The Dives we know

[Strong Atheist]

Tell us about the dives you know.


Copycat.;)

[maveric]

1. Growing up in Lawrence MA. I could tell of thousands.

But for now the "Arizona Cafe" in Ocean Beach, San Diego.
Its got a bar,Jukebox, a pool table and the nastiest restrooms at the beach. But its friendly, good Rock n Roll on the jukebox and the drinks are cheap.

[babylonsister]

14. Wow! My husband grew up in Lawrence, MA. He's 53; what

dives do you speak of? He might have played (guitar) in some of them.

[maveric]

28. Horseshoe Bar, Brothers 4, Joey's (North Andover).

Daigles Cafe, The Round Robin, DK's, Chez When, Barnaby's, Whippet Club, Red Onion,...
If he's from "Lawry", he knows these places/dives.
He's 53? I may know him. I'm 50.

[GOPisEvil]

2. The late, great "Joe's Generic Bar" in Austin.

Ambience, none.
Beer, cheap.
Blues, fantastic.

Sadly the owner was murdered, and the bar closed.

[GOPisEvil]

4. Another: The Triple Crown in San Marcos, TX.

Total dive, but they occasionally have good music.

[Texasgal]

39. Jenny's little longhorn!~

Best DIVE ever!!! IMO!! :hi:

The crown and anchor on campus is another good one too! :)

[AngryAmish]

3. The Mutiny on Western in Chicago

What an f'n dive.
on edit - The late, lamented Tuman's Alcohol Abuse Center on Chicago (it was a bar) and The Saxony Lounge on Lawrence next to the Aragon.

[Greyhound]

5. The Funky Fox (since deceased) will always have a warm spot

in my heart
Cheap booze friendly and horny dancers.

[Roon]

6. An old gay bar in Denver called Mr.Bill's

It was like walking into a Star War's Bar..a lot of hustlers, homeless folks, and rich old men. They had food every sunday and the jukebox funds paid the rent. When I was thin, pretty, and 22, I could walk into that bar and drink for free all day and night. Sadly this bar closed down a couple of years ago.

[William Bloode]

7. Wildlife,

Clap board construction, dirt floor, no real bathroom. Cheap beer, and brown baging your own whiskey is allowed. They have good music there as well, bits of Blues, Bluegrass, and Country Rock, and Southern Rock.

Cat Square dance hall, and Hog Hill, both have no floor no jukebox, no bar(not a real bar any way), no alcohol for sale bring you own. They have decent bands that play a mix of Western Swing, Country, and Bluegrass, with some Rock, and Southern Rock.

All three are a great place to get cut, thrown through a window, or shot. I loved all three of them very much, never a dull moment.

[Kali]

8. I must be in strange mood 'cause they sound

fantastic - would love to see a place like that - hey maybe I should start one!

[William Bloode]

10. Not many of them left here.

I do believe Hog Hill is gone now, turned into a church if can believe it. They are whats left of the old Southern backwoods blood and guts juke joints around here.

I would not call you strange, but adventureous. Most of the city folks abouts are scared to even go into those places. But it's not that bad. Most of the fights come from rivalries, and some are just good natured brawls too let of a bit of steam. Some times around here fighting can be a friendly passtime, as long as no one hold no hard feelings.

[annagull]

9. The Saturn Bar in New Orleans

It was out of the French quarter, down on St. Claude. Very dark, cheep booze and one of those old jukeboxes from the early 70's that had old rock tunes in it. It is hard to describe how cool this place was, I'm not sure if it made it thru Katrina, but I sure hope it did.

[long_green]

12. O'Neill, the guy who ran it, recently died

not a direct casualty of Katrina.

[long_green]

13. Monaco Bob's Touchdown Lounge (New Orleans)

too good to last.

[annagull]

26. Oh No! Rest in Peace, O'Neil

Man, what a character. He WAS the Saturn Bar, such an unusal person. I remember Andy Griffin always seemed to be on the TV no matter what time of day or night we went in there, and O'Neil was such a funny guy, he really made that place. Sad to hear.

[trof]

16. Was it a Wurlitzer with bubbles?

Love those.
;-)

[Fox Mulder]

11. The Met Lounge in Morris, MN.

My favorite place to get drunk! :toast: :beer:

[trof]

15. Frank's Supper Club

I was doing some bartending at a friend's party a while back, and it felt good. Natural.
Standing there behind the bar, wiping up with a bar towel, polishing glasses, chatting with friends. Making that cool spiral stack out of the cocktail napkins.
I tended bar at a blue-collar beer bar for two years while I was in college. Mid 60s.

The blue neon sign outside said "Fra_k's Supper Club". The "N" had blown out, or been shot out, something, and Frank never bothered to get it fixed.

