What is your favorite dive bar?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

My favorite local dump is the Cambridgeport Saloon. It's a beer and shot kind of place, and if you want a lime with you gin and tonic, fugghetabotit. You have to run around the corner to the Star Market and buy a lemon or lime and the bartender will cut it for you. Despite the BYOF (bring-your-own-fruit) policy, the place was swarming with fruit flies the last time I was there.

The clientele is mixed ethnically and consists of working class, MIT, and guys that fall asleep at the bar. The place wreaks of stale beer, nicotine and BO. It's a real CHAHMAH! It makes the People's Republik, where we have had a couple of DU gatherings, look like a martini lounge.

[NewHampshireDem]

1. Rusty Hammer, Portsmouth, NH

Great burgers, too.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

2. I've been there before

Portsmouth has become so gentrified that there's nary a dive bar left in the center of town.

[NewHampshireDem]

5. Yeah, it's more faux dive than dive, but the heart is there ...

I remember when I first came to this area 10 years ago ... there were a lot more college kids and a lot less SUV's, BMW's, and condos downtown. :sigh: Time to find the next cool place :shrug:

[flamingyouth]

3. Nite Lite in Seattle

Near the Moore Theatre, on 2nd Avenue.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

6. What makes it special?

I honestly like the Saloon in small doses, despite the smells.

[flamingyouth]

9. You kind of have to see it to believe it

It's been around for decades, and it still has that early '60s vibe to it. Plus, the area has just been gentrified, but for whatever reason, the oldtimers still hang out there.

River Phoenix made a film called Dogfight not long before he died. It was set in San Francisco but was filmed in Seattle. They used the Nite Lite as a location because the film was set in the mid-'60s and this place was perfect.

[Kat45]

30. I saw "Dogfight". That was a good movie.

It was filmed in your favorite dive bar? Cool!

[Zomby Woof]

36. they make a STIFF drink

PLus, it is right next to the Moore Theater, and a good place to pre-funk before a show. :-)

[fudge stripe cookays]

4. The Hole in the Wall, Austin.

Many happy memories there. I learned how to play pool on the crappy worn tables in the back. You could jump on the floor and get a ball to drop in if you didn't get lucky for the shot.

FSC

[Kathy in Cambridge]

8. I've been there before too!

My friends who live in Austin frequested there.

[htuttle]

7. I closed Wolski's!

Wolski's Bar
1836 Pulaski Street, Milwaukee.

Like darts? Come here to get sharked out of your paycheck. :)

I crawled home from that place more than once. Luckily, I lived less than a block away.

[tXr]

10. Any one of the icehouses within walking distance of my house...

special mention to the K & K Drive Inn.

Scooter's in Pearland (TX) - great burgers!

Time Out #1 - the closest thing to 'Cheers' that I've ever seen. Walking in the door is like a family reunion with all your most dysfunctional relatives!

:toast: :beer:

[Mojambo]

11. It's no longer around.

The Frontier Room in Seattle.

I hear it has re-opened but it's now much more upscale.

God I miss that bar.

[salib]

12. Oh, gotta be Taco Land!

No place I have ever been to has all the blue collar workers from the bakery and brewery to be replaced fairly promptly at about 8:30 pm with wanna-be punks from the local prep school college. So much fun. A real institution in San Antonio.

[fishnfla]

13. its daytona, take your pick

but my favorites are(trumpet flourish)
1. The Dock-because they leave their Xmas decorations up for decades, they open at 6 am, they serve free popcorn, every third round is on the house, strangers will buy you drinks, and the lotto machine has hit the big one twice!
2. The Last Resort- a biker bar. This was Aileen Wournos' hang out. They still have the car seat/couch she used to sleep on out on the porch.Her hand writing is lireally on the wall. She traded sex favors for long necks. It is actually the closest bar to the house. The bartender "cannonball" is about wide as he is tall.

[sniffa]

14. "guido's" in w. cambridge, ma

i Like to go back there once in a whiLe but it aLways makes me depressed when i see the same peopLe there from 15 years ago.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

15. I haven't been to guido's in a long time

You're right about the 'lifers' there though.

McFly's up the street is gone. it's been gentrified.

[NewHampshireDem]

16. You guys ever go over to the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge ..

for the improv shows?

http://www.thetribepresents.com/

I went last spring ... it was very, very cool. Hopefully I'll be going Thursday night, if I can get a little crew together.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

18. I haven't been to the Cantab in years

Have you ever seen Little Joe Cook?

[NewHampshireDem]

20. Can't say I have ... I only went to the Cantab for my buddy

He's in the improv troop down there ... 2 of them, actually. It takes me a little too long to go down to Boston to drink or go to clubs, seeing how I have to somehow find a way home afterward.

