A Blog about bars and the wonderful life of depravity behind them.
"There can't be good living where
there is not good drinking" -
Benjamin Franklin DIVE BARS
Now days it seems “real”
dive bars are getting harder and harder to find. Seems the old breed of bar
owners have either died off (probably of a bloated liver or lung cancer) or
sold off their once proud hole in the wall to some young hip entrepreneur who has
the business savvy to know that he can make 12 bucks on any neon colored drink
he serves, and turn something that was once more trashy than trendy into
something that’s all cleaned up and completely PC. (lacking of all Personality
and Coolness). You can say it might have started with the no smoking ban
or maybe just the cost of real estate. Let’s face it, it’s tougher to make a
few bucks as an owner on $3 PBR tall boys then it is to charge $10 drinks for
having the pleasure of lounging in the cleanliness and sterile environment of
some chain restaurant bar or hip new club with a Euro named DJ and flashing
lights.
Dive bars now it seems are
considered any bar that doesn’t have a list of 30 martinis, valet or a DJ on a
weekend night. Any bar where people feel just a little uneasy if the tables
aren’t wiped down or menus aren’t handed to you walking in the door. A dive bar
is the sort of place you would go to after planning a bank robbery or plotting
a murder. A place with stuffing coming out of the chair’s, stains on the
ceiling and the smoke caked smell in the carpet and on the walls from all the
years of chain smoking over the bar. A place where the bartender will give you
the stink eye for ordering a foo foo drink. A dimly lit bar with graffiti
stained bathrooms reflecting the time spent their writing poems on the walls.
The last refuge for the woebegone, the bar standing battered and bruised like
an aging prize fighter, wishing it still had it’s youth when it wasn’t
considered a dive but just the neighborhood corner bar. Dive bars are not a
place to pick up “Hollywood Hotties” or college co-eds, they’re the place for
downing stiff drinks and talking story about drunken mayhem, moments of defeat,
getting shit canned from a job you hated or laughing about all the great times
spent with good friends. That’s the beauty of the dive bar. However, if
you do meet a girl in a dive bar like I’ve just described – you marry her face
off, because that chick is legit!
