Twelve years ago I tried to do a post from the Hole In The Wall Saloon in Pekin. It’s a classic biker/dive bar that’s been in business since 1977 and I thought it would be great to get some photos and do a post from there. However, as you can read in this post, that didn’t happen, due to what I then described as, “technical difficulties.” Basically what happened was I went in and ordered a beer and then asked if I could take photos and the bartender said no in quite a gruff manner so I drank my beer and left.

I never went back and tonight, twelve years later, I’m going to try again for the sake of this bar crawl. As I said, The Hole In The Wall Saloon is a classic Pekin bar and I really would like to document it with photos and a post, so let’s see if we can make it happen twelve years after we were told no. And I have a special guest star who’s going to be my bodyguard in there and we’ll meet him momentarily!

It’s off to Pekin we go and hopefully we’ll have photos from the Hole In The Wall Saloon soon!

——-

Bar Number 160: Hole In The Wall Saloon, Thursday, June 9, 2026

Here’s that aforementioned bodyguard, the frequent guest star and the man formerly known as Vern Damico and now we call him Karl, Jim/Karl.

Always great to have him along and here we are cruising into Pekin, Illinois with the greatest of ease!

Here we are at the Hole In The Wall Saloon. Twelve years after we were denied photo access. Let’s see if we can pull it off this time!

I love the “Harleys Only” parking block!

There’s Karl doing his opening of the door duty!

Here’s the bar and Karl has already grabbed a seat. Hopefully this won’t be the only photo I get to take in here!

Stephanie was the pretty and friendly bartender on duty for the evening and she flashed a beautiful smile for the MBIP Camera and told me to feel free to take all the photos I wanted to!

Well that’s music to my ears and a big change from our last visit in 2014!

There’s Jim at the bar, striking that Karl pose that we all know and love!

Will he get some French fried po-taters tonight? Only time will tell, keep on scrolling!

I love the dark bar in here and there’s the sign of a classic bar, a Budweiser trolley hanging overhead. And, as I mentioned earlier, the Hole In The Wall Saloon has been standing tall in this location since 1977.

There’s picnic tables lining the wall opposite the bar with one lone table at the end of the room. There’s also a jukebox, a dartboard and a TV screen over in this corner.

There’s a row of gaming machines against this wall if you’re in the gambling mood.

A pool table is housed in this room up in the front along with yet another picnic table.

As you can see, this is a very well stocked bar and there’s a shot of the bar from the other end of the room for your viewing enjoyment!

There’s a door over here, let’s see where it leads us to…

There’s a nice beer patio out here with even more picnic tables and a wall covered in graffiti. Jim/Karl noticed that Larry from Pub 52 left his mark on the wall!

Very cool and it’s hard to believe that we’ve been to 108 bars since then, but time flies when you’re having fun on the run!

Thanks to Stephanie for letting me take photos in the Hole In The Wall Saloon, this was a fun night in Pekin!

And thanks to Jim/Karl for driving and sadly, no French fried po-taters were had this week. Oh well, I heard a rumor that he may be joining us next Wednesday, so we’ll see what happens then…stay tuned for further bar-crawling shenanigans!

——