Last month I introduced a French friend to my favorite California dive bar, the Silver Peso, and it was clearly love at first sight. Smiling with delight, Sandra glanced around the dim room, slid onto the ragged bar stool, leaned across the sticky wooden bar, and said, “White wine.” Aghast, I tried to shout “No, no stop!” but before I could get the words out, the bartender had disappeared into the back. “I guess I should have mentioned this earlier,” I said. “Never order white wine in a dive bar.” “Why not? Don’t they have it?” “Well, they’ll have something,” I said. “Doesn't mean you’re going to want to drink it.” In case you’re not familiar with the American term “dive bar,” it refers to a well-worn, unpretentious local place that can be anything from a comfy, no-frills neighborhood pub to the kind of seriously squalid gin joint where you’ll want to keep your back to the wall and check to make sure all your vaccinations are up to date. The term comes from Prohibition-era basement speakeasies entered by diving down a flight of stairs under the cover of darkness. Today, dive bars enjoy a kind of retro, hipster vogue, and this can lead you seriously astray. Google “dive bar” in most cities, and you’ll come up with a list of trendy taverns and cookie-cutter microbreweries that are, frankly, an insult to the time-honored concept of down-and-dirty drinking establishments. To me, the essence of a dive bar experience is a funky atmosphere, modest prices, and quirky patrons who tend to accept you exactly as you are. It’s very refreshing. Sandra, who just hours earlier had been at an excruciatingly chic luncheon, said as we waited for our drinks, “I like this place. No one is looking at us, no one is watching what we wear or cares how we look.” Exactly! Which is why it’s worth the effort to find the real thing. We often stumble across great ones by sheer chance while strolling through an unfamiliar city or taking a road trip through a rural area. How to Spot a Dive Bar For a start, a true dive bar never calls itself a dive bar. The name is usually something old school such as The Hide-Away, Monty’s Log Cabin, or simply Bar. The exterior is usually underwhelming, and the interior is dark — murky, even — and festooned with Christmas lights and barroom kitsch: neon Budweiser signs, poker-playing dogs painted on velvet, calendars showing sports teams from 1986, and signs like “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” Ideally, the bar stools are held together with duct tape while the floors are sticky with old beer, and occasionally (I award extra points for this) covered with peanut shells or sawdust. What to Order You know you’re not in a dive bar if they have top shelf liquor and a wine list — especially one offering chardonnay at $17 a glass. In a recent visit to Petaluma, Rich and I were drawn to Gale’s Central Club Bar by the hand-lettered sign offering $2 pints of PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon beer). Now that’s what I’m talking about! In a proper dive bar, nearly everyone will be drinking beer, whisky, or whisky with a beer chaser. Don't even think of ordering a mojito or cosmopolitan — or of course, white wine. Even if they manage to scrounge up something approximating such beverages, you’ll be proclaiming yourself a rookie and an outsider. In America, order a Bud, and elsewhere ask for a local draft beer, at least for the first round. You may notice the bartender is drinking one as well, and perhaps you can bond over that. What Not to Order During a recent trip to Portland, a friend said, “My son knows a great vegan dive bar!” I’m sorry, but vegan food is an automatic disqualifier! Nothing wrong with vegan food, of course, but like a $17 glass of wine, it is way too fancy for a dive bar. In fact, food and dive bars are rarely a happy combination. Some of the hipper places like Zeitgeist in San Francisco provide suitably downscale fare such as low-budget grilled cheese sandwiches and burgers, but for the most part, dive bars offer little beyond packets of peanuts or potato chips (and I’d check the sell-by date on those). One night in Torino, Italy, Rich and I rashly sampled the all-you-can-eat buffet at Damadama, eating unidentifiable deep-fat-fried substances that left us with a strange taste in our mouths and a disturbing tummy rumble. Never again. Sandra’s Wine It crossed my mind that Sandra’s wine might not be so terrible; after all, the neighborhood around the Silver Peso was seriously gentrified now, and we were just hours from vineyards producing some of California’s finest labels. Perhaps a decent chardonnay had managed to creep into the cooler by osmosis. I watched with interest as the glass appeared in front of her and she took a cautious sip. A look of horror passed over her face. Oh, thank God, I thought. The spirit of the Silver Peso — and of dive bars everywhere — lives on. Been to any great dive bars lately? I’d love to hear about them!
