Places to celebrate after final exams

Celebrate hard and long, to make up for months of hardship and torment at the hands of your professors.

And at the end of such a hard day, there's really nothing as refreshing as a pint or 20 of your favorite poisonous liquid.

I'll try to outline a guide for all of you thirsty mongrels out there, to help you flush out the tough memories of the last months.

For starters, there's always The Nugget. They have always had a post-finals bash on Thursday afternoon, but this usually closes pretty early in the evening.

This leaves a plethora of thirsty, half-dazed students with a dilemma: Where to now?

The city of Long Beach is not known as a dry town, so there are plenty of choices.

For the economically minded, there are many bars that specialize in students and offer cheap drinks. The Thirsty Isle, located on Carson and Lakewood is one such place.

On Thursdays and Sundays, they have "student night" with ridiculously low priced beer. That means you can get enough Newcastle Brown Ale down your throat to quench a small African country and still spend less than $20.

Because most are done with finals on Thursday anyway, that would be an ideal candidate for your partying needs.

Moving southward, if you're into cheap pick-up lines and sweaty dancing, Live Bait might do the trick (if they're open). Cheap drinks, cheap people and obnoxious doormen, it's a wonderful experience.

Second Street offers a huge selection of bars and restaurants, and although most people seem to gather around Belmont Station and Shannon's Bayshore, I have a few candidates that will get you more "off the beaten path," so to say.

Limerick's on Naples offers the best Guinness in town, along with a range of other Irish specialty brews. These guys know their stuff, the Guinness is creamy and thick and slides down your throat like black beer pudding.

Next door is Crow's, a tiny place that used to be a place old alcoholics gathered while waiting to die, but somehow it's been through a revitalization and nowadays you're likely to find a young crowd sipping drinks and being cool. Maybe the old people finally died.

But this is futile. I can't list all the places I want. I'd need the whole paper. So let's summarize, if you're still with me.

Finish your finals. Rejoice. Spend hard-earned money on well-earned beer. Enough said.

Trond Vagen is a staff writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.