I stumbled across aroundphilly.com’s South Philly Bar Crawl this week. Although it hits some of the decent bars down here, it missed a couple:

• South Philly Tap Great beer selection, a slightly upscale take on bar food, and a decent indie-rock juke box. The Tap room is worth a trip west of Broad. Beware of crowds during Temple games, and an extremely annoying Quizzo dude on Tuesday nights.
• Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar It gets very smokey, and you will have to scrape by on Blue Ribbon and Lager. But the Friday night karaoke is usually packed and entertaining.
• As for Pub on Passyunk East (POPE), I’ve only had bad experiences. Maybe its just opening jitters, but the staff never seemed very friendly. And the food is strictly appetizers at best — pierogies and wings. Despite ample room inside, and another decent indie-rock juke box, I have to say Pope is poop.
• Triangle Tavern, on the other hand, is worth checking out. I’ve never tried the food there, but the drinks are reasonable. Be ready to chat with the regulars. There’s always plenty of people to meet on weekend nights.

There are Crawls with Claus going on every Wednesday in December along East Passyunk Ave. Nothing warms a heart quite like doing shots with Santa.