College dive bars are a distinct species, but share some similarities. CDBs are characterized by:
-cheap pitchers of even cheaper beer
-a loose interpretation of “of legal age”
-“Live Music Nightly” - the hardest working band in show-biz
-all liquor served as shots. Asking for a mixed drink will get you 86ed
-bouncers who were linemen on last year’s losing team
-bar food is bad pizza, even worse wings and a French fry-based basket that contains at least 7 ingredients, 4000 calories and tastes heavenly after 5 Natty Ices
-unlike regular dive bars, college dive bars have TVs for local games. The only time the lights come up is when we score
-regulars who have been there for a decade and are still “working on their dissertation”
Yeah, I was actually thinking about this earlier, especially since that Tuscaloosa place is what I’d probably classify as a college dive bar, judging by the pictures and videos of it I found. At my college there was a place (long since gone) called The Keg that is not what I would call a “dive” by my normal definition, but would fit my definition of “college dive.” Pretty much everything in your definition would qualify for this bar, but I think they had some mixed drinks. I distinctly remember having a shot they called “The Green Hand Grenade” there, and was the only bar I could routinely drink at while underage. Anyhow, it closed shortly after someone was shot to death there during a bar fight about a decade ago.
There is a dive bar I visit when I’m “in a mood” and don’t want bothered.
Last time I was there, a loud woman repeatedly tried to engage me in conversation. I’d mutter a single syllable reply each time. Other people in the bar were glancing at her like she was killing kittens.
She was really starting to wear on my, and I was “in a mood”.
She asked, “So, what do you do?”
And I replied, “Mostly I mind my own goddamned business.”
Egan’s has always had a mix of students, grad students, faculty and locals. It’s the place a lot of students are afraid to go because for years many students thought it was a gay bar. It’s pretty much the only place left on “The Strip” near campus that has any character. When I first started going there as a student they had 25 cent draft beer but those days are gone. There is no stage, bands play in the corner by the dart boards. You have to walk past/through the band to get to the bathrooms. Or you can go out the front door and go around and come in the back door. It’s one of the only places that supports local original music. I met my wife there after the Alabama vs. Arkansas game in 2005.
This picture gives you an idea of where the bands play. The opening to the left of the video game is the bathrooms.
I lovingly remember a college dive bar up at Humboldt State called Mad River Rose. it had all the characteristics I described above, plus: it was in unused warehouse space in a business park, all the tables were old line spools, and when the bouncers threw you out, they literally threw you out.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, if the bar is in close proximity to an AA place, pretty good indicator that it is a dive. The place I mentioned upthread was literally 12 steps away, door to door, from an AA meeting place.
Dear God I just had a flashback to the Fire Alarm in Cicero IL.
It closed at 8:00 AM and reopened at 9:00 AM and they couldn’t serve alcohol for that hour but if you wanted to stay you could buy as many drinks as you needed to tide you over and they would lock the doors and you’d be locked in the place while they cleaned.
Actually, good call. The neighborhood place I talked about was kiddy corner from an AA meeting place. And the AA meeting place used to be a bar itself years back in the 80s (and a house of ill repute upstairs, too.)
Cicero had bars that would stay open until 8 a.m.? Was this like unofficial, or was it different back then? Even the 4 a.m. licensed bars here in Chicago (5 a.m. on weekends) are getting to be difficult to find. I sometimes miss Budapest’s 24hr bars, but I probably don’t have the stamina anymore to do that sort of thing.
My daughter and her BF just moved into the Humbolt Park neighborhood. Their place is a block from Archie’s, which I understand is a pretty definitive Chitown dive. Do you know it?
Also, last night they took us to a place called “Rootstock” about 3 blocks from their apartment, where we could sit outside with the dogs and the Uke Lady could get a glass of Austrian wine. Halfway down the block was a place called The California Clipper - Air Conditioned (that was what the neon sign read). I excused myself to go down and check it out.
Couldn’t figure out what wrong turn I’d made in life that I was drinking in Rootstock instead of The California Clipper - Air Conditioned.
Back when I was a kid it seemed like Cicero was the wild west. I doubt very much of what went on was legit.
I remember a place called The Show of Shows on Cicero avenue by Midway, and the reason I remember it is because when I was 17 years old in 1983 a friends older brother brought us there. As I recall I was drinking the first drink of the night at the bar and wondering what was so special about the place that we needed to drive all the way out there when there was a tap on my shoulder and I turned around to see two women completely naked except for shoes asking me if I wanted to have a good time.
Back then Stone Park was similar. You could walk into a bar/club very clearly underage and without any ID and get plowed, and at 1 AM there would be an announcement over the PA that the cops would be raiding the place in 15 minutes and if you didn’t have an ID you’d be busted. Funny how they always knew 15 minutes before the cops showed up…
To me it’s more of a basic neighborhood corner bar than a dive, but this is where my definition of the term seems to run at odds with what is the current understanding by 20- and 30-somethings is of the term.
Heh. Wonder where this place was. That’s pretty much my neighborhood (I’m near 47th, between Cicero and Pulaski). Of course, huge swaths of that area got rebuilt, but that sounds about right. I don’t know about any places like that still being around (but I don’t seek them out), but I do know there’s still plenty of prostitution busts happening just off Cicero near the airport, and (at least according to my cousin), there’s private apartments running as brothels.
ETA: Looks like it was probably well north of the airport in Cicero proper, so not really in my neighborhood. And looking further into it, it looks like it was somewhere between Cermak and Roosevelt and, of course, connected with The Outfit.
