Favicons: This is by far my favorite feature of modern browsers, and I in no way apologize for loving them. They make bookmarks actually useful for sites you visit regularly. Take a look at my bookmark bar: [1] The favicons allow me to fit all of the links I visit regularly in one easily accessible, compact place. I don't care if they look "tacky", they're incredibly useful.
I find it weird to even think of a bookmark bar anymore. At least in FF, the URL bar does such a good job searching history/bookmarks that I have no use for it, and I thought chrome was now in a similar position?
I find Chrome's omnibox better than the address bar in FF, as it autocompletes. I suppose I could press cmd-L to jump to the box and type a few letters, but the web is so optimized for the mouse that I usually have my finger on the trackpad anyway.
I imagine it would be distracting to someone who doesn't use it daily. For me, I know where everything is and what it does. It's optimized for efficiency, not cleanliness. Bookmark buttons are grouped by subject (mail, links, security & coding, humour, news, info, music, tv & video) and I know what each favicon is for. It saves me having to type the first few letters of a given URL, which works for me.
My bookmarks bar looks quite similar. In fact, this is the main reason I'm using Chrome instead of Safari, though I really like the new features in Lion and therefore think about a new way to organize my bookmarks.
Damn dude, I do the same thing, just not as.... extreme. Been using FF4 a bit lately, once Firefox gets tab/process separation I think I'm going to be on my way back there. I miss noscript like nothing else.
Here's mine, I've been having a fun time trying to figure out half of your bookmark bar, damn man.
[1]http://min.us/l5aGM