Tuesday February 9, 2010

What Makes A Dive Bar?

posted by CityGal on Jul. 22, '08 at 3:47 PM

I'm compiling criteria. I'd say that any place that serves Red Breast or Hendrick's isn't exactly a dive bar, but then just looking at the joint, I can't say that Stasiu's is otherwise. Still, it's no Matt's or Country Bar.

What are, say, three things (or more) you think make a dive bar a dive?

posted by mindgrapes on Jul. 22, '08 at 5:23 PM

This is tough because there are so many different kinds of dive bar. Lack of a dancefloor? Single-stalled, unsantiary bathrooms covered in graffiti? Lots of tough-looking regulars? Tattoos? Jukeboxes with actual CDs? I'll give it some thought.

posted by BeckaWie on Jul. 22, '08 at 6:15 PM

1. Hamm's on tap
2. Stale beer smell
3. Any bar that appears as though it would do well in Northern Wisconsin - dead animals hanging on the wall, lots of hunting/fishing things strewn about, men in cutters, women with mullets, etc.

posted by alexism on Jul. 22, '08 at 6:40 PM

I maintain that Matt's cannot be a dive bar because they do not serve liquor. To quote myself: "Dive bars have regulars that show up for their 10:00am booster shot (whiskey, neat) and barflies that suck vodka and tonics through two stirrer straws. Not some wussy beer and wine only 'bar.'"

Jimmy's is my favorite dive bar (and coincidentally the closest drinking establishment to my house). They have pretty much the worst CD jukebox in the city; so bad it's good.

True dive bars can have many things, but what they do not have are dancing areas, TouchTunes jukeboxes, bartenders who actually cut people off, beer that costs more than $4, garnish trays with more than 5 ingredients (maraschino cherries, olives, limes, lemons and filberts) or any sort of food besides bagged salty snacks and frozen pizza.

posted by Odoacer on Jul. 22, '08 at 7:05 PM

What's so great about dive bars? I'm not trying to be snarky; I'm genuinely curious. I've been to dive bars in various locations in the cities and small towns, and they can be fun, but I don't see their innate appeal. A lot of the ones I've been to have been pretty dirty and some have even had overpriced drinks. Could someone enlighten me?

posted by AlphaBean on Jul. 22, '08 at 7:21 PM

Dive means no overpriced drinks. The appeal is just that. You go to hang out without a million douchebags bumping into you. I go to be invisible and not judged, to have drinks with friends (without dropping over 60 bucks). The perfect bar to me would be a private rooftop with cheap, exotic beers and a juke box with records. That would never exist, so I'll take a dive where most of the regulars are too drunk to notice you and they have more than Budweiser...

And who cares if a bar is dirty? Alcohol is self-sanitizing.

***Popcorn and chips are good, but it's 2008... a dive bar can have buffalo wings, can't it?

posted by aliecat30 on Jul. 22, '08 at 7:29 PM

Surprising that no one has mentioned pull tabs, yet. Al's is definately my favorite dive bar with the CC Club at a close second. A good dive bar is where you can go without makeup and talk to either a 60 year old real estate agent on his third Crown and Coke or a 23 year old art student nursing his Premium.

posted by songczar on Jul. 22, '08 at 8:36 PM

I'd say it's a neighborhood bar that has people drinking hard booze from opening to close. Also, sort of the anti-Cheers. Where no one wants to know your name.

posted by alexism on Jul. 22, '08 at 8:47 PM

Good call aliecat, a dive bar needs pull tabs.

The dive bar is where I go when I don't want to see anyone I know except the bartender and maybe a couple regulars I've met over the years.

posted by girlwonder on Jul. 22, '08 at 9:19 PM

A dive bar has old music on the jukebox (or just an old jukebox), the same people have sat in the same seats for the same three hours every weekday for the past few decades, and in a smalltown have all known each other (and darn near everyone else in the bar) just as long :)

And smells like stale beer and deep fried food.

posted by Slimpee on Jul. 23, '08 at 12:04 PM

A dive bar is a place in which the dudes wearing designer t-shirts and sunglasses indoors wouldn't be caught dead.

That said, a place like the CC can be intimidating to those who aren't wearing tattered thrift-store clothes and piercings all over. I walked in on a weeknight last week wearing a Gustavus rugby jersey and shorts and got a "Go back to Uptown" as soon as I walked in. I didn't hear it but my roommate did. That kind of crap isn't cool with me...

posted by alexism on Jul. 23, '08 at 1:01 PM

See, I would say the CC is in Uptown, because it's on the same stretch of street as the Uptown Bulldog, Cliche, The Wedge and a bunch of other things that most people consider to be in Uptown.

