You know you’re in a dive bar when…

[RShea]

Their food menu consists of the snack rack - chips, pretzels, etc., a specialty like hard boiled eggs, a jar of pickles or whatever, muenster cheese slices, beef jerky, and that is it.

[scmartin69]

PBR on tap and in cans is the beverage of choice. Dingy. Low light. Pool table, shuffleboard. Hookers giving head in bathroom for a saw buck.

Where can you get a blowjob for $10? Asking for a friend...

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[Core Shot]

Where can you get a blowjob for $10? Asking for a friend...

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Nowadays a saw buck is a twenty. Inflation.

Cigarette machines with the pull handle clunk?
Wrong thread. But that was the dive bar tell. Once upon a time.

[neufox47]

Shake a day, drunks who do odd tasks for beer, bars that actually extend “tabs” or credit, “for entertainment only” slots that are actually illegal gambling.


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[Art Shirk]

I was bartending at a scuzzy place in West Hollywood in the late 80's, and we had those generic matchbooks on the bar for the customers. I asked the manager why we didn't have matchbooks made with the name of the bar. He said the owner didn't want to be tracked down when one of the drunks killed themselves (and others) on the drive home.

A little Seattle trivia for current or ex Seattlites.

About 25 years ago, I would go to this little dive on Queen Anne, which is usually an oxymoron based on the area. More so because it was tucked in the middle of the neighborhood, amongst all the residential houses, and not on QA Ave where the bars and restaurants were located.

There was no sign, just a dingy door on the only none residential building in the neighborhood. A couple pool tables, great juke, wrap around bar and a one-armed bar tender. I went a few times thinking maybe I’d stumbled into a dive vortex and this place didn’t actually exist in this dimension. Never more than a few people there and always quietly talking and drinking in a corner.

So one day I asked the bartender what the name of the place was and he grumbled “I don’t know.” I only found out later that he was the owner.

Well, that guy ended up dying, as sometimes happens, and the bar changed ownership, took on a public name, eventually bought flatscreens, digitized the juke, resurfaced the pool tables, etc. A real shame.

Name that bar.


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[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

There was a pretty low club in L.A. back in the day where they'd smash the beer bottles when they went into the trash. This was to prevent their future use as projectiles when shit got out of hand.

[Toadman]

They only serve a selection of 3-5 beers. None of which are micro-brews. No fancy drinks. And when you walk in, everyone knows your name, or at least those that are still not drunk yet.

[Skistack]

They have Busch Light on tap.


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[Skistack]

They have Busch Light on tap.


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[gaijin]

There aren't any exterior lights. Not even a fucking sign. Just a black, windowless door.

Iquique, Chile.

My client tells me he doesn't want his English lesson in my office downtown, we should go to Café Con Piernas. (I was an English teacher serving BHP Billiton Copper mine out of town, in the Atacama Desert.) I say fine, sounds good. I did the translation in my head, piernas, but didn't think much of it.

It was a strip club. Well, that's a really polite way to describe this place.

As we entered the place, the girls, clad only in their bras and panties, scurried into a line from which the head Madame directed us to choose our "waitress." My client chose without flinching. I don't recall her name. She was young. Looked uncomfortable. But she knew my client.

He ordered a whiskey, I ordered a coffee. Because, fuck no.

Anyway, a few drinks go by, she's doing awkward pole dances next to our table. It's clear my client and she are having an affair.

Then a scream shrieked from outside. Through the highly tinted (painted?) windows I could see a young boy holding a knife to an elderly woman's throat. She handed him her purse.

"Let's go!" or was it "Vamos!" gets screamed by my client as he slapped the table and the entire bar's patrons ran outside and chased this kid up the street.

Grandma had her granddaughter with her. Both crying at this point. A moment later my client comes back holding the boy's hat.

"I got this, but I couldn't catch him. How much money was in your purse?"
"2,000 pesos." about 20US$ at the time if I remember correctly.
Every patron then handed her 2,000 pesos. She was now crying because everyone was so giving. She probably walked away with 40-50,000 pesos.

Me: "Are you going to call the cops?"
Client: "There are no fucking cops, you dimwit. This is Chile, not America."

And that's when I learned that when you don't have anyone to call, the community looks after itself. Dive bar or not.

[ghosthop]

In Baltimore all the legit dives have a grandfathered package liquor license. For the same reasons, some corner stores will have a two or three seat bar so they could retail on Sunday.

