By Erin Randolph erin@dmcityview.com

Ebenezer Frogs is confused. The suburban strip mall establishment, located at 7460 Hickman Road in Windsor Heights, has a name that would suggest it caters to the near-Depends and colostomy bag crowd, yet its clientele is made up of twentysomething punks, hippies and preps. Ebenezer Frogs has a dècor that suggests, thanks to an abundance of exposed wood beams, a ski lodge or a German beer hall, yet the Irish drinking songs on the jukebox and the abundance of shamrock-related regalia suggests it thinks itself an Irish pub. And the fact that it's in a strip mall in Sherwood Forest, well, that just means it's in the suburbs.

Though the Bar Fly has spent a great deal of her life living in the western suburbs of Des Moines, she never knew the place existed. Neither did Drinking Assistants Brian and Drew, who'd scouted out Frogs earlier in the day while they had a car serviced at a nearby Phillips 66.

We decide to head there on a Friday night, and we're greeted by a small crowd of young'ns mingling around the bar, which, oddly enough, is sunken into the ground, as its floor sits at least a good foot below the level of floor where Ebenezer Frogs' three pool tables (at 75 cents a pop) sit. We head straight up to the bar to order our drinks ($2.75 domestic bottles, though the bar also has 22-ounce bottles of Bud Light that are a mere $2 on Mondays) from an indifferent bartender before retiring to a table near the door and jukebox.

We're joined by Drinking Assistant Nicole, and later, Chris, who upon entering the door says he likes the place. However, within a minute, Chris has already changed his opinion, as he spouts off negative comment after negative comment. We chalk this up to the fact that Ebenezer Frogs doesn't take credit cards, making Chris' desire to get even more hammered a little bit harder than he'd planned on.

"They don't take credit cards here," Chris says dejectedly. "Because this isn't a bar apparently."

"It's not?" Nicole says.

"Apparently not, because they don't take credit cards."

Nicole and the Bar Fly head up to the jukebox, where a sign touts $5 for 18 picks. Well, turns out it's 30, and finding that many songs worth playing proves to be a difficult task. We decide on a whim (one obviously not thought out well enough) to play an Irish song called, appropriately enough, "Come Back to Erin." When it comes over the speakers, however, it's apparent that what we thought would be an Irish drinking song turned out to be some mess of an opera song.

"Good pick, guys," Brian says sarcastically.

"We had 30 picks and there aren't 30 good songs on there," the Bar Fly says, trying to redeem her pick.

"Why couldn't you have picked an Irish song like, 'I'm Drunk and I Pissed My Pants'?"

Had it existed, we might have.

But speaking of pissing, the men's bathroom is home to a sign that says, "If you have an 8-inch dick, let go of it, cause it ain't yours."
Amen.

But we spend the rest of our night amassing a table full of Bud Light bottles, listening to our good and also questionable picks on the jukebox and watching people who appear to be regulars disappear into the bathrooms for a considerable amount of time or wander in and out of the pub every 15 to 20 minutes.

We're not sure if we'll be back to this ski lodge in a strip mall (with shamrocks, stuffed animals and frogs for decorations). Perhaps when we're hard up for an open pool table, a relatively cheap drink and a mediocre jukebox. CV

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