Baker’s Lakeside Pub Let’s You Travel To A Different World, Right Around The Corner

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome
Photography By: The Gnarly Gnome

I don’t know what you’re looking for when looking for your next local bar to swing into… for me, I want a place that has some sort of soul, some history, good, affordable drinks, and friendly people to sit with while I drink them. Bakers Lakeside Pub (affectionately called “The Lake” by regulars) is this, and so much more.

Walking Through The Experience

The experience that is Baker’s Lakeside Pub starts as you pull into the big gravel parking lot and up to the log cabin-style building that just doesn’t quite seem like it’s up to code. It already oozes that history and soul that I crave so deeply from my bars, and that’s before you even walk through the door.

Walking into the bar, low ceilings, dark walls, exposed wood beams, and plenty of regulars bellied up to the bar regardless of the time of day greet you. Pieces of history in the form of old photographs of the bar (and its former neighbor, ‘The Copper Stallion’) are all over the walls and behind the bar.

There are pool tables in a side room and hundreds of dollar bills with names scribbled on them cover the ceiling. It’s friendly and cozy and open 21 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is a bar designed for regulars, the community, and people like me.

The Outside

When you step out the backdoor onto the big deck on the back, it all comes together. It’s right on Glen Ridge Lake, a reservoir that was created sometime back in the 50s (the bar used to be the bait shop) – and it has become so much more than just a little neighborhood bar. It’s a lakeside escape from the world around you.

Every time I have been to ‘The Lake,’ I have stuck to my standard order in an unfamiliar bar, and a cold bottle of Miller High Life goes down just as perfectly as you’d expect. A summer evening in a seat on the back deck with that same beer, though? It’s otherworldly.

My Takeaway

Baker’s feels like family. From the outside looking in, it’s a little rough around the edges (and I’m sure on some nights, full-on rough), but once you find your spot inside, you’ll see a friendly neighborly side to it. It’s like a warm blanket that wraps around you when you need it.

You’ll find every type of personality bellied up to the bar… no matter what time of day you swing through. If you want a better picture of some of those personalities, Brian Vuynacih did an amazing job writing about the place over at Beechmont Stories, and I can’t encourage you to head over and read that nearly enough.

If you want to visit Baker’s Lakeside Pub, you can find them at 903 Cincinnati-Batavia Pike