So apparently a “dive” bar is anyplace that isn’t TGI Friday’s. People casually recommend bars with words like, “Oh, it’s great. Low on the bro factor, totally divey,” while in the same paragraph using terms like “craft cocktails.” Somehow not being brotageous means the place is a dive now, it would appear.
Back in my day, a dive bar was a terrible, poorly-lit affair where old men were drinking bad beer at 1pm and stayed there until their wives nagged them into going home. There aren’t “craft” cocktails at these types of joints, and if there’s any food at all, it’s pickled and served to you from a giant jar. Maybe there are some chips available for 50 cents. Dives open as early as your state will legally allow them to, and will serve you a drink in a to go cup when you’re ready to go on your way. Dives are the kinds of places young people might happen upon, give the crowd the once over, and decide to go somewhere else.
But no, according to some, a dive bar is anyplace where it’s kind of dark and it’s okay to wear your Chuck Taylors to. Yeah, you know what I call those? Bars.
So we need a new name for actual dive bars, since the original name has been corrupted. Suggestions welcome. I’ll make it a new thing. Or at least it’ll become a new thing among my friends, this way when I say “Let’s go to a dive bar,” they won’t say “Let’s go to this delightful hole in the wall with 1000 reviews on Yelp where we won’t be able to get a seat.”
I always think it’s funny when people on dating sites say “I looove dive bars, the divier the better”, when what they really mean is “I love corner pubs”.
I went to college in a town that was mostly corn and cabbage fields. We stayed away from the dive bars*, but if you ventured into them, they tended to be pretty ugly.
If someone really wants to go to a real live dive bar, I can take them there, but they probably don’t. Like I said, what they want is a corner bar with some character that, like you said, isn’t a Fridays.
*It was a college town and had two downtowns since it was near two cities so there was plenty to chose from.
ETA: it’s also dependent on regionalism: when Northernern professionals, one or two generations from the factory floor, go to a beer & shot place, it’s an exotic yet alien experience. But when Southerners, one or two generations from the cotton fields, go to a honky-tonk, they feel as if they’re shucking off their pretensions.
This way when I suggest we go to an old man bar/pub, they’ll know exactly what I mean and can either agree or shut it down, instead of agreeing on a “dive,” then sending me to a place packed to the tits with 28 year olds, spending $7 a round on Jameson. Yeah, no, no self-respecting dive will charge you $7 for that shit.
Not sure when “dive” replaced the term “corner pub,” but it has clearly happened. And I would rather drink with the kinds of folks I grew up with than to spend time in some annoying-ass bar where people are patting themselves on the back for going to a “dive,” even though it’s the same shithole that’s overpriced and overcrowded, but without the dress code. But that’s just me.
Yeah, I basically call it a blue-collar tavern or something like that. Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though. It’s usually pretty clear to me what is meant by “dive” depending on who is talking and what neighborhood is being talked about. In my neighborhood, a dive bar is exactly what the OP describes. In, say, Wicker Park some young twenty something is waxing poetic about this “great dive bar” they found, I assume the more “hipster grit” type of dive, not a working class bar where the truckers and old men hang out.
Thing is, a working class bar need not necessarily be a dive. So maybe “working class dive?” “Neighborhood dive?” I got nothin’. It’s all just contextual.
MOL I wonder if the entrance levy for Black people where you are is the same where you are as it is here? In Atlanta, the urban Buppies can venture out to the hinterlands and be accepted in the old chitlin joints, but not the redneck joints (I posted a thread a while back about a coworker who was foodies and jack rolled at one).
I grew up in my dad’s working class bar: an Irish-American fish-fry and fistfight joint. So when “Irish Pubs” started to crop up in the 80’s, I thought I’d fit right in. It was like trying to get loaded on a Disneyland Darby O’Gill ride.
Huh, maybe the term hasn’t changed and I’m just hanging around jerks now? Because I grew up in what could generously be described as a “blue collar” neighborhood (dad worked with his hands for a living), and at worst be called a straight up ghetto, and when we said dive bar, we meant it. Now I have to deal with this north side bullshit of a dive being anything that isn’t The Violet Hour. And for non-Chicagoans, swipe out “Violet Hour” for whatever obnoxiously pretentious and popular $15+ cocktail joint du jour. Oh, and by the way, when 20somethings from Wicker Park start talking to me, I don’t even listen. I don’t want to hear anything they have to say about anything.
