The best real, authentic, old DIVE bars in your city?

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

Ok, here's my thing about dives...

Is it merely that they aren't scenester bars?

If that's the case then virtually every bar in Philadelphia outside of three or four ZIP codes is a dive - cheap drinks, complete lack of pretense and 70s era decor at best.

The only difference between an Oscar's or Dirty Frank's or Bob & Barbara's and any corner bar in Frankford, Mill Creek or Germantown is the median income of neighborhood. I've been in a lot of bars all across this city and the neighborhood corner 'shot-and-a-beer' spot is far and away the standard model and the biggest difference between those places and Center City's dives are the names on the bottles.

But anyway to answer your question McGlinchey's will always be delightfully gutter and beloved by me.

How can youse not love a place named Mc Glinchey's. It is the sound your zipper makes when you lift it after a serious pee following a three pint sitting.

[kool maudit]

Copenhagen has made a bit of an art, or at least a legal category, out of the dive bar with its "bodega" classification. If a place is below a certain floor area, it can be classified as a bodega which means you can smoke inside and it can stay open 24 hours.

As for drinks? Carlsberg in bottles or shots. Language? KUN DANSK.

[NorthernDancer]

One of Toronto's oldest bars (and just around the corner from my places) was The Brunswick House. It closed down just over a year ago and is now a drug store.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Copenhagen has made a bit of an art, or at least a legal category, out of the dive bar with its "bodega" classification. If a place is below a certain floor area, it can be classified as a bodega which means you can smoke inside and it can stay open 24 hours.

As for drinks? Carlsberg in bottles or shots. Language? KUN DANSK.

24hrs? beer&shots only? still schmokin? weirdly called bodegas?

well, i think copenhagen is the clear winner here.

at least in general, if not in individual divey joints.

[Via Chicago]

i feel like so many in chicago have been lost over just the past few years.

the all time great was Johnnies.

dude lived above it and would just come down and open it up, roughly when he felt like it, 365 days a year. he would buzz you in. he also sold christmas trees and pumpkins out of the side lot in the fall and winter. guy worked in the factories after coming the US from Europe, back when factories still existed on the north side of chicago, and bought the bar with that money. place was one of a kind.

the sun bleached Hamms sign sums it up

[Via Chicago]

another good one that is still around is St Pauli Club.

One beer on tap. Its Spaten and its $3. all wood paneling, a pool table in the back, and Elvis on the jukebox. want to know the way you can tell its a true dive bar? I cant even find a picture of the interior online.

[Kenmore]

RIP Ms. Ollie

[i_am_hydrogen]

Danny's (Bucktown)

http://www.chibus.com/lifestyle/2016...ut-of-the-loop


https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicag...on?oid=2440617


L&L Tavern (Lakeview)

https://roadtrippers.com/us/chicago-...ink/l-l-tavern


https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicag...ion?oid=835469


Old Town Ale House (Old Town)

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/chic...town-ale-house


http://www.planet99.com/chicago/bars...house_449.html

[Private Dick]

I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania... on the center of one of the lengths of the rusty, isosceles triangle formed by Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh... so if you know anything about this area of the country, you'll understand that about 90% of the bars there are dive bars by the modern definition of the term.

Though their numbers are dwindling or transforming with their neighborhood to straight-up sketchy dens full of inhabitants looking for one form of trouble or another, there are still plenty of places that are worth the trip and will be happy to have you drink the 75 cent PBR drafts (not ironically), use the 1960s-era condom machine on the wall of the bathroom and its metal trough to piss in, and bone the resident Pall Mall-scented cougar on the constant prowl for fresh meat and a cold Coors Light.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania... on the center of one of the lengths of the rusty, isosceles triangle formed by Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh... so if you know anything about this area of the country, you'll understand that about 90% of the bars there are dive bars by the modern definition of the term.

Though their numbers are dwindling or transforming with their neighborhood to straight-up sketchy dens full of inhabitants looking for one form of trouble or another, there are still plenty of places that are worth the trip and will be happy to have you drink the 75 cent PBR drafts (not ironically), use the 1960s-era condom machine on the wall of the bathroom and its metal trough to piss in, and bone the resident Pall Mall-scented cougar on the constant prowl for fresh meat and a cold Coors Light.

haha, yeah, a lot of the rustbelt DEFAULT mode of bar is a "dive bar," not some quirky outlier. unironic 75 cent PBR drafts remind me of 50 cent natty drafts here at the cat's meow, an old school soulard bar in the smoke and steam of the big brewery filled with retired union brewery workers drinking tubs of longnecks by themselves, wonderin' what they hell yer doin' in there.


trekearth.com

tripadvisor.com

[Centropolis]

if you take a photo in a proper rustbelt dive bar the correct facial expression is confusion and/or annoyance.