Frosted glass blocks flanking an entryway are always a sign of a good time.

[toast2266]

When the sinks are at chest height so people don't piss in them.

One of ours also has padded forehead rests on the wall above the urinals.

[billyk]

Jar of pickled bologna. Extra points if it's Koegels.

Pickled pigs feet in a jar.

[BmillsSkier]

The cigarette machine has lights and a Christmas tree on top, and it stays that way all year round.

[Core Shot]

I did not have one armed bartender on my bingo card

A little Seattle trivia for current or ex Seattlites.

About 25 years ago, I would go to this little dive on Queen Anne, which is usually an oxymoron based on the area. More so because it was tucked in the middle of the neighborhood, amongst all the residential houses, and not on QA Ave where the bars and restaurants were located.

There was no sign, just a dingy door on the only none residential building in the neighborhood. A couple pool tables, great juke, wrap around bar and a one-armed bar tender. I went a few times thinking maybe I’d stumbled into a dive vortex and this place didn’t actually exist in this dimension. Never more than a few people there and always quietly talking and drinking in a corner.

So one day I asked the bartender what the name of the place was and he grumbled “I don’t know.” I only found out later that he was the owner.

Well, that guy ended up dying, as sometimes happens, and the bar changed ownership, took on a public name, eventually bought flatscreens, digitized the juke, resurfaced the pool tables, etc. A real shame.

Name that bar.


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[Aldo]

Sometimes you just know.

[Danno]

this place

[BmillsSkier]

If the name of the bar has "Inn" in the name, chances are you can sit on plastic lawn furniture around a folding table while drinking a Bud heavy and a shot of Jager that cost $5 with tip.

[skaredshtles]

Pickled pigs feet in a jar.

Pickled eggs.

Pickled red hots.

Dammit - now I'm hungry for some dive bar food.

[skaredshtles]

If the name of the bar has "Inn" in the name, chances are you can sit on plastic lawn furniture around a folding table while drinking a Bud heavy and a shot of Jager that cost $5 with tip.

Front Range Inn. One of the best burgers in the area.

[muted reborn]

When the toilet has no door and sometimes no door and just 2 walls.

[BmillsSkier]

Back in undergrad a favorite dive was the Pilot Inn that had it all: cheap beer, cheap food, plastic furniture, pool table, great tunes and a few TVs. Two bartenders, one named Tom who did it all: made stiff drinks, cooked the food, joined in bar games and kicked your ass if you got out of line, and one named Wilma who was easily 100 years old, called everyone "hon" and used a custom stepstool that Tom built along the well so she could get up above the bar to make sure your 7&7 was filled to the top with booze. The men's room had no locking door, one urinal and one shitter with nothing in-between them. If you had to go in there and sit down, you better have a friend watch the door or get ready to be very uncomfortable. Next to the sink was one of those actual hand towel rolls that you yank on and assume the next bit is clean. The bar had a rotary phone at the end that took quarters for anyone looking to make a call. It would ring and the place would go silent until someone would pick it up and tell the caller "there's no one here by that name".

The place was everything you'd ever want in a bar and nothing you didn't.



If you were feeling a little more stabby and less inclined to make new friends the Edge Inn was 2 doors down the block with a glorious horseshoe shaped bar with cracked pleather padding along the edge to protect those out on work release from hitting their heads too hard on the bar.



But the most "Inn" of them all is about a mile away in an old Victorian mansion surrounded by the US Playing Card factory and frequented by everyone from 3rd shifters to college kids to hipsters to people just looking to smoke inside despite being illegal in the state for several years. The aptly named Happy Hallow Inn:

[liv2ski]

And cigarettes sold individually

That made me laugh, thank you

[Mazderati]

More clues in names:

- Alcohol advertising in place of a name.
- Just "Bar".
- Someone's Place. Like, Dave's Places or Steve's Place.


Also, the number of windows seems proportional with the dive factor with less being more. Especially landscape windows.

[Danno]

More clues in names:

- Alcohol advertising in place of a name.

When I was in high school, we would frequently go to a bar in the East Village that simply had a neon Budweiser sign in the window. 6 high school guys would walk in, knowing the bartender would never card us because we just tripled the number of paying customers in the place. We called it the "Shithole Bar", and it was glorious.