I have another criteria item: A dive bar is a place where you'd find no hipsters, unless a hipster is there alone drinking her/himself into a stupor.

posted by CityGal on Jul. 23, '08 at 2:17 PM

I would say that the CC is the perfect dive, Minneapolis style. We are a city that embraces it's punky hipstery denizens and thus a dive bar to represent our fair city is going to reflect that. The Triple Rock is a punk bar. The CC is a dive bar. It's suitably grimy, the food is simple and greasy, the staff is often cranky, and the drinks are cheap and strong.

The Country Bar, now that's something else. Walked in to the tail end of Snoop Dogg's "Sensual Seduction", and within ten minutes, the cops were there, three of them, breaking up a fight. When we left, the sidewalk was spattered with blood. I just can't help but find things like that charming so long as they don't escalate. Is the Country Bar a dive? Yes. But it's also totally batshit.

posted by jscheeler7 on Jul. 23, '08 at 5:31 PM

Meat raffles, cranky regulars, aging vinyl booths or stools, female workers that aren't trying to be sexy; with names like Ma, Franny, and Toots, popcorn machine or peanuts, a stale stench or decidedly unfresh odor, pictures of real people taped or pinned to the wall, CD or record jukebox with no Top 40 hits, overall lack of trying to be trendy, the owner tending the bar, cheap beer and strong pours, dated decor, menu devoid of non-fried foods...

posted by mindgrapes on Jul. 23, '08 at 9:25 PM

I agree with what jscheeler7 said.

Don't feel bad, slimpee, I was in a similar boat at The Rail Station.

posted by Odoacer on Jul. 23, '08 at 9:42 PM

Is it just Stuff White People Like? I haven't read the book, but this article tells me it is.

I don't hate on dive bars, they can be good places to go if I want a low-key night with friends, depending on the bar of course, but I don't see their innate appeal. To each his or her own.

posted by Slimpee on Jul. 24, '08 at 11:09 AM

Odoacer, I agree with you on dive bars as a low-key place during the week. The CC during the weekend, however, is usually packed.

In the end I like all sorts of bars. As long as i'm with a good group of cats I don't care if i'm at The Drink, CC, Seven, Gasthofs...after all, a bar is only as good as the people in it.

posted by kloberella on Jul. 30, '08 at 3:11 PM

Whoever made that "go back to uptown" comment to you Slimpee is an idiot, especially because, as alexism pointed out, CC is in Uptown.

anyway, my idea of dive bars include the same details others have mentioned: cheap booze, a lingering odor of grease mixed with old smoke leftover from pre-smoking ban days, pull tabs and neighborhood barflies.

really a lot of the charm of a dive bar is not so much what it has, but what it lacks in terms of frills.

posted by CityGal on Jul. 30, '08 at 4:39 PM

"really a lot of the charm of a dive bar is not so much what it has, but what it lacks in terms of frills."

My thoughts exactly.

posted by matt on Jul. 30, '08 at 6:05 PM

There must be at least two different categories of dive bars: 1) Urban dives, generally popular and oft-frequented by hipsters (the CC definitely counts in this category), and 2) Genuinely unremarkable, unassuming, cheap, out-of-the-way establishments that pretty much squeak by an existence on the kindness of their regulars. I'd say they both count as dive bars, although the former attempts to emulate the latter, and Wikipedia calls the hipster bars "faux dives" (a Simpsons reference, natch).

I think the authenticity debate -- in this matter as in so many others -- is sort of pointless posturing, but fun to talk about. I might make an argument that the chief distinction really is popularity.

Case study: Fresno's Astro Motel. If this thing were situated between University and Marshall on 13th Ave NE, it would be packed every night and be ubiquitous on best-bar lists. It really did acquire that boffo sign lo these many decades ago, and it really does cater to truckers. There's really nothing else in its vicinity, the drinks are incredibly, incredibly cheap, the bartender is a little old lady, and if you went on a Thursday or Friday night, you'd be hard-pressed to find a time when the tiny bar is half-full.

I like this random person's explanation:

One thing about dive bars that makes them unique is when you're there, it feels like you've walked into something hidden and personal, something not everyone knows about.

posted by CityGal on Jul. 30, '08 at 6:12 PM

"It has to be cheap, if not in the prices of drinks than at least in the clientele. And it must be disreputable (again if not the drinks, at least the clientele.)

