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

In this age of craft beer, 100 taps! available, hipster beard/beer expert mania, I have to admit I love a dark, old, hole in the wall bar, with a sort of crude barmaid/lady, and limited beer options. They have character, they have a soul, and they aren't run over with grapefruit, belgian IPAs, and brainless people.

Well if I haven't alienated enough of you...... let's have it...

Philadelphia is one of the best beer towns in America with plenty of Belgian beer bars, and German beer halls, and hipster beer cafes--they are all over. But I still love me that dirty realism, a real dive. And Philly has plenty of them as well.
Just to get the thread started, I'll mention Philadelphia's - Oscar's Tavern, located in Center City, close to Rittenhouse Square. A classic, old dive. I've never walked outta here! (HK) sober.

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So if you had to recommend to a fellow dive bar lover, new traveller to your city, some of your town's coolest dives.... where and why? Any stories to share are always appreciated... Cheers.
:cheers:
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Costa Mesa (Orange County): The Goat Hill Tavern
It doesn't have the best selection of beers or anything, but it has a partially enclosed patio you can smoke on and its where all the locals hang out.

Santa Cruz:It's gotta be The Blue Lagoon.
$2 PBR's and Jager shots and a dance floor. So shitty its great.

Houston really isn't a dive bar town but Poison Girl still manages to capture that feeling:

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The list is endless.

Washington, DC: Wonderland Ballroom.

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I got no pictures for show-n-tell but Second Story Bar is my favorite gay dive bar in Chicago. It's right off Michigan Avenue. Walk about 50 paces east on Ohio just past The Gap and there's a wee door next to Sayat Nova ... super kitschy, super awesome Armenian place.

Up the narrow stairwell (complete with surveillance camera with a monitor positioned just so for the bartender to spy who is coming in) and step right back to 1979 gay Chicago.

It hasn't changed a bit since I was first there in 1980-something.

In Montreal:

Barfly

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In Copenhagen:

Mc. Kluud

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i've always liked the central west end dive bars in st. louis. dive bars are different in busy neighborhoods (they can get weird off the beaten path) ...but they seem to be getting demolished right and left (they all seem to be in one story buildings in an otherwise taller neighborhood). ROSIE'S PLACE is one of the few left (that i also like).

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in chicago i basically would always park myself in helen's 2-way lounge in logan square (because it was on a wedge block with two doors).

now it's gone OF COURSE.

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i'm not sure there is a better place for dive bars in the united states than philly other than new orleans. everything (meaning dive bars) in philly still feels centralized, unlike nyc and chicago.

Toronto has a lot of pretty divey bars, but most of them aren't places you necessarily want to go to. In the west end you have Portuguese "sports bars" that are usually brightly lit with fluorescent lights and have the same group of friends drinking espresso in the early morning then beer in the evening. My friend got the shit kicked out of him at one once for reasons unknown. There used to be a lot of interesting dingy taverns in the East End but most have slowly disappeared, or went more upmarket as the demographics of the area changed. Still lots of good authentic dives in the inner-suburbs but I don't really ever go there.

For a place more along the lines of what OP was thinking of, I enjoy going to the Black Swan Tavern on the Danforth before and/or after shows at the Danforth Music Hall across the street.

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Ronnie's local in Kensington Market is a more punk rock type place, but it's been around for quite some time and I think qualifies as a legitimate dive despite the crowd veering towards the (older) hipster end of the scale. That comes with the area though.

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This fits firmly more into the hipster dive bar category but it's one of my favourite bars so I'll give Thirsty and Miserable, also in Kensington Market, an honourable mention. They only serve beer and whiskey, cash only, it's a tiny hole in the wall, and the bartenders will reserve the right to overcharge you if you act like a dick. Which sounds kind of awful at face value but it's impossible for me to go in without having a great conversation with the bartender and/or randoms I meet at the bar.

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Oh, and for divey bars with a different kind of character I wouldn't really recommend - my friends and I used to go to a place around the corner from us called Akia King Cafe. It's across the street from what at the time was the Don Jail and always had someone just released having a beer. And the types who'd start drinking as soon as they were allowed in the morning. After last call they would close the blinds and keep serving pretty much as long as you wanted to drink.

No pics online so here's the streetview: https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.66612...7i13312!8i6656

I'll vouch for the Black Swan.

Toronto has a lot of dive bars. Some even have rooming houses on upper levels.

Snickers and Pippins Tavern in River North Chicago are good ones

zoo bar in kansas city is a crazy old brightly lit (florescent lighting) dive bar, one of the last that used to be along a dive bar row mid century era "entertainment district" deep in an echoey downtown canyon.

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the place has bars on the windows, so you know it's good.

kansas city might actually give any midwestern city a run for it's money in the dive bar department. i don't really know why, dive bars there always seem extremely energetic compared to other midwestern cities. it could be because it just has way less dive bars than corner bar places like st. louis and milwaukee where people have more local watering holes, so the ones that there are, are more energetic. dunno.

you can't mention river north dives without mentioning Rossi's

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i gotta admit, i like dive bars that sort of have kept up with the beer, but havent done a sterile gut rehab with table candles. as much as i like dive bars, there's so damned many of them in st. louis and so many that are proud that they just have budweiser and stag on tap and bust your balls if you take longer than 5 seconds to order. or like rosies place they only have CANNED MACRO BEER, shots, cigarette smoke, and THAT DOOR OVER THERE (if you don't like it).

Yes. It's maybe not as authentic but I like a divey bar with locals that still has good beer. Usually a limited number of taps though, maybe 8 max. That's my ideal. At some point being proud you only have macro lagers on tap becomes almost as pretentious as having ONLY craft beer.

truth.

pride is the antithesis of not giving a shit.

and the best dive bars don't give a shit.