“And it feels right as you lock up your house/Turn out the lights, and step out into the night/And the world is busting at its seams/And you’re just a prisoner of your dreams/Holding on for your life, ‘cause you work all day/To blow ‘em away in the night.” –Bruce Springsteen, “Night” (1975)
Springsteen analyzed blue-collar existence to the core on most of his records: Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town. The first four albums were absolute masterpieces. He’s right about a few things in “Night,” except, for me, the “work all day” thing is bogus. In my case, it’s more like “get off the couch/to not do shit in the night.” You don’t meet girls at these dive bars described so eloquently by Springsteen and his other contemporaries like Southside Johnny. You step out into the night for one reason: to get housed. It’s what everyone else in the place is doing whether they’re sitting by themselves nursing that fifth scotch-rocks or yelling at their friends chugging their ninth pitcher.
You’re used to dive bars in a small college town, especially before graduation. They’re the shittiest bars you’ve ever been in, but you love them just the same. The fucking pre-yuppie bars are irritating—20 minute waits to get drinks, sorority girls all pretending they’re best friends while gossip spreads behind everyone’s back, and guys in lavender pants trying to spit game through half a dozen Jagerbombs. You can only handle that shit for ten minutes, tops.
The place my buddies and I hung out at in school was a fucking dive. It had a few pool tables, cheap beer ($5.00 Yuengling pitchers...enough said), and the overwhelming stench of smoke. Cheap wallpaper, cigarette machines, broken bathroom sinks, the works. After we’d get bored at this place, we’d hit up another bar that was a little classier, but had pretty much all the same attributes—pool tables, locals drinking well bourbon, everyone watching a baseball game and bitching at the TV, a bartender who looked like he’d been working there for at least thirty years. We had great times even though we pre-supposed we’d be leaving the whole dive bar scene behind after graduation. I didn’t.
If you think eventually you’ll be living in New York going to amazing cigar bars, well, you’re kind of out of luck. Some kids got there. I even do every couple of months when I visit my buddies there. But, like many kids looking for jobs in a bad economy, I moved back home, took my seat on the couch, and haven’t done a lot of moving since.
Living in the suburbs isn’t all bad, except for the fact that you’ve gotta start frequenting all the same dive bars you used to try to sneak into in high school and the ones you went to when you were home on breaks in college. The dives at school were great because you knew all the bouncers, bartenders, and girls. But the bars at home aren’t like that since you’ve essentially been on a four-year hiatus. In the ‘burbs, you’re faced with two choices: the expensive bars your parents go to for after-dinner drinks (and the ones you stop by with your elitist friend who goes to Yale) or the shitty bars you always end up at after two hours of debating what you’ll do on a Friday night.
Everyone who’s had to go back to their parents’ basements has had to revisit those bars, some for longer than others. I’ve found about four or five bars in my area that I absolutely adore, though. And whenever we end up arguing about going out at night, we always narrow the list to these same places, even if your one friend suggests that for “a change of pace” you trek twenty miles away to hit that bar with $6.00 beers and shot girls that are “totally hot.” Or that club with a bunch of gel-heads who think bottle service makes them part of some elite group. Fuck that shit, man. I love dive bars. Going to clubs, especially back in my neck of the woods, is enough to induce dry heaves.
From what I’ve gathered from being at home unemployed, and from my buddies who are in similar suburban living situations dealing with the same terrible economy, we’ve found that there are a few types of crap bars. Though you’ll get my unique “stories” here, these are the kinds of places you’ll come across while you’re searching for meaningful existence. You’re not living the dream. And hell, you might even end up working at one of these joints while you try to get your shit together. Here we go:
1. The Neighborhood Bar
My neighborhood bar is one of my favorites in the area. Why? I can drink as much as I want and still make it back to my place and end up safely in bed without any thoughts of getting a DUI.* In fact, it’s usually the last stop after a night of drinking before we end up in my buddy’s garage smoking hookah and having a couple of Elijah Craig’s on the rocks.
There’s a great assortment of people at the neighborhood bar, but it doesn’t cater to one specific kind of person. No Guidos. No Hipsters. No hippies. Just real Topeka people. It’s a bar that people aren’t afraid to go into by themselves because they know they’ll always find someone there to shoot the shit with. If you go every Saturday, you’ll always see the same people. It’s like Cheers with actual personality. One dude even looks like a clone of Norm Peterson.
