I Have No Idea What A Dive Bar Is

Welcome back! It’s been crazy cold here in Chicago this week and I am not a fan. We need to drain lake Michigan and kill the elder gods who dwell there, restoring balance and order to this chaos city. This is my first Midwest winter and I am not handling it well. I saw people dig out their cars and then put cones or lawn chairs in the spot to mark their territory and I found that so bizarre. It’s street parking, you can’t claim your spot! This is Joe Biden’s America! These spots belong to the PEOPLE! Then I started digging out my car and, well I get it now. If you shovel snow for a couple hours, you should be allowed to put up a fence with barbed wire and a locking gate around your spot. I’m a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” republican now, sitting out in my spot with a shotgun across my lap protecting what’s rightfully mine. With my entire worldview completely shattered because I had to do physical labor exactly once in my life, I now keep a beach chair in the trunk of my car to stick in my spot whenever I leave. It still feels wrong and selfish, but I also work nights and not having to worry about finding a spot after 9pm cools that fire pretty quick. Everyone is principled right up until they aren’t.

PICTURES

I took these pictures last Monday in the snow and have not stopped daydreaming about getting some oysters and several beers before a Cubs game since. Also, getting out ahead of this scandal now: I know this place isn’t a dive. It’s an oyster bar next to a large market baseball stadium - it’s a nice place. I am probably the worst person to be running a dive bar account (brand? Lifestyle blog? I am still not sure what this is exactly. Do they still give TV shows to sort of hack twitter accounts or was that just that one time?) because I am completely uninterested in discussing what is or isn’t a dive. I love dive bars but I don’t care about your dumb rules that decide if somewhere is a dive or not. The Justice Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” defense is overused and maybe a little lazy, but still mostly applies to classifying a dive bar. The weirdest rule that gets shouted at me on Twitter a lot is that a bar “isn’t old enough to be a dive.” I do not think that age is a factor at all! The Red Derby in Washington DC is my go-to example of this. When it first opened it didn’t take credit cards and was a pretty run down spot. As time has gone by and it's become more popular, they started doing brunch, expanded their menu, took credit cards, and just generally cleaned up the place. So the age argument for dives seems to be working in the opposite direction here.

A list of rules and checklists to prove somewhere is a dive will never work anyway. You’ll always find somewhere that doesn’t quite fit and then the rules have to change or some proper shithole will not technically be a dive. No reason to tie your hands by having quantifiable standards, if even just one person thinks it’s a dive, that counts and you can put it on the board. I think really the only hard and fast rule about dives is it can’t serve drinks with one big ice cube. That’s a fancy cocktail drink thing to do. Get outta here with that shit, man.

ALTERNATIVES TO BARS DURING THE PANDEMIC

Super Bowl babyyyyyyyyy!!! The game sucked this year and everything that could possibly be said about Tom Brady has already been said so I am not going to get into it too much. My only take on Touchdown Tom is I hate every take about Touchdown Tom. I hate him and I hate everyone who hates him and I hate everyone who doesn’t hate him. The one opinion about Tom Brady that I don’t find exhausting is begrudged acceptance. He is as devastating and inevitable as Death itself. Best not to think about it too much.

***

Every year I wake up early and spend Super Bowl Sunday cooking chili, frying up buffalo wings, making dips, and building a huge spread for a watch party. This year is no different except for well, ya know, the “party” part. Half the time I end up bringing all the stuff no one ate back home with me anyway, so covid just kind of cut out the middleman.

Despite the quality of the game this year, I do still really love the Super Bowl*. One of the better American holidays by far and it’s a sort of a rare one where I don’t mind that I can’t go to bars. The Super Bowl at home is way better anyway! All the big drinking holidays tend to be bad bar days. Longer lines, bigger crowds, and the quality of drinker is typically way lower than normal. You will never catch your regular Wednesday night after work drunks puking green beer all over the bar on St. Patrick’s Day, or doing some problematic sombrero wearing on Cinco De Mayo. Super Bowl is amateur hour for both football fans and drinkers, which can be fun but it’s got to be in the right setting. Under less pandemic-y and more ideal conditions, I would like maybe somewhere in the 10-15 people range to watch the game with. Including a healthy mix of people who care about sports, people who gamble on sports, and weirdo freaks who “like the commercials.” Just enough variety to keep one topic from dominating but not too many people that you can’t hear the tv or have to sit on the ground, futon, or that weird folding chair that only gets used when you’re hosting the Super Bowl party. 

*Am I allowed to say Super Bowl? I’ve always been very unclear on the rules. Ads normally say “The Big Game” which I assume is for some sort of trademark reason but that sucks. Just call things what they’re supposed to be called!

WHAT AM I DRINKING

PBR Coffee

I’ve mentioned on Twitter before that I enjoy Will Gordon’s substack about beer Worth A Shot and think you should all read it. (Oh shit wait, this is now my alternative to going to bars. Go read that. Damn you got two of them this week, lucky you.) So I am going to avoid stepping on his toes with this section and mostly review weird drinks and stuff that isn’t just plain beer. I think the “gross novelty booze” is more my beat than actual beer anyway. And truthfully, this section is my very open attempt to con my way into some sort of branded content sellout deal. Send me weird shit, like this ranch dressing beer and give me money to lie about how good it is. The overt theme of this week is just how little principles or shame I have.

Anyway: PBR coffee. Mixing caffeine with booze is a lesson we all learned in 2011 when they had to change the 4Loko recipe to keep kids from dying but this one manages to get by the dangers of the past by being low ABV and low caffeine. I had one of these first thing in the morning and still ended up drinking just a regular cup of coffee afterward so I don't think it really works as a morning pick me up but also there’s booze in it so probably for the best.

The thing it has going in its favor however, is taste. It’s sweet and a little milky, but still tastes like coffee. I could easily kill the 4pack without thinking about it too much which I guess is a good thing? Depends on what you’re looking for when it comes to drinking, I suppose. It was the Super Bowl so I had a tailgating all day vibe going on and it worked well for that. Enough to get you started but not too much that you miss the game. I cannot possibly think of another scenario where you would ever want to drink this outside of an all day tailgate, but also all day tailgates are some of the most fun you can possibly have in this life so not too shabby there, PBR. 

Alrighty week 2 in the bag! Not totally married to the 3 sections format but it seems to be working so far. I’ll probably mix it up as time goes on but again, this is mostly just something to write to give myself a task while I look for more gainful employment or I figure out a way to make this profitable. Dudes who tweet about bars, drinking culture, and occasionally sports isn’t a completely saturated market yet, right? Gotta have at least one more perspective from an insignificant white guy in this area of discussion if you ask me.