Inside SRO on a quiet night.

​If food and a clear line of sight to a fancy television were all it takes to make a good sports bar, you might as well build up those plaque reserves at home. Judging sports bars involves more utilitarian considerations than usual - some of us have even ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings at some point because of convenience or peer pressure, terrible as that truth is. But it's character, camaraderie and specialization that make sports bar great, as opposed to just a place to park your ass while you fume about everything your team should be doing differently.

Based on that, here's our list of the top ten local sports bars. The order is rigidly definitive, and if we forgot your favorite place, it's because your favorite place is actually worthless.

Center Court.

​10. Center Court

This Pearland spot has only been around for half a dozen years or so, but it's already older than the surrounding bars in its strip center. (Except for area ice houses, Pearland is a fairly young town, bar-wise.) It's small and brighter than most places, with plenty of TVs. What makes Center Court stand out, though, is the family feel (relatively speaking -- this is still a business that sells liquor and stays open until 2 a.m. on weekends) and the pizza. The pizza isn't the best in town, but the thin-ish crust variety they sell is some of the best we've had at a Houston bar. It comes in a dozen varieties; try it with goat cheese, spinach and grilled chicken, or go Ninja Turtle with extra cheese and pepperoni.

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The bar on a quieter night.

​There was a fog advisory in effect Tuesday, but no amount of weather could hide the fact that I'm not black or a lesbian. The black thing is pretty clear, and although I have been mistaken for a woman in the line of duty, it was by a man who was hanging out on Fannin and seemed very high.

I wondered how that would play at the Fairview on a Tuesday, which a friend - a friend who used to work there - told me was "black lesbian night." It sounded like fun, but was it going to be "drinking with new friends" fun, or "shit, that was awkward" fun?

It was neither, because my friend was mistaken. The night he was thinking of happens sporadically. But I did stumble into DJ Sly Foxx's neo-soul video night, which is pretty much every Tuesday. First impressions were formed based on Maxwell videos and cheap drinks. This was going to be all right.

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​It spent nearly 25 years in the hands of a woman who started as a bar owner when she was only a few years short of senior discounts, and upon her death, it was passed on to her beautician because she didn't have any blood family, though she seemed to have the other kind in spades. Bonnie's has got some character.

The South Houston dive was the College Lounge for 14 years or so before Bonnie took it over. I've got a soft spot for older women who run bars, whether they're gruff Alice's types or sweet Ruthie's-style women. Extra points if there's a Southern drawl involved; reminds me of my grandmother, who, if she ran a bar, would require a solid source of switches nearby to whip regulars into submission. Self-cut, no other way to do it. I'm surprised the smaller trees in Tupelo have any thin branches left.

But I don't know what Bonnie sounded like. I was about nine months late for that. I could tell from talking to the bartender on duty Tuesday that she is missed. She spoke of Bonnie in a way that made it clear people cared for her, next of kin or no.

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D&W Lounge.

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"I know it when I see it." - Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, on correctly identifying pornography. Also applies to dive bars.

The dive distinction is complicated. Used to be you could stick a bar in the non-dive phylum if a web jukebox were present. But nowadays there are dives that still feel like coming down in a Greyhound station (in a good way?) even though you can download the Carpenters on the jukebox, if you're so inclined.

Dirt doesn't make a dive. Every bar is dirty. I'm not going to lick the floor at Red Lion, not unless I spill something really expensive, but that doesn't mean it's a dive. No matter what Guy Fieri says.

As for patrons, the West Alabama Ice House has a rode-hard crew of regulars, but since the place started dressing nicer (and flying a Greek flag, for some reason) it hasn't felt the same. A great neighborhood place - or a semblance of its former, grittier self, depending on who you ask - but not so much a dive any longer.

Then there are bars that give me particular trouble. La Carafe and Warren's - if they were college football recruits, I'd give them the amorphous "athlete" distinction and slap a rare five-star ranking next to their names. Despite the rating, I didn't include either on this list, and it's difficult to explain why. They have a timeless quality that doesn't make pigeonholing them impossible, but it does feel sacrilegious. Is Blood on the Tracks a rock and roll album? Stop typing, music geeks, that was rhetorical.

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Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows you have a drinking problem and doesn't constantly tell you that you need to go to therapy and/or church.

​For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the winner had hefty competition from other Houston bars and restaurants.

