"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun bars and club articles -- including guides, unique features, drink recipes and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!

The votes are in and the winners have been selected for OnMilwaukee's Best: Bars & Clubs, 2009. The results of this readers' poll, including an editors' pick, are available in this series of articles that run all month long in the Bars and Clubs section of OnMilwaukee.com.

Before we write about the best bars in Milwaukee for a bender, we should first establish the ground rules. What, exactly constitutes a drinking bender?

We enlisted the experts at Modern Drunkard Magazine who have this to say on the subject:

"Some believe a drinking spree is called a bender because a lot of bending of the arm is required. Others assume it's reference to the bends one might experience after a long bout, which is unlikely as benders were being executed as early as 1846, 50 years before the bends appeared in print. More likely it owes it name to an obsolete British coin, the sixpence, commonly called a bender because they were made of silver and could be bent, as a test of their veracity. To go drinking on a sixpence or bender meant you were loaded for bear (or beer, if you will). A popular pub sign of the day read: "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence, clean straw for nothing," which meant you could stay loaded for six days or really tear it up for three. Either way, you got a nice bed of clean straw to pass out on. Now that's hospitality."

No bar in Milwaukee will let you rage for days on end (that we know of), but there are plenty of watering holes where it's perfectly acceptable to waste your day away in the company of your best drinking buddies.

The readers of OnMilwaukee.com chose Wolski's Tavern, 1836 N. Pulaski St., as their favorite place to binge on beers for the day and / or night.

The vote makes sense. Wolski's has a friendly, classic Milwaukee vibe with plenty of games and regulars to keep us entertained. No one is there to judge, and everyone is there to just have a good time.

Plus, it's one of the bars that Lakefront Brewery spits you out to after its intoxicating daytime tours. Thank goodness for that free popcorn ...

OnMilwaukee.com editor's choice: Barnacle Bud's

Runners-up:
2. Nomad World Pub
3. Jo-Cats
4. Landmark Lanes
5. Barnacle Bud's
6. Hooligan's
7. The Newport
8. Rosie's on Water
9. Axel's
10. O'Brien's
11. RC's
12. Paddy's Pub
13. Eastsider
14. Swinging Door
15. Tracks
16. Palm Tavern
17. Judge's
18. Up & Under
19. Hegarty's
20. Hector's
21. Halliday's