America’s most authentic, popular dive bars
THE DIVE bar’s obituary probably has been written a thousand times, sometimes with an eloquence that would baffle the average coot who shuffles into these black holes, looking for a shot and a beer before the clock strikes noon.
And yet, the ratio of dive-bar listicles to dive-bar obits must be about 10 to one. Either the dive bar’s demise has been greatly exaggerated or the definition of such watering holes has become so loose and unmanageable that it encompasses just about any place that doesn’t serve a US$ 20 ( RM90) Manhattan.
Over the months, as we’ve perched on countless stools to contemplate the State of the Dive, a few truisms have emerged, each as irrepressible as a barroom pundit. After arguing over their qualities, we agreed that true dives possess a handful of basic attributes:
They must have history. There is no such thing as an instant dive bar. They must have regulars. These loyal barflies will inevitably cast a suspicious eye toward strangers.
They cannot be expensive. If you pay US$ 9 for a draft, you’re not in a dive.
But this is our point: A dive bar is personal.
Little Longhorn Saloon
Beer and ticket in hand, the faithful gathered around the chicken coop at Little Longhorn Saloon to cheer on the contestants, a pair of colourfully plumed hens by the names of Loretta Lynn and Little Ginny. The birds were pecking away at the seeds scattered inside their pen, oblivious to the exhortations of the patrons all around them.
“C’mon, baby girl!” yelled one dude, urging the birds to strut over to square No. 38 on the bingo board, which serves as the floor of the coop.
“Drop the deuce! Drop the deuce!” shouted another as a band cranked out boot- scootin’ honky-tonk music in the background.
Rarely had so much been riding on a fowl moment. Every Sunday at Little Longhorn, patrons lay down their own deuce - US$ 2, that is - to purchase a ticket for what the bar dubs, without a drop of euphemism, chicken droppings bingo. Winners take home US$ 114 each, which isn’t
Either the dive bar’s demise has been greatly exaggerated or the definition of such watering holes has become so loose and unmanageable that it encompasses just about any place that doesn’t serve a US$20 (RM90) Manhattan.
exactly chicken scratch.
This game of bird- drop bingo was first conceived by Dale Watson, the silver-pompadoured Texan better known for producing fine country music.
In 2013, Watson and his sister, Terry Gaona, along with her husband, David, bought the former Ginny’s Little Longhorn from Ginny Kalmbach and gave the place a much-needed facelift. The new owners built a stage for their full schedule of bands. They added beer taps. They even installed a window in the once sunlight- deprived honky tonk.
In 2015, Watson sold his share of the saloon to the Gaonas, preferring to spend his time on the road, not inside a dive bar. But Watson left behind his legacy of chicken droppings bingo.
Nancy Whisky Nancy Whiskey’s history is a microcosm of Detroit in the 20th century. The Irish bar, a converted general store tucked away on a side street of the historic Corktown neighbourhood, got its liquor licence in 1902. It survived Prohibition, allegedly as a speakeasy. When the city’s economy roared, it became a hangout for Teamsters, including former union president Jimmy Hoffa, who used a phone booth near the front door to conduct private business. Members of the Detroit Tigers baseball team used to come in after games to drink until the wee hours, since the bar was only a 10-minute walk from Tiger Stadium.
When Detroit began its welldocumented decline, Nancy’s did, too.
“When I first started here, around 1992, this was a really bad neighbourhood,” says bartender Sheryl Grogan, who grew up in the neighbourhood with her brother, Gerald Stevens, the bar’s current owner. Things got worse in 2000, when the Tigers moved to a new stadium across the city and a neighbourhood full of large, vacant parking lots began to languish. “But this is a big city cop- and-fireman bar, so this bar would be full all the time, with the shift changes,” Grogan says. “Through the rough times, I think that’s what kept the bar.”
Drop in to Nancy Whiskey on a Tuesday and business is brisk, with regulars greeting friends as they walk in the door and groups meeting at the bar to watch baseball.
Lone Star Saloon
Squatting on the corner of Travis Street and St. Joseph Parkway, the Lone Star Saloon, you could argue, is a barnacle on the gleaming ocean liner of downtown Houston. The bar is a small brick structure, the colour of Texas ruby red grapefruit. A pair of wooden signs, each cut in the shape of Texas, are affixed to the facade. The signs look like they were made in shop class, circa 1980.
