One of our favorite places to hang out when we first moved to Brattleboro was McNeill’s on Eliot Street. Having moved up from Boston/Cambridge, home of many gritty, grubby Irish-style pubs that were not then or ever going to be fern bars (remember those?), we were happy to grab a pint at Brattleboro’s equivalent spot whenever we had a free evening. Although many of our new Brattleboro compatriots seemed to prefer fern bars, we never found the clean scene that inspiring. Despite pressure to transfer our allegiance to places shiny and new, we continued to frequent McNeill’s, where an affordable pint was always available and the ambience was right.