[brickell]

I think I get the concept, you want "authenticity" but not actual bars filled with authentic working class people. Because those are a dime a dozen, no? Seems like every other storefront in East Little Havana is a bar full of illegal slot machines, ladies of the night, santeros and bales of cocaine in the back.

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by brickell

I think I get the concept, you want "authenticity" but not actual bars filled with authentic working class people. Because those are a dime a dozen, no? Seems like every other storefront in East Little Havana is a bar full of illegal slot machines, ladies of the night, santeros and bales of cocaine in the back.

I've been to a few of those Miami bars in my time... sometimes very fun, other times a bit scary.

Miami has plenty of the real thing.

I guess the "dive" bars there these days might be more along the lines of Mac's, Fox's Sherron Inn (RIP), Churchill's?, The Bar?, Ted's?...

[PHL10]

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

Ok, here's my thing about dives...

Is it merely that they aren't scenester bars?

If that's the case then virtually every bar in Philadelphia outside of three or four ZIP codes is a dive - cheap drinks, complete lack of pretense and 70s era decor at best.

The only difference between an Oscar's or Dirty Frank's or Bob & Barbara's and any corner bar in Frankford, Mill Creek or Germantown is the median income of neighborhood. I've been in a lot of bars all across this city and the neighborhood corner 'shot-and-a-beer' spot is far and away the standard model and the biggest difference between those places and Center City's dives are the names on the bottles.

But anyway to answer your question McGlinchey's will always be delightfully gutter and beloved by me.

Agree with all you wrote but will add that the Center City Dive bars (I reluctantly call them that) might be a bit more interesting in that it draws from people who would be in dive bars from other parts of the city so you don’t have that homogeneous vibe….it’s kind of like an all star team of bar patrons – young, old, white, black, but everyone is just looking for a cheap buzz. I really hate hearing hipsters talk about dive bars when it’s a bar that is full of hipsters and then for me, it ceases to be a dive bar.

[maru2501]

L & L tavern in Chicago is a shudder fest due to the Gacy and Dahmer links

I will also nominate Nisei Lounge near wrigley. And their twitter is great

@NiseiLounge

they have been marching toy penguins into a malort pool of misery after any cub loss

[volguus zildrohar]

Originally Posted by PHL10

Agree with all you wrote but will add that the Center City Dive bars (I reluctantly call them that) might be a bit more interesting in that it draws from people who would be in dive bars from other parts of the city so you don’t have that homogeneous vibe….it’s kind of like an all star team of bar patrons – young, old, white, black, but everyone is just looking for a cheap buzz. I really hate hearing hipsters talk about dive bars when it’s a bar that is full of hipsters and then for me, it ceases to be a dive bar.

That is correct. I think the term 'dive bar' carries a vibe with it anyway and such places would never think of themselves with such an intentional label. If they did then they're really not helping themselves.

There is a bar on Passyunk called 'The Dive'. Never been there only because any place that would call itself that doesn't seem to be my kind of spot. Maybe one day I'll see for myself.

[Parkway]

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

But anyway to answer your question McGlinchey's will always be delightfully gutter and beloved by me.

McGlinchey's is a place that will always have a special place in my heart. The Inqy even did a piece on it today.

[McBane]

I think you have to distinguish between real dive bars and those pseudo-dive bars populated by hipsters drinking Pabst. A true dive does not have craft beer but offers cheap macros in mugs for $1.75.

[initiald]

In Charlotte, it's the Thirsty Beaver. It was the only spot on a block that refused to sell to a developer, so the developer is building around it.


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...opment-NC.html

[Parkway]

Originally Posted by McBane

I think you have to distinguish between real dive bars and those pseudo-dive bars populated by hipsters drinking Pabst. A true dive does not have craft beer but offers cheap macros in mugs for $1.75.

Fishtown immediately pops into my head. Many of the old neighborhood joins have been replaced by pseudo-dives. Fishtown Tavern definitely goes for that feel but it's all a little bit pretentious. I have a job that requires me a wear a suit and I feel more out of place there than I do at a place like Murphs.

Ultimately I think a real dive bar is a judgement-free zone.