The Gem Saloon

Deadwood is a town of second chances. Who you were in any other part of the US is the past once you enter the lawless thoroughfare. Once you start all over again on the manure filled streets, you’re going to get thirsty. 

And there’s no better place drink then at The Gem Saloon. The antithesis of prim and proper when it comes to its inhabitants of whores, tortured rogues, thieves, murderers, and drunks, but when it comes to the Shakespearean and Joycean prose filled with an abundant amount of C words that would make even an adolescent criminal gang from the UK blush, the place has a dainty quality. Even if you don’t understand what anyone says, you’ll love it all anyway. 

Outside, working class girls hang a hand-painted banner as they twirl umbrellas. Inside, a large two story space lit by candle chandeliers and lanterns creates dark mood lighting making the ugliest sexy. The space is plain with wooden fixtures, a piano, and a few rooms upstairs for the owner and all of the Johns who want a touchy touch for a nickel or two.

The Gem offers free market freedom. No dress code. You can be whoever and whatever as long as you have money to spend and don’t tick off the sociopathic owner. A high class woman from the East nurses a drink alongside a gold miner covered in filth of all kinds. Blood, sweat, and fornication permeates through the main atrium before the whiskey.

However, if all you want to do quench your thirst rather than gamble, get high, fight, or have a fun night with a pro or two or three, you are able to do so while listening to whimsical waltzes. The booze comes straight from the barrel. Whiskey and more whiskey. And though The Gem advertises name brands like Old Grand-Dad and Green Brier with a cocktail menu of a few fixes, once you taste how watered down it is, you might want to call bull but then again, hold that thought to yourself or you’ll be thrown to the pigs like all the others who pissed off the owner.