Hi. I’m not sure I understand your question. Are you asking me if I’d be accepted in the divier black places, but perhaps not the divier white ones? I don’t know. I hang out wherever and have generally felt fine wherever I go (the Midwest is weird about race, but whatever), but my main beef is people not even knowing what a dive even *is *these days. I tend to steer clear of redneck joints just because I don’t really want to go to places like those, but I went to a country/western bar here once (some white guy took me there) and my experience was fine, even if it wasn’t my thing.
Anyway, I live by some pretty decent dives in a neighborhood I lovingly call Polexico (it’s about 50/50 Polish and Mexican), and these are legit dives, but it seems like some folks I know wouldn’t even call them that, because they call actual dives something else, so these places are just… just what? What do we call them? Old man pubs/bars is my winner so far.
“Tavern” usually describes it pretty well. Although if “tavern” were to be recognized as a way to refer to a dive bar as you define it, hipsters would fuck that up just like they did with “dive bar”. I’m afraid there isn’t really a sustainable way out of this. Status-related terms have a way of going down the treadmill unless there’s something non-fuzzy about their referent to anchor the term to.
What are the reasons that you wish to find this type of bar? How is it superior to other kinds? Is it the cheapness of the alcohol? A good reason indeed, but then look for that.
If, however, you are looking for something along the lines of “an authentic, spontaneous, real , old-timey place that hasn’t been commercialized by corporations and hipsters” well, that’s very much the type of place that attracts hipsters. Like you.
The couple times I’ve had to qualify “dive bar” to someone, my second phrase is “beer and a shot place.” I think the phrase “no blender” has also come up. Or if they have a blender, they have to find it and wash it first.
I do like cheap booze, and I also like not having to arm wrestle people for a seat. Also, I have begrudgingly admitted to myself at long last that I just do not like young people. I want a dark bar with cheap booze and no kids where the bartender talks to you because he likes you. I just have more fun in these types of places than elbowing my way through a crowd of children and paying too damn much for mid-shelf whisky. Seriously, it should be a crime to charge more than $6 for Jameson.
It slays me when I say I want to go to a dive, and people take me to some place in the trendiest neighborhood in town and go “Oh my gaah, this is such a dive because it isn’t a chain!” False. Let’s just go to a dirty old bar and relax. There won’t be any cute boys, but it’ll be peaceful. I like peace.
Yeah, “old man bar” is another term I use for some of these places. “Old-school neighborhood tavern” also kind of gets the feel across. I tend to reserve the word “dive” for the more run-down, completely bare bones versions of these places (for example, I live on the Southwest Side in a similar Polish-Mexican neighborhood, and every place around here tends to be be of the working class sort, but plenty don’t fit under my idea of a “dive” and not all the dives are “old man” bars, either. These categories do tend to intersect, though. If it’s got more than two or possibly macro lagers on tap (and nothing else), then it probably isn’t a dive. But, then again, you can have a pretty hip bar and still maintain a sense of divey-ness to it, I think. Maybe you can call those “hipster dives.”
Hell, even the shit bars are getting too crowded on the weekends for this curmudgeon. I’ve started going out on Wednesday nights since I’m off on Thursdays. No idiots from the suburbs spilling over into the quiet dive spots.
Right. Working class does not a dive bar make. There are a lot of elements I think go into it that get completely lost, and while terms like “blue collar tavern” might get closer, that’s still not exactly it. So far “old man bar” is a close as it’s come, and even while it’s a fairly good approximation, it’s not perfect. It is too bad I can’t think of any way to describe what seems crystal clear in my mind in a way that any listener would get.
And in case this thread is going that way, dive bars aren’t my favorite thing in the world. I at times want to go to them, but the point of this thread really is how hard it is to describe a dive to other people since the term itself (I believe, at least) used to conjure up a very specific image, and has since been diluted into meaninglessness. On a typical weekend, I’m at your average corner bar, but that doesn’t mean I never want to reference dive bars. It’s frustrating that when people use it, they don’t mean what I mean, and I when I say it, other people don’t hear what I’m trying to tell them.
Being an old man, I like the term, “old man’s bar”. Often the name gives it away. Names like “Harry’s”, “Joe’s”, “Stinky’s” (all real places I’ve been). The sorta place where, if the bathroom is occupied, you can go outside behind the dumpster. The kinda place where, at closing, a few patrons who have lost their licenses to DUIs beg rides home. The kinda place where if a regular hasn’t been around lately, people assume he’s in jail. Again. The kinda place where a person can “get lucky” if he/she lacks any minimum to what he finds acceptable. Warm beer and cold women.
If you haven’t seen the movie Trees Lounge, watch it for an excellent depiction of a dive bar. If you’ve seen it, watch it again. Steve Buscemi at his finest.
ETA:
Written, directed by, and starring Mr Steve Buscemi.