A hotel when it opened in 1903, it’s since been converted to condos. But it retained the common space downstairs, so it still has event space for things like weddings and, most wonderfully for me, the Owl Bar. 

I think owls are cool too, if a bit mysterious and weird. They’re all over the place where I grew up outside Cottonwood, Ariz. A sleepy Screech Owl figured prominently in the first White House pool report I wrote (it pooped on George W. Bush’s wrist at a wildlife refuge in Maryland). And I met a Great Horned Owl named Oden at a wedding reception at the John James Audubon Center in Pennsylvania a few years ago, and he is a charmer. The fact that I share an affection for Twin Peaks with the editor of RIYL is a natural extension of all this owl lore. 

So: The Owl Bar. 

You find it by walking through the gleaming white lobby of the Belvedere, past the roster of famous people from another era who hung out there. (Tyrone Power! John Philip Sousa!)

It’s like walking into a cave, which gets progressively darker as you get to the heart of the matter. White disappears. Brown, black, green, crimson dominate. On the walls: all kinds of out-of-time imagery (squires, stag heads). 

In the inner sanctum, it feels far away from the outside world, a sign of a good escape. Heavy wood and cushioned chairs and stools. A dark-wood bar with an impressive but not overwhelming amount of booze. On draft, nationally recognized cheap beer as well as local craft beer. Classic cocktails and in-house specialties. Some modern touches, pizza oven, for instance. Want a simple burger? Done. Crab and corn hush puppies? That’s an option too. Basically, fancy bar food that can double as a meal if needed. Affordable. 

Clientele? Plenty of locals. It is the ground floor of a condo building after all (A plate on the lobby bathroom says “Restrooms for residents and patrons only.”) Some tourists, too. The occasional power broker, girls-night-out, date night and what have you. No one looks out of place in this very peculiar place. If Nite Owl from Watchmen bellied up to the bar and asked for a pint of the whatever Union Craft Brewing seasonal option was on tap, It wouldn’t be out of place. 

And overlooking it all above the bar: a triptych of stained-glass owl iconography: “A Wise Old Owl Sat On An Oak” and etc. I like bars that not only contain stories but provide stories. 

It’s a refuge. 

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