It was as close to a "speakeasy" as I'll ever get. The front door was always locked. Had one of those little diamond shaped windows at about head height with a ragged curtain over it. If you wanted in, you rang the bell, or pounded on the door. Frank, or me, or one of the regulars, would peek out. If you weren't a cop, or an unescorted female (looking for hubby) we opened the door. Frank did not check IDs, although I don't think he ever sold beer to anyone under 16 or so.

The "Supper" part of the joint's operation was a fairly short menu. Hamburger, or cheeseburger?
Usually consumed at the end of an evening of fairly heavy drinking.
They were prime.
Ground sirloin.
And well prepared. I usually doubled as cook.
;-)

There was a pay phone on the wall next to the front door. For outgoing calls only. Frank had disconnected the bell. Wives couldn't call in to harass errant husbands. Well, they could...if they had managed to get the unlisted number...but how would we ever know if they did? Frank looked on his place as a haven for the harried male. Kind of the Tuscaloosa version of the Yale Club in New York. The only women allowed in were those escorted, usually by a husband on a Saturday-Night-Out special treat.
Right.

Frank was an ex-Marine. Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal. He didn't talk much about what went on there, just that he was there. He was a young moonshiner and bootlegger during the last of prohibition. Ran a tug up and down the Black Warrior and Alabama rivers. Pushing barges of whatever. The still was on the boat and the exhaust ran into the boat's engine stack for a nifty visual AND olfactory camouflage job. He made stops, up and down the river, for his regular customers.

I wouldn't mind another evening behind the bar at Frank's.

[trof]

17. Ah, memories. "F" Street Station in Anchorage.

What a place.
Good food, good booze, GREAT waitresses (women only) and right next door to the Hilton Hotel.
A great thing during a blizzard.
The sauteed oysters were to die for.

[trof]

18. And the No Name Bar in Sausalito.

Damn.
There are so many.
And ain't that great?

[BrotherBuzz]

23. I assume you met Spike Africa when you were there?

[skygazer]

19. I grew up in a town of about 26,000

It had, at the time I was coming of age, 38 bars of one sort or another, a good portion of them would be considered dives. I hung out at all of them.

For music and dancing (and fighting and rowdiness), you went to the Village Barn where there was usually a fairly decent rock band playing.

To hang out in a quieter dive, you left the Barn, went through the alley, and entered Alice's, a long narrow place with a bar, a couple of tables and perhaps a pinball machine.

If you wanted to play pool, you went to Mort's Roadhouse.

For edgier music, the Quarter Moon.

To hang with the Yuppies, The Tavern.

To hustle pool, Bob's Ponderosa - the tables were all warped and ragged and some of us knew every bump. You could win some money at Bob's if you knew the tables.

For food and drinks, Sportsman's Lounge.

To do lines in the bathroom, Ransom Hastings.

Jazz and natural foods, The Mole's Eye.

To avoid those you knew, The Howard Johnson's bar.

When you got thrown out of just about every other bar, Mike's.

When you got thrown out of Mike's, Mac's Pub, the diviest of them all.

Most of them are gone now - it's a whole different town.

[Tikki]

20. Al's Bar.....

....many Angelinos will remember the immortal....




Tikki

[DBoon]

44. "Tip or Die"

Saw the Meat Puppets there in the 1980's

Billiards, a "take your own photo" machine, and the Museum of Neon Art right around the corner

[bbinacan]

21. Troll's Bar in Chapel Hill, NC

back in the 80s. Damn I feel old.:banghead:

[HuskerDU]

22. Dean's Parkade Lounge- Cedar Falls Iowa.

It was really two bars. On one side there were old farmers with John Deere hats, on the other side, infamous punk bands like MDC played to a crowd of misfits.

Good times for all. Sorry that it went away about 15 years ago.

[LynneSin]

24. McFinney's - somewhere outside of Plymouth Meeting PA

Oh the stories those walls would tell if they could only spake for surely I'm not going to!

:wow:

[bbinacan]

25. Three dollar Deweys in

Portland, Maine. Don't know if it's still there.

[SiobhanClancy]

29. It is...eom.

[bbinacan]

32. Cool. n/t

[mitchum]

27. The Manhattan, Lunch Paper, Flicker, Georgia Bar all in Athens, GA

[tishaLA]

30. Philadelphia:

Dirty Franks, 13th and Locust.

[LynneSin]

33. I love Dirty Franks

but it's not as "Dirty" as it use to be

[Omphaloskepsis]

31. The Jockey Club..

The gem of North Portland.. Best.Jukebox.Ever

My school was across the street from the place.. I used to grab pints of Pabst between classes. The bathrooms are so foul you piss from the edge of the puddle. Sometimes that is actually outside of the bathroom. Oh, how I miss that place..

