A Dart Trip Down Memory Lane

I started playing steel-tip darts in 1988 in the Chicagoland area. My first league was out of Ardmore Lounge in Villa Park for the West Suburban Dart League. Boy does time fly because it just seems like yesterday...

My first blind draw? Village Inn Pub (VIPs) on Algonquin in Arlington Heights. It's long gone now but in its heyday that was the place to be. VIPs claim to fame was that it was the home bar of Chicago dart legend K.C. Mulaney, who tragically died in his 30s while attending a tournament in Las Vegas.

Players shooting out of VIPs were given a bright blue collared dart shirt, and a free drink token for the team drink. Saturday nights there were a couple of blind draws, the first starting somewhere around 8:00PM...the best I ever did was to win first place in both draws on some long ago Saturday night. That was a nice chunk of change and lots of fun as well. It was at VIPs that I met my good friends Thomas and Chris Wald.

In the early '90s, VIPs lost its popularity. Maybe it was because K.C. Mulaney was no longer around, I'm not sure. The suburban darters all seemed to shift to Maxfields, in Palatine. Maxfields is another dart bar that is long gone, but it was a great place to shoot out of. A combination restaurant and bar, there were blind draws, small tournaments and lots of teams that called Maxfields their home bar. The dart setup was excellent with the playing area up a step or two and out of the way of any passersby, or even darters on their way to the bathrooms. In the corner, by the windows, was a six-foot tall cigar store Indian, complete with a headdress. Just for yucks people would stick a cigarette out of the Indian's mouth. Was it any wonder that the cigar store Indian was full of dart holes from people's steel-tip darts? And there was great music to get you into the dart throwing kinda mood...

With such a large concentration of darters in the Chicagoland area, you could always find a blind draw on any given Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening. On Sundays the place to be was Salty's. Another bar that's no longer in business, Salty's had a great setup. The place was huge with probably about 10 dartboards. The way it was set up was such that darters didn't have to walk in front of each other to get by. Decorated with a nautical theme the bar was sold and the new owners never renewed the liquor license. That was the end of Salty's on Central in the city.

A few weeks before each Windy City Cup and Windy City Open, there were warm-up tournaments at Parkside Inn, on the north side of the city. It was a small joint but boy could Parkside pack in the darters! I was recently told that one of the owners died and the bar is no longer in business.

Friday nights you could find a draw, in fact you can still find a blind draw, at Di's Den on Irving Park in the City. The dart room takes up 2/3s of the bar and Chicago's best darters can be found there on any given Friday. Just this year ('2002), Frank died. He was a great man and really helped promote the game of darts in the Chicagoland area. You can still find Di there most of the time and she works really hard to make sure that people are enjoying themselves.

Who was the best competition? In the late '80s and 90s, the darters to beat were Cindy Mars, Linda Soloman, Cindy Palmer, Nancy Visocki, Angie Burns, Terri Gates, Una Cox, Maryl Spence, the Pavlicks (Jerry and his wife Geri), Dan Pucillo, Frank Lopez, Andy Mac, Jimmy Damore, Chuck Downer, Rick Praner, Joey Beecroft, Rick Runyon and his brother Ed DeBehnke, Jon Wald and more.

After a hiatus from steel-tip darts for several years, I now find myself running into old friends and making new friends in '2002. A lot of these same great Chicago darters (mentioned above) are still playing excellent darts and there are lots more new players who are shooting just incredible darts and making their mark. I've been lucky enough to meet some along the way as I begin frequenting the blind draws and pro-ams once again and I'm looking forward to meeting many more of the great Chicago darters, as well as all the other darters who travel to Chicago to play. There's nothing like watching great darts and being a part of this sport!

Thanks for coming along for my ride down memory lane. If you've got any stories or fond memories of the dart bars here, please take a moment to click on the E-mail Webmaster link at the bottom of this page and drop me a line.
From Sherilyn...And as always, good luck and I'll see you at the line.