At Amvets Good Cheers, Affordable Beers, Musical Ears, and Having a Cocktail With Peers (A Bartender's Perspective)

(Illustrative Only)

At Amvets bitters
are for Old Fashions. 😊
Bring your happy face
and hang with friends.

Some bars are better than Cheers a place for friends and peers. Other bars… well, they try.

The atmosphere at Amvets is lively and socially connected. The bartenders take the time to listen to customers and make them feel welcome. They help keep conversation going and the experience a positive one so that people come back.

Bartenders are there through it all. Some tell you their life stories, bring in their adult children (“This is my kid—he finally moved out!”), and show up for both their best days and their “I-need-a-double-right-now” moments. 

That’s the magic of a good watering hole—like Amvets—where the drinks are cheaper than your regrets, the smiles come free, and the kind of friendly energy that makes you stay “for just one more” somehow turns into three.

Weekends? That’s when the party wakes up. Music, dancing, karaoke that goes from surprisingly good to “wow, that took courage,” and bands that keep the place buzzing.

Weekdays bring out the pool sharks, dart throwers, and folks who swear they’re “not competitive” right before trying to sink an impossible shot.

And sure, some places have a scratch on the wall or a nick in a chair—but those are stories, not flaws. Little reminders of all the characters who came before.

When the place gets busy, no need to get frizzy. Your bartender will meet you with a smile—because they know your shoes have walked more than a mile, and everyone deserves a cold drink and a warm welcome.

Open most days 4 to 6 pm or longer. Weekend music around 7 pm.

You may want to read, 

Bartender Jokes that Make You Laugh

Amvets Entertainment: 02/20 Tom Edberg and 02/21 Moonlight Entertainment Karaoke

 Come on down for some entertainment this weekend. 

The Warrior Within: Personality, Growth, and Life After Duty

(Illustrative Only)

An older veteran
teaching recent veterans
about the lessons
of life and career
after service.

Personality and emotional intelligence shape many parts of our lives, and veterans know this more than most. You can be highly trained, disciplined, and capable, yet still find yourself struggling when frustrations or triggers hit too fast. Military service sharpens certain instincts—quick reactions, strong command presence, mission-first thinking—but those same instincts can become challenging in civilian life if they go unexamined. Many of our core traits were formed long before enlistment, and the structure of service often reinforces them. Without reflection, we repeat old patterns instead of adapting them.

Variation in personality isn’t just normal—it’s essential, especially in the military community. A unit never functioned because everyone behaved the same way. You needed the sharp strategist, the calm medic, the decisive leader, the meticulous technician, the quiet observer, the steady teammate. When someone insists there’s only one “right” personality for success—on the battlefield or back home—it oversimplifies reality. Every personality carries strengths and liabilities. Self-awareness is what allows veterans to identify those patterns and reapply them in a way that solves problems rather than creates new ones.

Human survival—and mission success—have always depended on a diversity of minds. If every service member thought the same way, operations would fail. History shows that both great and flawed leaders rose from their personality traits, not from uniformity. The planners, the innovators, the protectors, the thinkers—all existed because people react and reason differently.

Most veterans naturally strive to grow, overcome challenges, and continue improving long after their time in uniform. The key is understanding your own personality: knowing where you excel, where you struggle, and how your tendencies show up under stress, transition, or in everyday life. Don’t mistake confidence for competence—some speak loudly, others act quietly, and both can be effective depending on the situation.

Real awareness comes from reflection. Sometimes others mirror behaviors back to us—coworkers, family, other vets—but their interpretations aren’t always accurate. Ultimately, self-understanding helps you separate who you truly are from what others project onto you. When you understand your tendencies, you can pause, choose better responses, leverage the strengths service gave you, and navigate obstacles with more consistent success.

Thinking about personality, Confucius once said:

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

For many veterans, the mission, the camaraderie, and the purpose were that “job.” Learning yourself—really knowing yourself—is how you build a life after service with that same sense of meaning.

Setting Effective Goals for Veterans, Students and Anyone Else

 Goals help us stay focused on what we want to achieve, whether they are big and long-term or small and short-lived. They guide our efforts, give us direction, and help us stay motivated even when life gets challenging. Effective goals matter to us personally, can be measured, and are broken down into manageable steps that keep us moving forward. As we grow and change, our goals evolve too, but the process of setting and pursuing them remains essential. While we cannot control everything in life, staying committed to our goals helps us move with purpose rather than drifting aimlessly. Giving up guarantees failure, but persistence creates the path to progress.

Steps for Setting Effective Goals

• Choose goals that matter to you so your effort feels meaningful.

• Make the goals measurable so you can track progress and know when you’ve achieved them.

• Break each goal into smaller steps that can be done daily or weekly.

• Stay persistent, even when obstacles arise.

• Review and adjust your goals over time as your life, priorities, and circumstances evolve.

