The Dive Manifesto

Recently I had the unfortunate opportunity to drive across Nebraska with my family.  No disrespect to Nebraska, of course.  Between the country and western on the radio we heard an advertisement for a local bar that proudly listed a $3.50 beer bong as one of its Wednesday night specials.  My wife turned to me and said 'Wow, that place sounds like quite the dive'.  Initially I agreed.  What kind of self respecting awesome establishment outside of Daytona Beach offers up beer bongs?  After pondering this for a bit, though, and I-80 in Nebraska is kind enough to offer lots of opportunity to ponder (State of Nebraska Motto Idea:  Nebraska: Land of Too Much Time on Your Hands), I changed my mind.  Does the sale of beer bongs alone make a place a dive?  What really does constitute a dive?

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, a dive is a 'shabby or disreputable establishment (as a bar or nightclub)'.  That leaves quite a lot up to interpretation, and doesn't quite scratch the surface of what can be a complicated categorization.  I've had many a time when someone said to me, 'This place is a pretty good dive', only to have me not agree due to some disqualifying factor.

To follow is a completely unscientific (to be fair, a scientific study of dives would be missing the point completely) review of what many long nights on the backstreets of Denver have taught me about dives, which will hopefully shed some light on a dark topic.  This will be split up into three acts:  Act I - Some things I know to be true; Act II - Some clues to look for; and Act III - The vast gray areas.  Here we go!

Act I.  Some things I know to be true:
1.  Dives are not limited to drinking establishments.  Sorry Merri, it's just not so.  As I have portrayed in my blog, you can find equally diveish environs at a restaurant, or anywhere else (fleabags, no doubt) for that matter.
2.  Serving Pabst Blue Ribbon is not a requirement.  Several sites or blogs online will have you believe that having PBR makes an establishment's case for being a dive.  PBR being the poster beer for Fro-Dives all over this great land disqualifies it completely from having anything to do with real dives.
C.  Just as you cannot open a factory to crank out classic cars or worn out leather sofas that suck you in to their broken-in comfort, a dive cannot be created.  Dives are like luxury goods - the story and the pedigree matters.  Have you heard of Dive on Fifteenth?  Of course you haven't - it was a brand spanking new 'dive' that closed after about 3 months of troubled and confused life.  Serving PBR in a can and providing a foosball table dost not a dive bar make.
4.  If it's got 'dive' in the name, it's not.
5.  If it has won some sort of award for being a great dive, it's probably not.  Real dives don't want awards, much less win them.  Though The PS Lounge is an exception that helps prove the rule.

Dive food doesn't have to be dodgy.  But it should find its way onto yellowing photograph menus.

Act II.  Some things to look for as clues.  Each not enough to make a place a dive on its own, but each certainly helps:
-No credit!  Cash only!
-Trough urinals.
-Bullshit on tv.
-Crappy wood paneling.
-That one odd dude, sitting by himself, getting smashed.
-A wall menu consisting of photographs of the food that someone's uncle took in 1985.  Asian restaurants are the real pioneers in this area.

Act III.  The gray area:
-Bad food.  Pure opinion.  While I may think that the steaks at Elways suck, that doesn't make the place a dive.  Crown Burger is a little dive of a hamburger joint, and it serves up a tasty burger with delicious, yet mysterious, special sauce.
-Dancing.
-Good music/jukebox. 
-A little filth.
-Unfriendly:  Could be.  Wolf's Motor Inn was a fairly ominous joint.  Definitely doesn't have to be.  See Mr. A's, Denver's Friendliest Lounge.
-Cheap.
-Hipsters.  Hipsters deserve their own discussion, so I won't give a detailed analysis of why they suck and why they are cool.  Just be on the lookout, and don't jump to conclusions.

So what's a dive?  In the end, there isn't really a scorecard you can tally up to qualify a place as a dive or not.  Maybe that's why the term gets bandied about so frivolously as it does.  Hopefully, however, this piece will help give things a little perspective.  Perhaps you can just put dives down as places you go when you want something different;  a different feel, a different time, a different crowd... you name it.

Anything I missed?  Discuss.

The Best Dive Bar in Denver, According to Someone Else

What does it mean to be the best dive bar?  Does that mean it didn't suck as bad as it could have?  Or maybe that it is so seedy that the bums are looking uncomfortable?  Its like saying 'yeah, that was the best hernia I ever got'.  Even though I was a bit confused, I did take a moment to read the recent online article from Westword, proclaiming the Denver's best dive bar in 2011 to be The Kentucky Inn.  I'd love to be able to lambast Westword about their choice, but have to admit that the Kentucky Inn is not one that I've had the pleasure of enjoying.


It must be dive bar season at Westword, because they followed up with another article about the Five Best Dive Bars in Denver (actually 4 plus the Kentucky; I guess just naming the best one wasn't enough), and this post that attempted to digest the reader comments Westword received from people arguing about why the Westword picks were junk, and what constitutes a dive in the first place.  I am not 100% sure why I am regurgitating all of Westword's work, maybe I am just lazy and feel like posting other peoples crap instead of my own.  Actually I do have a point, which goes back to the Westword comment board: To start a discussion about the age-old question that needs to be answered before anyone can put their claim on knowing what's best:  What is a dive?  Just a joint that could use a good cleaning?  A place in a rough neighborhood?  Is it limited to bars?  And what does PBR have to do with it?  All these questions and more will be answered in my next post - The Dive Manifesto.  Stay tuned. 