At this bar, a “Hotel” that probably hasn’t given weary travelers comfort since like 1878, there are all sorts of strange rangers. Last week, I ran into the guy who used to be my school bus driver when I was in 10th grade. The week before that, my neighbor, a mother of two, was hitting on some black dude...until I came in the door. She was supremely glad to see me for some reason, even though the last time I talked to her (two months earlier), she was walking her dog and bitching about “snow in November.”
Every time I end up in that place, I also run into the two gay guys who sit at the end of the bar, cooing to each other and, for some reason, flirting with all of the attractive women. The girls all flock to them—they’re much better company than half of the drunk guys there who come in with beat-up jeans and t-shirts looking like they just got off a double-shift at the steel mill. Those gay guys are always better dressed than everyone—nice overcoats, button-up vests, $150 shirts, and perfectly tailored gray dress slacks or Diesel jeans. The kicker: they’re the only ones in the place allowed to dress like this. When I rolled in there to meet friends after a nice family dinner, sporting a J. Crew sweater and khakis, I got all kinds of strange looks, especially from the bouncer rocking a hoodie and cargo shorts two days after Thanksgiving.
I always end up getting to this Hotel when my buddy Barry is home for winter break. We get down there about three nights a week with a random assortment of friends. While I make it there at least once every couple of weeks when he isn’t around, I end up there bullshitting with the locals all the time when he comes back—if he calls me at midnight on a Tuesday looking to drink, I never say no. Barry’s a smoker, so if I join him outside for a butt once in awhile, we meet some interesting people. The same guys I always see there talk about random shit: football, punk bands, girls, blowjobs, what have you. And always ridiculously loudly. We ran into one guy, trying clumsily to light a Marlboro Red through a liquor-induced fog and talk simultaneously:
“Yo, you guys see the Iowa game today?” the dude asks us.
“Uhhh...no, but their defense looks pretty good this year,” Barry jokes amicably. He doesn’t know shit.
“Fucking right it does.”
“Yeah, so what’s going on man?” we’ll ask in unison.
“Nothin’, what about you guys?”
“Just havin’ a quick smoke. Reflectin’.”
“Yeah, well I live over there, you see that place right across from the post office?”
“Got it. Great place,” Barry says, not sure of where this conversation’s going.
“You guys smoke weed?”
“Uh...” We look at each other, and decide that “Once in awhile,” is a good answer for something like this.
“Well, yo, check out this piece I just picked up this week.” This dude, the Iowa fan, pulls a $100 bowl out of a Lens-Crafters case and shoves it in our face. He then proceeds to show us the quarter he bought in the last couple of days which looks like really good shit.
“Yeah, I just picked up this fucking Haze from my buddy downtown. What you think?”
“Looks fucking great,” Barry says, as I jab my elbow into his side. “Uh, I mean, looks okay, whatever.”
“Yeah, you guys wanna come hit this shit?”
“Uhhh...not really, man. We gotta go finish some beers, and we got a party going at my place in a little,” Barry lies.
“You want some coke? Is that your shit? You look like those college boys. I never made it to college, but I can tell by that polo shirt...”
Obviously shit’d gotten uncomfortable, so we just said “No, thanks.”
“Yeah, that’s cool, whatever. It’s my day off tomorrow, we got a few cases over at our place. Always lookin’ to hang out. You sure? My roommate’s sister’s in town...”
“Of course. We’ll keep it in mind.”
We run back inside, chug the rest of our beers, and get out. You’re never trying to socialize with the people you meet in dive bars, especially not in the neighborhood bar. The Iowa fan is a cool guy. His fiancé is really laid back. But we don’t want to hang with them after closing time. These local bars exist in a vacuum—you’re happy to be hanging out with people while you’re sitting there knocking back a few brew dogs, but you don’t wanna extend the relationship beyond the typical barstool conversation.
But when you’re there, things are great—people will buy you a beer for no reason (if they’re wasted enough), the drinks don’t cost shit, and there’s at least one good bar fight a month. I saw two girls beat the crap out of each other over Christmas break a year ago and when the cops showed up, the brawl didn’t subside one bit until three people got arrested. Maybe someone got tazed, but...eh...who knows. And for some reason, the people who go there, especially the 30-something burnouts, usually know good music. If you want to debate whether The Last Waltz or Woodstock was a better concert film, you’ve found your crowd. No dive bar, not even in college, measures up to the neighborhood bar that’s the only remaining part of a haunted old fleabag motel.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Springsteen analyzed blue-collar existence to the core on most of his records: Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town. The first four albums were absolute masterpieces. He’s right about a few things in “Night,” except, for me, the “work all day” thing is bogus. In my case, it’s more like “get off the couch/to not do shit in the night.” You don’t meet girls at these dive bars described so eloquently by Springsteen and his other contemporaries like Southside Johnny. You step out into the night for one reason: to get housed. It’s what everyone else in the place is doing whether they’re sitting by themselves nursing that fifth scotch-rocks or yelling at their friends chugging their ninth pitcher.