Goals play an important role in the lives of college students and military veterans. In many cases, these groups overlap—some students are veterans, and many veterans pursue new paths such as starting a business after leaving the military. Setting goals helps guide that process of discovery. You begin by exploring how to start a business, learning the rules, figuring out financing, understanding operations, and following a developmental path that leads from one step to the next.

The same is true in college. If you want to earn a specific degree or pursue a certain career, goals help you stay on track. Even for those who simply love learning for its own sake, the journey is shaped by goals. You take new courses, meet new professors, encounter new ideas, and gradually expand your understanding of the world. It becomes a continuous process of discovery.

Goals are not meant to be easy—they are meant to challenge you. That challenge is what shapes personal growth. The goal gives you a direction, but where you ultimately end up depends on your choices and the environment around you. Along the way, you may grow enough to adjust your goals into something even more meaningful. That evolution could never happen, though, if you didn’t take the first step and keep moving forward.

Knitted Hats for Our Amvets Scholarship Fund

Come in and get one of these very warm handknitted hats and support Amvets Scholarship Fund. Made by a master knitter. If you want to make a monetary donation reach out to our local Amvets. Information on the flyer.

Amvets Scholarship Fund Central Page

The Value of Friendship for Veterans

Illustrative
The value of friends.

Friendship is an important aspect of one’s life, and the more we develop quality friendships, the happier we often become and the more connected we feel to the social world around us. In many ways, friendship also plays a significant role in the world of business and life. When people become familiar with you and learn to trust your perceptions and judgments, opportunities tend to open up. This is one reason social networking is so common for those trying to advance within an organization, career, or professional field.

Much of what happens in life occurs through our social affiliations. These connections help us feel part of society and our communities, and they also help things get done when they need to be done. Because of this, being socially involved is both beneficial and practical. Friendship can take many forms, including close personal friends, social clubs, business associates, veterans groups, sports and recreation partners, or connections formed through shared activities.

On a deeper level, people are designed to function as part of a social organism. Those who are skilled at connecting people and building friendships are especially valuable because they foster interactions that often lead to growth and development. At the same time, it is important to be thoughtful about the types of friends you keep, as they tend to influence you personally and often reflect aspects of your own value system.

This does not mean judging every friend over minor details, but it does mean striving to surround yourself with quality individuals—people who are honest, demonstrate integrity, have your best interests in mind, and show consistency in their behavior. When you surround yourself with strong people, your chances of succeeding both personally and professionally increase because your support network is solid.

On the other hand, if you surround yourself with people who create negative experiences, you are more likely to become entangled in those negative patterns. This study was interesting because it explored the nature of friendship and reviewed existing literature on the topic. Whether you are a regular person, a veteran, or simply someone living your life, it is worth considering the importance of good friends and how they help create a sense of connectedness with the world.

Adult Friendships and Wellbeing

Stoicism and Military Veteran Leadership: A few thoughts on mastering challenges for business and life.

(Illustrative Only)
Representing Veteran Stoic 
Lessons for Executives, Leaders,
Business Owners. etc.

When one masters their response they begin to master their environment and philosophy can help us understand how this may work.Those who serve in the military, including veterans, often develop advanced skills out of necessity. They are regularly required to overcome challenges and complete missions, and those experiences tend to produce deep insight. Great challenges often lead to great change both personally and environmentally. 

Some may argue that philosophy has little to do with military or veteran development, but it is closely connected to understanding human nature under pressure in a broad environment. The article discussed philosophy and Stoicism, which was especially thought-provoking. As people develop, their emotional reactivity tends to decrease while their strategic thinking improves. This is where true mastery begins. Win or lose you did your part and were positively impactful.

At this stage, individuals learn to choose their responses making them a key strategic player. They act in ways that are most helpful to their unit, community, society, or organization. Developing this ability requires consistent challenge, adaptation, and overcoming adversity. Taking a moment to step back and think through options often leads to better outcomes. Acting impulsively, on the other hand, often leads to mistakes.

These ideas also apply to business ownership and executive development. This is one reason veterans are often strong candidates for leadership and development roles within organizations. Statistically, many have also succeeded in business by creating new opportunities for themselves. In many cases this persistence in the face of challenge and the ability to step back and make a strategic choice has long term benefits for personal and organizational development.

Over time, lessons learned across different situations help develop the ability to pause, evaluate options, create a strategy, and then execute it. Those who have served not only observe large organizations in action but often face situations that force them to challenge assumptions and adapt to new realities. Through this, they come to understand the edges and possibilities of personal development.

For those who master these challenges, they have learned a lesson in real life that most others can only view from a book, podcast or theory; even though they may not always know. This is a lesson many people struggle to successfully navigate throughout their lives. No executive grooming program can tap the worm at the core on that level. You understand when you can think "Impossibility is a paper tiger" crumple it up and threw it in the trash can where it belongs. Each challenge is a lesson and a chance to improve so choose to adapt willingly and come out stronger on the other side.

Stoicism and Military Leadership: Why Calm Command Still Matters