Club 404 Lounge

Club 404 Restaurant and Lounge has been shuffling Denver south siders through its doors on South Broadway for ages.  It was SOBO before there was a SOBO.  The sign outside is one of those classic roadside antiquities that you might find in a museum somewhere or in a sign graveyard in the desert outside Las Vegas.  It acts as a perfect dive bar marker:  decrepit enough to make casuals move on by to the fancy Hornets and such down the street, but showing enough dated class to give an inkling that it might be worthwhile stopping.


I am not sure why, but walking into the 404 I felt like I was stepping on board a 1970’s pleasure cruise.  There was entertainment on one side of the boat in the form of some comedian, and I am sure there was a shag-covered keyboard over there somewhere as well; T-bones were on special in the restaurant for the blue hairs, the bar was filled with patrons you could easily characterize as scallywags, and to get to the bathroom you had to walk through the galley.  Bartenders served up on the cheap from behind the sexy vinyl covered bar (And not only the bar is covered in vinyl, the entire ceiling is covered in vinyl.  I imagine that in one of the back rooms they have a massive stash of Liquid Leather, just to keep the place together) that is backed by a glorious ancient wooden back bar that has a patina coming from many a hard voyage.  It provides the perfect spot to kick off your topsiders and get a drink with an umbrella.  Of course if you do show up in topsiders and start ordering Piña Coladas, your fellow patrons may choose to pick a fight with you, as they did when I was there (luckily they were arguing with each other and not with me, since even though I may be able to swear like a sailor I cannot fight like one), so keep your wits about you and be ready to disembark at the next port of call if necessary.


The Club 404 Lounge sets sail daily from 404 South Broadway.

The Sports Station Redux

My relationship with dives is kind of like the relationship I have with my kids.  Having that first breakfast burrito at Charlie's Silver Fox is not entirely unlike the joy of watching my boy ride his bike for the first time.  Sometimes they both can be a source of happy surprises (like getting a free beer at Mr. A's).  Sometimes they give you indigestion (a $1.10 scoop from Little Panda, with aplomb), or worse, just plain make you sick.  Each also can disappoint: this week The Sports Station made me feel like I just found poop on the bathroom floor.  I have visited The Station before, and found it to be an enjoyable stop.  It was a nice mix of worthless barroom banter, crap on tv, and an amenable owner who is more than happy to sit at the bar with you and blow that evening's take on drinks for himself.  So you can imagine my chagrin upon hearing that there was a shooting there recently.  Here's what a semi-reputable news source had to say earlier this week.


This just goes to show that you don't need to hop a plane for some exotic locale or find a lonely stretch of trail up in the mountains in the search for adventure.  Just head down to your local dive and watch what happens.  

Bar Bar

One of the best dive bars in Denver is happy enough without you.  It can be found surrounded by parking lots on a desolate spit of no mans land, in an area bungled by Broadway shooting straight southward across the jacked up diagonal grid of downtown Denver's streets.  It's not exactly right around the corner from anything, or super convenient to anyone.  The sign hanging over the door simply says 'Bar', giving away nothing and giving you no reason to assume that it is anything out of the ordinary.  You have to want to go to Bar Bar.  And one night we did, and we were not disappointed.

I stole this picture from Westword.

The Carioca Cafe, as Bar Bar is known to the tax collector, accosts you (probably literally, on some nights) with reasons to not bother and move on.  First and foremost is the clientele.  I would put them a step down from the welcome wagon or a friendly neighbor bearing cookies.  You might find, as we did, a gentleman wandering around on the sidewalk, and sometimes in the street, outside the bar between drinks.  His surly looks did not really scream 'welcome!'.

Bar Bar goes one step further to discourage one from spoiling its dive bar riches - it kicks you right out on to the street, as happened to the fellow sitting next to us at the bar.  He must not have appreciated the effort made by Bar Bar to keep the place cool by strategically placing dangerous looking box fans around the room.  Or perhaps he got greedy and tried to grab get an extra cigarette out of the coffee cup where Bar Bar had them on offer 3 for a dollar.  A very nice amenity and fairly priced, by the way, and I don't even smoke.  The poor guy could have tried to pay with a credit card as well, which is disallowed.  A handwritten sign attempted to make it obvious that cash is king at Bar Bar, but the sign obviously failed.  Whatever it was that got him booted (probably the fact that he had a hard time staying upright in his stool and was yelling in the direction of the barman) I felt for the guy.  We were enjoying the hell out of Bar Bar.  Its general disrepair and pictures of people we didn't know that covered every square inch of the dingy walls were somehow comfortable and familiar, and the three beers and three beers only on tap (Bud Light, Bud Heavy, and PBR, in case you were wondering) spare you the trouble of decisions, making it easy to get into a zone and spend some time pondering.  Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got, know what I mean?  Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.  Bar Bar isn't the place where everybody knows your name, though, it's the place where nobody knows your name, no one cares, and sometimes that's a good thing.

On the way back to our car, I noticed that there was graffiti on the side of the building, adjacent to the parking lot.  It was nothing too elaborate, only one word actually: 'Sloshed', which I thought summed up Bar Bar pretty well.

Bar Bar is located at 2060 Champa.  Go find it.