14 Comments
Katy
10/18/2017 07:35:22 pm
Just sorry I didn't get to introduce you to my Malagueno dive bar - but then again, there's also a lot to be said for places with great food and decent wine!
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Karen McCann
10/19/2017 09:30:33 am
Good food and decent wine have their place, but we must make a pilgrimage to your dive bar next time we're in town, Katy. I'm not thinking of myself, of course; I feel I owe it to my readers.
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Brian Bermingham
10/18/2017 09:20:21 pm
On Martin Luther King Jr Way near Main St and the old Merced Theater is Gabe's Tavern. Gabe's serves no hard liquor, only beer and packs of peanuts, etc. It has one pool table squeezed in toward the back entrance. The "beer of Gabe's choice" is Bud, but he keeps a few others in bottles in the old-fashion reefer (step out the back if you need the other kind).
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Karen McCann
10/19/2017 09:32:19 am
Brian, I have definitely earmarked Gabe's for our next visit to Merced. It sounds like the perfect place to kick back with a cold brew and watch Bonanza. Doesn't get better than that!
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Paul
10/18/2017 09:37:21 pm
I'm not normally a Dive Bar fan... hell, I almost never go to bars at all. But some semblance of a sort of civic pride encourages me to suggest you do indeed look up "Dive Bar" in Wikipedia. And right there, on the right, is a photo of the Merrimaker, our own local dive bar right here in Los Osos, on California's Central Coast (known locally as the Marriage Breaker. 'Nuff said!)
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Karen McCann
10/19/2017 09:40:05 am
Love the Merrimaker sign on the Wikipedia page, Paul; a classic. And when I went to check it out, I found this great definition of a dive bar from Playboy: "A church for down-and-outers and those who romanticize them, a rare place where high and low rub elbows—bums and poets, thieves and slumming celebrities. It’s a place that wears its history proudly." Yep, that about sums it up.
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Andrea Murphy
10/19/2017 03:39:26 am
Great article. I remember Silver Peso!
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Karen McCann
10/19/2017 09:41:20 am
We had such a fun night there, Andrea! Can't wait for you next visit so we can all go again.
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James Kinsella
10/19/2017 05:42:36 pm
Dona Karen -
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Karen McCann
10/19/2017 06:02:37 pm
A dive bar that delivers pot, beer, and pizza — wow. Thank God that didn't exist when I was in college or I would never have left my dorm room. Thanks for the info, Joe; obviously I'm going to have to do more research in Oregon soon.
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diane
10/19/2017 07:15:26 pm
Oh my word they sound like just my sort of place
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Karen McCann
10/20/2017 04:07:19 pm
Keep an eye out, Diane; you may find that there are dive bars right in your neighborhood or at least quite nearby. Let me know if you stumble across any good ones!
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Bar Fly
11/23/2017 10:29:55 pm
Living up to my moniker I managed to find a good dive bar in Oslo. It's called Rendezvous and is just up fron Sinsenterassen (you can't miss it in person or on Google Earth).
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Karen McCann
11/24/2017 08:15:28 am
Thanks for the hot tip, Bar Fly! I don't get to Oslo often, but next time I'm there I will make a beeline for the Rendezvous and order a pint. I'll post photos and a full report.
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I'm an American writer living in Seville, Spain and traveling the world with my husband, Rich. We've recently completed a five-month Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour, exploring the world's favorite cuisine to discover more about European culture — and our own. Send me your email and I'll send you more on the journey and what we learned about packing, comfort, and food. Try the comfort food recipes I've collected in 10 countries. OUR CURRENT LOCATION: SEVILLE, SPAIN BLOG ARCHIVES
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