You’re used to dive bars in a small college town, especially before graduation. They’re the shittiest bars you’ve ever been in, but you love them just the same. The fucking pre-yuppie bars are irritating—20 minute waits to get drinks, sorority girls all pretending they’re best friends while gossip spreads behind everyone’s back, and guys in lavender pants trying to spit game through half a dozen Jagerbombs. You can only handle that shit for ten minutes, tops.
The place my buddies and I hung out at in school was a fucking dive. It had a few pool tables, cheap beer ($5.00 Yuengling pitchers...enough said), and the overwhelming stench of smoke. Cheap wallpaper, cigarette machines, broken bathroom sinks, the works. After we’d get bored at this place, we’d hit up another bar that was a little classier, but had pretty much all the same attributes—pool tables, locals drinking well bourbon, everyone watching a baseball game and bitching at the TV, a bartender who looked like he’d been working there for at least thirty years. We had great times even though we pre-supposed we’d be leaving the whole dive bar scene behind after graduation. I didn’t.
If you think eventually you’ll be living in New York going to amazing cigar bars, well, you’re kind of out of luck. Some kids got there. I even do every couple of months when I visit my buddies there. But, like many kids looking for jobs in a bad economy, I moved back home, took my seat on the couch, and haven’t done a lot of moving since.
Living in the suburbs isn’t all bad, except for the fact that you’ve gotta start frequenting all the same dive bars you used to try to sneak into in high school and the ones you went to when you were home on breaks in college. The dives at school were great because you knew all the bouncers, bartenders, and girls. But the bars at home aren’t like that since you’ve essentially been on a four-year hiatus. In the ‘burbs, you’re faced with two choices: the expensive bars your parents go to for after-dinner drinks (and the ones you stop by with your elitist friend who goes to Yale) or the shitty bars you always end up at after two hours of debating what you’ll do on a Friday night.
Everyone who’s had to go back to their parents’ basements has had to revisit those bars, some for longer than others. I’ve found about four or five bars in my area that I absolutely adore, though. And whenever we end up arguing about going out at night, we always narrow the list to these same places, even if your one friend suggests that for “a change of pace” you trek twenty miles away to hit that bar with $6.00 beers and shot girls that are “totally hot.” Or that club with a bunch of gel-heads who think bottle service makes them part of some elite group. Fuck that shit, man. I love dive bars. Going to clubs, especially back in my neck of the woods, is enough to induce dry heaves.
From what I’ve gathered from being at home unemployed, and from my buddies who are in similar suburban living situations dealing with the same terrible economy, we’ve found that there are a few types of crap bars. Though you’ll get my unique “stories” here, these are the kinds of places you’ll come across while you’re searching for meaningful existence. You’re not living the dream. And hell, you might even end up working at one of these joints while you try to get your shit together. Here we go:
1. The Neighborhood Bar
My neighborhood bar is one of my favorites in the area. Why? I can drink as much as I want and still make it back to my place and end up safely in bed without any thoughts of getting a DUI.* In fact, it’s usually the last stop after a night of drinking before we end up in my buddy’s garage smoking hookah and having a couple of Elijah Craig’s on the rocks.
There’s a great assortment of people at the neighborhood bar, but it doesn’t cater to one specific kind of person. No Guidos. No Hipsters. No hippies. Just real Topeka people. It’s a bar that people aren’t afraid to go into by themselves because they know they’ll always find someone there to shoot the shit with. If you go every Saturday, you’ll always see the same people. It’s like Cheers with actual personality. One dude even looks like a clone of Norm Peterson.
At this bar, a “Hotel” that probably hasn’t given weary travelers comfort since like 1878, there are all sorts of strange rangers. Last week, I ran into the guy who used to be my school bus driver when I was in 10th grade. The week before that, my neighbor, a mother of two, was hitting on some black dude...until I came in the door. She was supremely glad to see me for some reason, even though the last time I talked to her (two months earlier), she was walking her dog and bitching about “snow in November.”