[Kat45]

31. My cousin's husband used to bartend there--if that's the place

I'm thinking of.

[sniffa]

38. is it moose? or suLLy?

[yellowdawgdem]

17. not sure about the dump part,

but I always enjoy a good Irish pub. They've got 'em everywhere, there's a good one in Sonoma called Larry Murphy's pub. And there is Lefty's in San Francisco that is fun because it also has a piano bar.

[rednek_Liberal]

19. The Bloody Bucket

Used to be in Old Ellicott city MD. It was closed because...
I cant tell you why it was closed. But suffice to say it was a biker bar of the old variety, not the chic new American Chopper kind.

[KittyWampus]

21. Wolfies- Up In Springs (East Hampton) New York

lots of artists frequent the place.

Or they used to.. haven't been there in a while.

Same peoplelargely having same conversations. I needed to grow some. :)

[Elginoid]

22. Hotsie Totsie's on Division St....alas it is no more...

I used to live upstairs, two doors down, and when i couldn't sleep, it was a great place with a 4am liscence, and Gary, the owner had a great recipe for mai-tai's...i even bought leon spinks a drink there(after he was refused any more credit)

[HEyHEY]

23. Duckies, SAckville, New Brunswick, Canada

[Bertha Venation]

24. the Brit -- gay bar in Long Beach

Primarily male clientele, but they don't mind an occasional lesbian. :)

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

25. Years ago it used to be "Dragon Lady" in Los Angeles

at 6th Street and Normandie. It was a dive but with lots of color. It was owned by a Chinese/Vietnamese lady who also had a typical Vietnamese "B" girl type of thing going, like they had in Vietnam for the GIs during the war, where if you chose to, you could buy drinks for the many Asian girls inside and they would sit and talk to you. The place was intended to hold about 50 people max but on a good week-end there must have been 3 times that many people inside, packed in and standing up several deep at the bar. Lots of ex Vietnam vets would hang out there. It was kind of a real dive that had a combination of the exotic, danger, and excitement that you might find in a James Elroy detective novel. Unfortunately, Dragon Lady and several similar Asian bars in nearby Long Beach were shut down years ago.

[DS1]

26. There was a place in Westboro, torn down a few years ago

It was the perfect place to have a few drinks and not have to talk to ~anyone~ unless you wanted to.

Honolulu Restaurant, a complete dive. I loved it.

Plus it was a chinese place, so I could head back home full of mai tai or zombie, and plow through a big bowl of food watching movies on the telly.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

28. Is Ashland a dry town?

Do you have to go to the 'Ham or Westboro to go to a bar?

[DS1]

29. No, but I live in Framingham now, this was when I lived in Shrewsbury

a number of years ago.

It was like a Samoan Peoples' Republik in a sense, just as cheesy, good drinks, people that didn't want anything to do with you - and you didn't want anything to do with them :7

[mitchum]

27. The Manhattan (Athens, GA)

[Kat45]

32. I used to like the Jumbo in Somerville.

They had bands downstairs, but upstairs was a little neighborhood bar with 25 cent drafts. We used to go there all the time in college (in the seventies), and even us poor students could afford to buy rounds. The two waitresses were elderly women, Mary and Margaret IIRC, and they'd shut you off if you got too wasted.

That place was always in trouble, getting closed down for periods of time due to drugs or fights or whatever. It's been long gone.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

39. I remember Jumbo's!

It was an interesting place!

[slutticus]

33. Cecil's in Houston

[SmileyBoy]

34. The Bison Turf next to the NDSU campus.

It's the hangout of all the college students, athletes, etc.

[DemWitch]

35. it's been long since closed, by the public health board...

but back in the early 80's in Phoenix, AZ there was a gay bar called the Ramrod. Filthy place. Never cleaned. Reeked the high heavens. Lucky if you got a glass, and luckier still if had even been rinsed out. But ohhhhhhh, so much fun.

[Zomby Woof]

37. The Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle

Tom Robbins holds round-table discussions there, there are free books to check out on the walls based on the honor system, peanuts dumped at your table, a small-screen TV at the bar instead of a large screen sports bar kind, and the music is liable to be a bootlegged recording of a recent local concert.

The tavern was featured in one of Kerouac's works... 'Dharma Bums' I believe. He did some time in WA in a fire-watch tower.

The place reeks of character and filth. :-) Many of the best Vietnam War debates in the 60's were held there... being a stalwart of the U-District.

[GOPisEvil]

40. Joe's Generic Bar in Austin.

I mean, even the sign out front is a bar code. It looks so out of place alongside the flashier places on 6th St. But, you can get some decent blues and cheap beer.