Here it is, the day after Christmas. Hope you got everything you wanted.

If you didn't, though, don't fret. You can always get yourself the present of a nice pint of beer down t' pub. If you need to escape the family for a little while to catch up with friends in town for the holidays or you just want to drink something other than eggnog, we're here for you with our list of the Top 10 neighborhood bars.

They may not be Cheers, but they're all pretty damn close.

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Photo by DannyTamman on Flickr

​I first learned about bottle service my freshman year in college. I was new to the Big City and all of its glamorous social practices and an acquaintance of my roommate had been "lucky" enough to be treated to the experience by her much older, i-banking boyfriend.

I initially thought she was talking about some sort of elite recycling agency that sent people to your house to separate the light from the dark-colored glass.

"HAH, no!" she replied. "It's when you go to a club and you have a private table with your own bottle of alcohol. And juice and stuff. You mix your own drinks. It's very expensive, like $150."*

Mix my own drinks. "Hmm," I thought, "I get that luxury for free at dorm parties." Call me old-fashioned, but (at least at the time) I correlated a high-cost drinking experience with high level of service.

*Historical note: At that time, bottle service did not necessarily include your own waiter/waitress to concoct libations.

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​The bathroom attendant at Sherlock's singing along to this song on the radio while I used the urinal was one of the more intimate non-sexual moments of my year so far. Here I was trying to piss, and there he was, earnestly expressing himself by the sink and waiting to hand me a paper towel. As I washed my hands (I do this anyway, but it'd be really hard not to with a guy sitting on a stool and holding a paper towel just for you), he told me, "Coldplay! That is a bad jam! Nothing like some good music." I didn't have any change so I dried my hands and left without tipping him.

He had a good voice; if not I could have held my cell phone up to indicate otherwise. That's how the audience was instructed to show disapproval at Sherlock's Monday comedy open mike night - a crowdsourced Gong Show or iPhone Apollo Theater, with the performers a mix of local amateur and pro comics.

No comic got that treatment while I was there, though. Not even to the kid who summoned a wall of silence after going on a rant about religion as if he were possessed by Bill Hicks on an off night.

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Chuck Cook Photography

Justin Burrow pours a craft cocktail on a quiet night at non-pretentious Fitzgerald's.

​Justin Burrow, who recently received the Favorite Mixologist nod for the My Table Houston Culinary Awards in October, is using his experience to create a casual and accessible cocktail night every Tuesday evening at Fitzgerald's.

Fitzgerald's has been around for 34 years and is a Houston live-music institution. Burrow has early memories from here and is fond of the place. "I remember my dad bringing me to Fitzgerald's when I was four years old to watch his friend's band. Being able to do something cool in this building is an honor."

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​Although I drank enough in college, I never went to traditional college nights, at least not the kind with nearly-free booze and 21-year-olds shooting their way across a strip of bars. After reading about the worst of stereotypical college life, this sounds like a less harrowing assignment.

To get that kind of scene going you need a large student population and a centralized nightlife zone that would cause anybody over 25 to cringe. Maybe it's better that Houston doesn't have the right environment. You ever seen someone in a halter top vomit publicly? It's disheartening.

I still see a handful of places in town advertise college nights, though, and it makes me curious. A couple weeks ago I checked out Christian's college dance night, which was neither. Last week, I went the college night at Shakespeare Pub. I have no idea who decided to declare Tuesdays as such at the Memorial bar. Maybe he or she consulted the person who decided a park called "Nottingham" would fit in one of the city's wealthier zip codes.

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​What if they gave an "all-night" dance party, and a bunch of people came, but no one danced?

Christian's Tailgate Midtown throws one every Wednesday. Last week I went to see what a Midtown weekday dance night looks like because sometimes I make bad decisions. I don't have a macho aversion to dancing - after four out of the five weddings I went to this year I've woken up wishing I were actually a little more averse to dancing. I'm just not sure I'm ready for dancing on a Wednesday in Midtown.

I never found out. The crowd was younger, and large enough to require two door guys and an off-duty cop. People were drinking, socializing in small groups and occasionally showing off enough midriff to make an assistant principal's head explode. By midnight, though, there was no dancing. It was loud and the DJ was playing Top 40 music (plus this video, NFSW). The drinks were cheap ($1.50 domestic draft, $6 domestic pitchers, discounted well drinks). But the cordoned-off area near the entrance stayed empty.

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