[TheBaldyMan]

34. too many to mention

they tend to look like pillboxes and serve bettery acid instead of beer.

[driver8]

35. This place...next to the Hawk and Dove in Washington, DC

The Tune Inn

[EstimatedProphet]

36. The Landing-West Point MS

Cheap beer, bar-box pool tables, and a bunch of frat kids every night. The mens room had a trench in the floor instead of a urinal. At closing time they would sell you a "pack to go"-a six pack with a bag of ice.

Dive.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

37. Nuzbacks in Laurel, MD

The old guy that ran the place had the funkiest tunes on his jukebox...stuff like "Your Red Scarf Matches Your Eyes". Whenever someone played that particular tune, he'd jump up and ring a ship's bell that he had mounted on the bar. He also had "Pong" and darts for customers' amusement. And every Tuesday was imported beer night...$1 a bottle.

Mr GoG and I had our first date there. LOL!

[Strong Atheist]

38. Figures. I do a copycat

to do a copycat, on something I am not that interested in, and it takes off, and keeps coming back every couple of hours, without my responding at all. Just my luck. :evilfrown:

[peekaloo]

40. reverse somersault back flip.

I'm not very good at it though. }(

[CanuckAmok]

41. Jerry's Alley (sadly, no more)

Part of the Russell Hotel in St. Catharines, Ontario.

St. Catherines is a really redneck city. in the late 70s and 80s, there were no places where you could just go and be different.

Except for Jerry's Alley.

It was basically a melting pot of anyone "weird" in the region. Leather gays, artists, lesbians, punks, New Romantics, hippies, students, biker gangs, potheads, skinheads (nazi and leftist), freaks, trans-sexuals, metalheads, strippers, old pensioners, skaters, Veterans... Jerry's had it all. Lots of jailbait punk girls, too, courtesy of an unguarded back door. And for the most part, everyone got along pretty well.

Every now and then, a fight would break out, but not too often. Few of the regulars would want to get banned for fighting, and anyone who came in looking for trouble usually left head-first.

Awesome music played by volunteer DJs (paid in beer). Mostly UK punk, reggae, ska, etc, but lots of Canadian and Western New York indie bands, too. There was usually a touring punk band on Friday and Saturday nights.

They had amazing bands play the joint: Bad Brains, Alien Sex Fiend, the Forgotten Rebels, Rhythm Pigs, Peter Murphy, Pere Ubu, the Ramones, etc. Considering the whole place was probably about 1500sq/ft, that was quite a feat.

$1.00 drafts (Molson Canadian), and a seemingly limitless stock of green-bottle Pepsi, long after Pepsi stopped bottling in green glass :scared:.

Really good pool table.

Smoking pot and hash was basically "okay" in the backroom, as long as you weren't too obvious about it. The bartender, "Lucy", would occasionally get pissed-off and throw people out for smoking too blatantly, but they were usually allowed back within the hour.

It often closed for months at a time, for fire-code, building-code, or other infractions, or on the whim of Jerry, the owner (who carried a gun).

Everything was broken all the time, in rotation. During hockey season, Jerry brought in a 14" black and white TV with a coathanger antenna, to please the Leafs fans.

Once I caught a cockroach under my draft glass, and it was so big it actually moved the glass a little when it tried to escape.

My favourite memory of the place was on one of the rare occasions it was opened during the day. It was open because of the annual "Grape and Wine Festival" parade, and was packed with regulars and a bizarre mix of parade attendees who just stopped in for a drink.

The back room caught fire during the post-parade party, and the fire department showed up. Although most of the drop-in people left right away (probably happy to have a reason), the firefighters couldn't convince any of the regulars to leave the place, so they had to fight the fire surrounded by drunken and stoned freaks. While they were dealing with the fire, two of the regulars stole the mobile command centre vehicle and crashed it into a shoe store.

Good times, good times...

[khashka]

42. A gay bar in San Francisco

Small, dark, smokey and things usually got out of hand - like ripping the bartenders clothing off.

When I was underage I used to hang out at a hustler bar. Because the bartender would serve us, he would even give us free drinks! Having a few cute young things around brought the chickenhawks in looking for teenage prostitutes. Sounds awful but it was a lot of fun.


Khash.

[DBoon]

43. The Circle Bar in Santa Monica, CA

where people who were not trendy hung out.

We were a dimishing minority in that neighborhood in the 1980's

[Orsino]

45. I recall "The Horse You Rode In On" fondly.

Visited it in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, I think. Dive with pretensions.