Every time I end up in that place, I also run into the two gay guys who sit at the end of the bar, cooing to each other and, for some reason, flirting with all of the attractive women. The girls all flock to them—they’re much better company than half of the drunk guys there who come in with beat-up jeans and t-shirts looking like they just got off a double-shift at the steel mill. Those gay guys are always better dressed than everyone—nice overcoats, button-up vests, $150 shirts, and perfectly tailored gray dress slacks or Diesel jeans. The kicker: they’re the only ones in the place allowed to dress like this. When I rolled in there to meet friends after a nice family dinner, sporting a J. Crew sweater and khakis, I got all kinds of strange looks, especially from the bouncer rocking a hoodie and cargo shorts two days after Thanksgiving.
I always end up getting to this Hotel when my buddy Barry is home for winter break. We get down there about three nights a week with a random assortment of friends. While I make it there at least once every couple of weeks when he isn’t around, I end up there bullshitting with the locals all the time when he comes back—if he calls me at midnight on a Tuesday looking to drink, I never say no. Barry’s a smoker, so if I join him outside for a butt once in awhile, we meet some interesting people. The same guys I always see there talk about random shit: football, punk bands, girls, blowjobs, what have you. And always ridiculously loudly. We ran into one guy, trying clumsily to light a Marlboro Red through a liquor-induced fog and talk simultaneously:
“Yo, you guys see the Iowa game today?” the dude asks us.
“Uhhh...no, but their defense looks pretty good this year,” Barry jokes amicably. He doesn’t know shit.
“Fucking right it does.”
“Yeah, so what’s going on man?” we’ll ask in unison.
“Nothin’, what about you guys?”
“Just havin’ a quick smoke. Reflectin’.”
“Yeah, well I live over there, you see that place right across from the post office?”
“Got it. Great place,” Barry says, not sure of where this conversation’s going.
“You guys smoke weed?”
“Uh...” We look at each other, and decide that “Once in awhile,” is a good answer for something like this.
“Well, yo, check out this piece I just picked up this week.” This dude, the Iowa fan, pulls a $100 bowl out of a Lens-Crafters case and shoves it in our face. He then proceeds to show us the quarter he bought in the last couple of days which looks like really good shit.
“Yeah, I just picked up this fucking Haze from my buddy downtown. What you think?”
“Looks fucking great,” Barry says, as I jab my elbow into his side. “Uh, I mean, looks okay, whatever.”
“Yeah, you guys wanna come hit this shit?”
“Uhhh...not really, man. We gotta go finish some beers, and we got a party going at my place in a little,” Barry lies.
“You want some coke? Is that your shit? You look like those college boys. I never made it to college, but I can tell by that polo shirt...”
Obviously shit’d gotten uncomfortable, so we just said “No, thanks.”
“Yeah, that’s cool, whatever. It’s my day off tomorrow, we got a few cases over at our place. Always lookin’ to hang out. You sure? My roommate’s sister’s in town...”
“Of course. We’ll keep it in mind.”
We run back inside, chug the rest of our beers, and get out. You’re never trying to socialize with the people you meet in dive bars, especially not in the neighborhood bar. The Iowa fan is a cool guy. His fiancé is really laid back. But we don’t want to hang with them after closing time. These local bars exist in a vacuum—you’re happy to be hanging out with people while you’re sitting there knocking back a few brew dogs, but you don’t wanna extend the relationship beyond the typical barstool conversation.
But when you’re there, things are great—people will buy you a beer for no reason (if they’re wasted enough), the drinks don’t cost shit, and there’s at least one good bar fight a month. I saw two girls beat the crap out of each other over Christmas break a year ago and when the cops showed up, the brawl didn’t subside one bit until three people got arrested. Maybe someone got tazed, but...eh...who knows. And for some reason, the people who go there, especially the 30-something burnouts, usually know good music. If you want to debate whether The Last Waltz or Woodstock was a better concert film, you’ve found your crowd. No dive bar, not even in college, measures up to the neighborhood bar that’s the only remaining part of a haunted old fleabag motel.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
*This is sort of a lie. My dad knows a guy who left my neighborhood bar about 16 beers deep, got behind the wheel, and thought he was “just fine.” An hour later, he got pulled over three towns over for driving without his headlights on. He was out-of-his-mind plastered. The kicker: he lives less than a half a mile from the bar. Instead of turning right out of the parking lot, he turned left. It’s given me a new perspective.
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