Dive Bar Shirt Club: Backdoor Tavern

A week or so ago I received an e-mail from Dive Bar Shirt Club telling me that this would be my last shirt and that I would have to renew my membership.  I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to continue this service.  I mean, I really do love it -- and it is a lot of fun getting a "present" every single month. And the shirts are a nice quality that I wear all the time.  Plus, it's neat getting shirts from all around the country.  I've really, really enjoyed it.  However, while affordable, it is still a somewhat hefty investment (I would like to remind everybody, though, that you can subscribe for any time period.  It doesn't have to be a year) and above all else, I'm running out of drawer space.  Ultimately, I decided that I would either continue my membership for a shorter period of time, or I would go on a brief hiatus and re-evaluate things after a couple of months.

And in the end, that's what I decided to do.  I'm going to end my membership at this point, and decide in 2013 if I want to go back.  Having said that, I HIGHLY recommend this as a gift idea for anybody out there.  It's a really cool idea and I've been really pleased with each shirt.  Like I said, I wear them all the time.

Okay, with that introduction out of the way, let's get to this month's shirt.  If it's my last one, I really think I went out on top.  For one, it's a color I've never received before (and this is my 24th shirt).  It's teal, which I actually quite like.  And the design on the front of a woman sitting within a circle is awesome.  Again, unlike any I've received in the past.  And finally, it's from an a part of the country that hasn't been ventured yet in my Dive Bar Shirt Club history, Knoxville, Tennessee.  The only downside?  They don't have a website, which means ordinarily means that I have to manually type out what's on the bulletin.  However, since the introduction was already a million pages long, I'm just going to copy and paste from an article that was linked from their Facebook page:

Ted Cook played basketball for the University of Tennessee and was best known for his dominant performance in the 1943 Southeastern Conference Tournament title game against Kentucky. Cook, known as a practical joker, was commonly called by the nickname, "Joe Toddy." While the origins of the name are a mystery, by the late 40's only UK coaching legend Adolph Rupp refused the moniker.

When Cook was a no-show at a Kentucky visit to Alumni Gym in the late 40's Rupp was said to have turned and asked, "Where the hell's Cook, I haven't heard him all night?" to note the absence of his biggest heckler, who regularly procured seats directly behind the Wildcats bench for their games in Knoxville.

Cook opened the liquor store and tavern at the then Knoxville city limits on what was formally known as Thunder Road. His sons and widow ran the businesses in the 1990's. Toddy's Liquor Store, under older Brother John Cook, moved to 4887 Kingston Pike in late 2007. Toddy's Back Door Tavern remains at 4951 under younger brother Barry and is now known simply as the Back Door Tavern or BDT.

Backdoor Tavern Facebook Page:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/BDT-The-Back-Door-Tavern/32198371737

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