The Dive Bar Manifesto

With recent runs at El Rio, The 500 Club, and Tunnel Top, I would like to pose a question:

What is a dive bar?

This question will undoubtedly yield a variety of responses, but many of us will assent to the following characteristics: A dive bar is a place with cheap drinks. A dive bar is a place with a run-down appearance, generally displaying the wear and tear of years of social functionality. A dive bar has a tacky, dated aesthetic, and predominantly unhygienic restrooms. There's likely to be a juke box. A subtly offensive aroma. Maybe a pool table or a dart board, too. And with any luck, contraceptive vending machines.

Commendably, the participating bars in the SFDBO have thus far fit these descriptions.

However, I need to pose another question:

What is an SFDBO dive bar?

If you answered El Rio, The 500 Club, or Tunnel Top, please keep reading.

Whereas those drinking establishments may physically resemble a dive bar, they do not embody one spiritually. And the spirit of a true dive bar is what makes this organization great. The aforementioned bars are actually just trendy dumps. They even border on hot spots at times. Despite their physical crudeness, their social equity sadly prevents them from attaining true dive bar status. Purists might even call these types dive bar impostors (gasp). I'm not going that far, but hear this: real dive bars are actually quite lonesome, eerie and sad. True dive bars aren't popular. They aren't crowded. They rarely have people under the age of 40 in them. There is an air of hopelessness and staleness prevalent from the moment you enter. And the joy of the SFDBO, of this great cause of ours, is to expose ourselves to the reality of these downtrodden drinking holes, while simultaneously fertilizing them with the light, carefree benevolence each of us is so fortunate to possess. Making the forsaken saken again. Even for just one evening. Temporarily transforming these bars from isolated dens of hopelessness to frolicking urban oases is what I signed up for.

I'm not here to chastise any of us for past efforts...our mission statement had not been clearly defined. But moving forward, let's be honest with ourselves. The aforementioned bars are simply too to popular and too successful to be a true "dive." Everyone knows what a true dive bar is. Mr. Bing's. The Eagle Drift Inn. Ha-Ra. And I implore each and every one of us to muster the social courage and hygienic tolerance necessary to truly explore these cultural phenomena.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to seeing you at the next forlorn location.


Jesse G