Pike Bar
From Spearfish Lake Tales Wiki
Pike Bar is a workingman's bar in Spearfish Lake with an unsavory reputation. It's primary customers were pulp loggers and workers at Clark Plywood. It had been built in the 1950s "out of peeled logs, and innumerable coats of varnish and cigar and cigarette smoke had stained the logs to a deep brown hue."FtS40 It featured a real wooden back bar that had come from a tear-down in Camden in the 1970s. Elsewhere it is described as having deer heads and football schedules on the wall.
As the Police Chief Harold Novato reported, "It's calmed down a lot in the last few years, but there was a time or two that we had a bar fight or three just about every Saturday night. I mean, it was a rare weekend when we didn't have to go out to the Pike Bar at least once, and sometimes four or five times."DW19
As late as 1998 Brenda Hodunk had to cover a "real knock-down, drag-out fight at the Pike Bar Saturday night."AC12
Back in 1971, on the completion of their ribstitching of Rocinante, Mark Gravengood wanted to take Jackie Archer to celebrate with hamburgers at the Spearfish Lake Inn, but Jackie wasn't dressed up enough. They went to the Pike Bar instead, although the jukebox was loud. Jackie was happy to go back to the Pike on another occasion, but would decline to go there on a Saturday night.
The Pike featured prominently when Jennifer Evachevski selected it as the location for a recorded music special in the fall of 2000. The resulting video Saturday Night with Jenny Easton was featured on Public Television's Great Performances and the live album was a strong seller. That night also happened to be the carefully planned wedding between Jennifer and Blake Walworth.
