After a hot Texas day, I was in the White Elephant Saloon at the historic Stockyards area of Fort Worth. I spent a cozy evening playing tabletop shuffleboard without a clue about the actual rules. I had a long conversation with someone about whether the board was covered in sawdust or salt (unresolved). Strictly speaking, the White Elephant is a honky-tonk, renowned for its country music acts and for being near the site of a legendary 1887 gunfight. But in the glow of its neon signs, in a calming cloud of cigarette smoke, I whiled away time in the kind of tranquility that can only be found in a great dive bar.
What makes a bar a dive bar is a matter of taste and sometimes, yes, a matter of orthodontics. A great dive is a place where the possibility of a gunfight exists (the White Elephant insists upon unloaded firearms), but mostly it should offer a quiet escape. Simple pleasures and a straight-shooting lack of pretension: bottled beers, a jukebox (at least one Elvis CD) and a TV above the bar, with the sound up when a decent game is on. These kinds of places may seem like they’re everywhere, but quality dives are a dying breed and are among the first victims of gentrification. Now, it’s easier to know a dive bar for what it is not: raspberry-flavoured lager, say, or a tapas menu.
The Old Town Ale House in Chicago, a favourite of mine, has a jukebox that only contains jazz and blues. The place is crammed with bric-a-brac, giving it the air of a naughty tool shed: old wood, a bust of a gorilla’s head, a Family Guy pinball machine and oversize ashtrays.
You may come to a dive bar for the three-buck Bud, but you stay for the idiotic conversation. Just recently at the Tam, a charming Boston boozerie, I wasted a considerable amount of time exploring the following question: “Could Superman, if he wanted to, write a great novel? Is Superman actually more talented than Hemingway?” Hemingway – he of the “clean, well-lighted place” – would be shocked at how many taverns today are so conversation-unfriendly and so insistent on loud club music – even when the bar’s empty.
Places where a bowl of peanuts is amuse-bouche enough are getting harder to find. But when you arrive at a place like Friendly Lounge in Philadelphia or the Frolic Room in L.A. or even Sly’s Midtown Saloon in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, you’ll know you won’t be getting valet service, but you’ll also know you won’t be driving anywhere anyway.
Praising the Bar
MCGLINCHEY’S BAR & GRILL
At this 1920-style Philadelphia saloon, a big square bar pens in the barkeep. McGlinchey’s is smoky and dark and makes quality sandwiches for starving artists and dive aficionados alike.
259 South 15th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215-735-1259
TOOTSIES ORCHID LOUNGE
This small Nashville honky-tonk has been graced by innumerable big acts before they made it – Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, among others – as well as by frequent singalongs.
422 Broadway Nashville, TN, 615-726-0463, tootsies.net
LI PO COCKTAIL LOUNGE
Legend has it that San Francisco’s Li Po started out as an opium den, but this red Naugahyde tribute to Buddha and Anheuser Busch needs no legend to affirm that it is a great American dive.
916 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 415-982-0072
Cue the jukebox at some of our favourite dive bars in the United States.
Friendly Lounge 8th St. at Washington Ave., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 215-627-9798
Frolic Room 6245 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, California, 323-462-5890
Old Town Ale House 219 W. North Ave., Chicago, Illinois, 312-944-7020
Sly’s Midtown Saloon 508 N. 8th St., Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 920-452-8511
The Tam 222 Tremont St., Boston, Massachusetts
The White Elephant Saloon 106 E. Exchange Ave., Fort Worth, Texas, 817-624-8273, whiteelephantsaloon.com
