Dive Bars and Why We Love Them
Octoboer, 2005
Night falls on San Francisco's bustling North Beach district, as tourists, flesh peddlers and hipsters troll the sidewalks beneath an ashen sky. I maneuver past a throng of fashion-conscious 20-somethings - all perfect hair and manicures - as they jockey for position in a velvet-roped line. I head south down a narrow meandering corridor, beyond the shimmering neon veneer of Broadway into the heart of Chinatown, past shuttered fish markets, junk shops and darkened alleyways. Steam rises from the empty streets, and for a moment I've stepped back in time to the untamed days of a bygone era. Two blocks down, tucked away from the arched rooftops and beneath a Chinese-style lantern, I arrive at Li Po's, a quintessential dive bar. Inside, three old Asian men play mahjong in a red Naugahyde booth near the back of the room, eyes down-turned, as hand-rolled cigarettes dangle from cracking lips, quietly defiant in the face of a state-wide smoking ban. Yellowing wallpaper curls at the seams, and a dusty, tabletop Ms. Pacman game sits idle in a darkened corner, a hand-written "out of order" sign taped over its coin slot. Burned-out Christmas lights hang from the ceiling (it's September), and a stream of easy listening classics pours from the jukebox, offering a healthy dose of Leo Sayer, Gordon Lightfoot, and Bread's "Baby I'm-A Want You" in a seemingly endless loop. Between drink orders, the bartender watches John Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder on a small, flickering black and white TV with tin-foiled rabbit ears.
And did I mention, the place is packed?
Groups of scruffy, jeans and t-shirt clad 30-somethings sip on Pampero while knocking back Budweisers, their swizzle stick legs jack-knifed over Naugahyde barstools. Coifed banking district refugees in designer suits mingle with crusty old-timers, swapping investment tips for nuggets of life wisdom worth their weight in gold.
This scene plays itself out nightly in gritty, no frills, busted pinball, sticky-floored bars across the country, from L.A. to Boston and all points in between. I began to notice this trend around 1995, as our national economy was growing at a record pace, fueled by a booming tech market and an unnerving sense of optimism. " When they file the IPO, we'll all get rich " became the mantra of an overachieving generation. So why, then, is this renegade menagerie of highly paid young professionals rejecting slick and trendy nightspots in favor of neighborhood dives?
THE DIVE: GREAT EQUALIZER
"This is a world where everybody's gotta be something - A dentist, fighter pilot, narc, janitor, preacher, all that. Sometimes I get tired thinking of all the things I don't wanna do. All the things I don't wanna be."
- Charles Bukowski, Barfly
Unlike the well-lit, glossy sheen of TV's Cheers, where "everybody knows your name," the dive allows its working-class patrons to bask in anonymity. In his book The View From Nowhere , Jim Atkinson refers to the dive as a Bar Bar, or "the only place left on earth where you can go and be nowhere." Writer Ron Donoho discusses a stateside watering
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