I like what said random person had to say, here, too.

posted by CityGal on Jul. 30, '08 at 6:17 PM

"Since working class people and urban hipsters rarely care to mingle, urban hipsters go to bars that specially recreate the physical characteristics of dive bars (run-down hardware, outdated furnishings, general uncleanliness) but without the working class clientele. The term "faux dive" is generally used to describe such establishments.

I find that to be the anomaly with the Twin Cities. The more townies there are, bedraggled older men nursing their seventeenth Crown and Coke of the day or beleaguered middle aged women downing their fifth gimlet, the happier we are, as "urban hipsters", to down some hooch with them. Yet another reason why this area is so awesome.

posted by AlphaBean on Jul. 31, '08 at 1:44 AM

Mingling with the working class really does sound like something off of "stuff white people like."

When you eventually get your picture taken with the working class person, then you know you're trying too hard.

posted by alexism on Jul. 31, '08 at 1:45 PM

Uh oh, guilty as charged?

That's Pauly and me. This whole set of photos was from a few years ago, the night the old Stasiu's as we knew it closed. It was sold to its current owner and reopened shortly thereafter as the "faux dive" that I guess it is now. I miss the old employees (some of whom I see at other dives around NE occasionally), the old food (as in so old you don't want to buy it) and the best karaoke group Northeast ever had. Sniffle.

posted by matt on Jul. 31, '08 at 1:57 PM

A karaoke group? Can you expand on this concept? Did they battle?

posted by matt on Jul. 31, '08 at 2:00 PM

BTdubs [not to derail], I'm soliciting applications for my karaoke group, Matty T & the Sound, effective immediately. We've already got a fly guy and a lead singer.

posted by alexism on Jul. 31, '08 at 4:54 PM

Karaoke group: the same bunch of us regulars who always showed up on karaoke nights to keep the mic warm. We also got preferential treatment over any pub crawling groups that wandered in on Friday and Saturday nights.

Everybody's favorite regular from our old Stasiu's karaoke group was probably Joe, a hefty white gentleman with a big smile who only drank Diet Coke. Joe is most famous for doing Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" (or any track from that album) so well that if you weren't looking in the direction of the microphone, you would think you were listening to the actual CD. He was that good.

posted by keith28 on Aug. 1, '08 at 10:33 PM

3 things that make a dive bar

1. Not necessarily dirty, but kinda makes you think about changing your clothes and washing your hands ASAP

2. 2 polar opposite types of regulars: the ones that don't say anything audible to anybody, but rely on a collection of grunts and nods. And the ones that want to talk to everyone, or at least make sure everyone else in the bar hears what they're saying

3. No imports or craft brews on tap, no top shelf liquor and no drink cost more than $5

posted by AlphaBean on Aug. 2, '08 at 4:17 AM

I'm glad I gave you a reason to post a picture of yourself, Alexis...

To be perfectly honest, I don't like going to a bar unless Jeff Healey is playing behind chicken wire, and Patrick Swayze is the bouncer.

posted by ChelleG on Aug. 7, '08 at 8:27 PM

For some reason, the black-and-white checkered tile floor is a key indicator of "dive bar" to me. There are dive bars without it, but just about no place that has it *isn't* a dive.

posted by hailster on Aug. 8, '08 at 5:30 PM

no windows.
tippy chairs
cheap drinks.
early morning regulars
not family friendly

dive bars are my favorite bars.

posted by molivier on Aug. 8, '08 at 10:13 PM

I would think that if the bar has some pathetic 60-something guy wearing a disguisting "Minnesota Twins 1987 World Chamipions" T-shirt, that might qualify as a "dive bar." Also, pickled eggs fermenting in a mason jar.

posted by AlphaBean on Aug. 9, '08 at 2:58 AM

I want to promote the Schooner again:

Last two times I was there with a lady friend. First time, a drunk grabbed her arm on his way to the restroom. The bartender/bouncer kicked him out. Awesome... end of drama.

Second time, she could hardly get to the restroom or patio without being harassed or groped. A 5'2" guy sat next to her at the bar, trying to leave with her. I actually had to walk up to the bar to make sure everything was all right. Me, the nerdiest white boy you will ever meet.

Then, at the table where we were sitting, the guy next to her kept on slamming into her, pissing her off. While she was at the bar, he heard a guitar solo he liked. He started shouting, got off his stool and air guitarred while spinning, and crashed to the floor.

What a magical place.

If the next vita.mn happy hour is at the Schooner, I'm there.

posted by alexism on Aug. 9, '08 at 10:47 AM

I've never been there, but I don't get to that side of the river much. Or that particular section of that side of the river.

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