There's a new German bar, Prost! in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. For those who didn't have a German best friend in high school, "Prost!" is what Germans say when they clink their steins together, spilling dollops of foamy suds onto one another's strong, Aryan wrists.

I rode my bike past Prost! yesterday and shook my head. "They are really trying much too hard for German authenticity," I sniffed. "It's not like--"

It was at this point that I began to backpedal, literally, as if by doing so I could make my brain go backwards until I forgot that I had been about to say: "It's not like in America we would call a bar Cheers."