This is a very entertaining read, with pictures of each. Sonicrusk is a good friend of mine from our Army days, and for years we corresponded with letters back and forth. Without exception, every one I received over a 5-6 year period had me cracking up. He’s a great storyteller, and a much better writer than he’s ever given himself credit for. I must have written to him just about every time that he needed to get a blog going. I’m so glad he did!
A post on dives is such a good idea. When I moved down to Massachusetts in 2001, there were a couple I’d frequent regularly. Characteristics of a dive tend to differ for inexplicable reasons, like two snowflakes, no two dives are the same. Some have no stools at the bar, some are full of the same union workers at 4:31 every weekday, some stock Beam-Jack Daniels-Knob Creek-Segrams-Chivas-Crown yet nothing above near-beer (Bud, Miller, Coors, etc), some have taps up that haven’t been used in years, some have a golf arcade game that men in kakii pants and colared dress shirts congregate around for an hour everynight to bitch about work and get a buzz going before they ‘have to’ go home and see their wife and kids, some have bartenders who put down a shot every 30 minutes, some open at 8AM, and once in a while there’s one you walk into for the first time, order a drink, then suddenly realize after looking around for a minute that everyone inside the place is a big Barbara Striesand fan, and if you don’t get the hell out of there they’ll think you are as well.
Jeff found a rich topic to riff on here!
Dive bars must have at least two of the following:
cheap ass, cheap quality beer
solid oak bar
crappy disk-like tables
TV in the corner
pool table
drunk old folks
smoking within even though smoking inside bars has been outlawed in CA since 1995.
a dozen people drinking at 1PM
old, crappy, no-frills carpet