(Dive Bars and Why We Love Them Page 2
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hole where the majority of late-night patrons are made up of weary restaurant staffers: "Tivoli offers a blue-collar respite from hours of fulfilling the wants and needs of hungry, impatient turistas." Similarly, and proving that the dive is indeed a global institution, the Old Sailor Bar in Amsterdam's red light district is a well-known haven for off-duty prostitutes looking to toss back a few Amstels after a long shift.
The dive bar offers a safe, comfortable environment for people to escape the pressures and drudgery of their working lives - a reminder that, according to Hunter S. Thompson, "the tyranny of the rat race is not yet final." And whether you're a drifter, plumber, lap-dancer or lawyer, the only thing you'll be judged on in the dive is the quality of your jukebox selections and the ability to pay your tab. In his book The View from Nowhere , Jim Atkinson says the dive offers a kind of transcendent egalitarianism where, "Inhabitants don't care what you look like, and certainly don't care if you've screwed up just about everything you've ever laid your hands on."
While this egalitarian attitude is certainly appealing to the down-and-out denizens who populate skid row watering holes, it is also a refreshing change of pace for affluent, educated professionals who are expected to compete and succeed in every aspect of their lives. In the dive, there are no expectations of its patrons, which is a blessing for workaholic go-getters and overachieving corporate climbers.
"Murio's is the one place I don't have to impress anybody. I love it here because nobody cares what you do for a living. And you don't have to pretend to be someone you're not."
-- Eric Fischer, 36 year-old video engineer
In addition to being a place where you don't have to "be something," as Bukowski suggests, or "be someone you're not" as the bar patron agrees, the dive itself is a kind of blank canvas, giving you the freedom to decide what you want it to mean. This is what semiotic linguists call an "empty signifier," a word whose meaning is so open you can project anything onto it you wish. The dive, therefore, allows the patron to assume any number of guises: Hipster, historian, rebellious orthodontist or anonymous drunk.
"In taverns, men did not ordinarily sit according to their place in the local social hierarchy.... Here there was at least the possibility for greater assertion in posture and conversation."
-- David Conroy, a liquor historian
In the earliest days of our nation, bars were the great equalizers, where peasants and noblemen could exchange ideas free from the traditional barriers of class or social standing. Even today, this is a hallmark of the dive, as J.R. Moehringer describes in The Tender Bar : "Standing in the middle of the barroom you could watch men and women from all strata of society educating and abusing one another. You could hear the poorest man in town discussing market volatility with the president of the New York stock exchange."