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culture and lived out the colorful stories they wrote. Bukowski mirrored his flop-house experiences in Tales of Ordinary Madness , while Hunter S. Thompson parlayed his days as a bowling writer in Puerto Pico into The Rum Diary .
What's more, these writers actually believed that the alcohol made them better writers. In South of No North when Bukowski is asked if he always writes when he's drunk, he replies, " Shit, yes. Sober, I'm just a shipping clerk, and not a very good one at that."
The connection between drunkenness and literary output suggests the alcohol itself is the engine behind the creation of literature and great barroom tales. Unlike traditional inspiration, this liquid muse is perpetually on call, easily summoned by uttering the following incantation: "Pampero tall and neat. Leave the bottle." As one contributor to Modern Drunkard Magazine says, "A hangover may last one day, but a great drinking story lasts forever."
THE NEW DIVERS: BOURGEOIS BOHEMIANS
"I know I have no right to complain. I know this neighborhood is gentrifying, and I am part of the problem, not part of the solution. I know that no matter where I move to get away from yuppies and hipsters, I will never be able to escape them, because I will be there. "
- superlefty.com
"I go to dives because they're real. They're weathered, and they offer a glimpse of what the world might've looked like in a simpler time."
-- Chris DeBenedetti, a 36 year-old reporter
In this age of gentrification, where everything old is torn down and built anew, where entire neighborhoods are razed to make way for upscale co-opts and condo lofts, the dive bar remains a static piece of history in an ever-changing world. In his article In Praise of Seedy , Michael Serazio describes most modern structures as having, "No soul in them, no community feeling." He adds, "It's very unsettling. You need architecture that your grandfather once had dinner at. It's important not to have everything torn down. It's important to the human spirit." The dive bar, then, remains a vital connection to the past.
Before the hard-drinking, fast-living Beats hit the scene in the 1950's, the Transcendentalists had been waging a quiet war against technology and the accumulation of wealth. Writers like Thoreau, Emerson and Alcott believed that machines and money prevented people from having the life experiences that really matter. Americans, they concluded, were able to calculate and measure, "but often did not take the time to sense and feel." (David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise ) As technology loomed before us in the 1980's and became part of our daily lives in the 1990's (laptop computers, cell phones, Palm Pilots), it can be argued that these innovations further isolated humans from one another. People telecommuted to work, visited chat rooms and engaged in cyber sex - all one step removed from a legitimate human experience. "I work from home, so I don't get the