The Lone Star is a rare fossil from mid-20th century Houston, a town not exactly known for preserving its history. The bar’s drab rusticity is easily overshadowed, not only by the modern Metro transit centre across the street but also by the tall field of striking, sun- dappled skyscrapers on the north side of downtown. How the Lone Star has avoided the wrecking ball all these years is a mystery - until you meet the owner, Joe Lee Thomas, a man with three first names.
Double Down Saloon
James Messina is perched on a stool at the Double Down Saloon, the dive bar equivalent of an open wound, a place that has been poked and probed so often it remains raw and angry. It’s late afternoon, but Messina has not rolled into the Double Down to lose himself in the permanent midnight of the bar. He’s not knocking back a mini- commode filled with Ass Juice, the sweet house drink of unknown ingredients. Messina doesn’t even drink anymore, a casualty of his misspent youth.
A bassist in a local punk band, the Gashers, Messina is not checking out the competition, either, which won’t even assemble on stage for another seven hours, maybe later. He’s come here to be among his kind, the Vegas- area punks who consider the Double Down their second home.
“I’m just a local. I know half the people sitting here,” Messina says. “I got to get out of the house every once in a while, just talk to some friends.”
The Double Down even serves as a black- ops party zone for celebrities, including Prince Harry or comedian Dave Attell, who either want to hide from curiosity seekers or promote the bar’s noisy, sticky appeal.
The Frolic Room
The first time owner Robert Nunley restored the Al Hirschfeld mural inside the Frolic Room, he was perhaps overly optimistic about how patrons would treat the touched-up caricatures of Chaplin, Groucho, Marilyn and others from Hollywood’s heyday. Nunley opted not to cover the restored mural with glass.
The customers at his legendary watering hole on Hollywood Boulevard did what dive-bar dwellers have always done: They defaced those famous faces. “It was real bad,” Nunley remembers.
“The language wasn’t very nice.” So the second time he decided to refurbish the late Hirschfeld’s mural, the owner ordered a pane of glass to protect the reproduction of the artwork that has graced the Frolic Room for a half- century. Candlelight Lounge
The white-haired woman in the loud tropical shirt is a regular at the Candlelight Lounge. Someone tells me she’s 92 and lives nearby in the historically black Treme neighbourhood, but I can’t verify any of this. The woman may be elderly and frail, but as she sits on an old brass dining chair outside the Candlelight, she’s primed for a fight. She declares that I’m just like all the other white writers who visit Treme: I’m here to make everyone look stupid.
“You make money off of them and what do they get from it?” she asks me, her rhetorical skills sharp. “Nothing.”
Her anger is pure and clear, if slightly misdirected, and I respect it. Treme is changing before her eyes: Many of her neighbours never returned after Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters ravaged their homes in 2005.
Subway Inn
When the Subway Inn was forced to leave its home of 77 years for new digs two blocks east, its owners tried to make the new spot feel like the old one. The large neon sign, a landmark near the corner of 60th Street and Lexington Avenue, was cleaned up and hung outside of 1140 Second Ave. The Salinas family copied the black- andwhite checkerboard floor and brought over parts of the bar and some tables, including the booth where Marilyn Monroe and her husband Joe DiMaggio would sit in the 1950s. They even covered up a wall of windows, so that the bar would retain the dark, divey atmosphere that drew celebrities, working stiffs and barflies for generations.
For all of their hard work, the new location isn’t quite the same.
Bob and Barbara’s Lounge
A recent Thursday night at Bob and Barbara’s Lounge starts like any other night at the landmark 48-year- old bar on Philadelphia’s South Street. Some sun peeks through the stained- glass front window, shining onto the huge, diamond- shaped bar. At happy hour, a diverse crowd of regulars chats in groups, greeting familiar faces as they walk through the door.
“I can’t tell the number of friends I’ve met here,” says Lauren Mulhill, who started coming to Bob and Barbara’s while a student at Temple University and now lives around the corner. “If you’re having a bad day at work, you come to Bob and Barbara’s and it makes it better.” — WP-Bloomberg