L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

12 Signs You’re at a Dive

September 11, 2008 on 6:38 pm | In General Musing |

I was pretty sure it was a dive. But it’s been so long since my dive years and suburbia creeps into ones cracks and crevices so stealthily you don’t even notice until one night you find yourself in a dive bar saying stupid things you’d never say if you were really still dive cool. But more about that in a bit.

I contacted my friend Squid, who knows dives and he gave me an excellent check list. I recommend you print it out and carry it with you if it’s been more than five years since your last bar crawl:

1. Beer. Lots of it. And not microbrew, neither.
2. Harleys. Lots of them.
3. An excess of gaudy neon, preferably for brands of beer that are no longer available.
4. Those strings of triangular flags hung up around the top of the walls for a sporting event from at least 3 years ago.
5. Either no door or a door that won’t latch on the bathroom stall, so ya gotta hold the door closed with one leg while ya go.
6. The toilet seat does not fit the toilet it’s bolted to.
7. The owner of the bar is also in some sort of service business, such as plumbing, HVAC repair, or metal fabrication.
8. There’s a stuffed animal head of some kind on a wall in the bar, preferably with a baseball/cowboy hat on and sunglasses. Extra dive-ness if there’s a Jackalope head above the bar.
9. The jukebox contains Georgia Satellites, Bob Segar, Lynnard Skynnard, Molly Hatchet, Allman Brothers, Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr., or Nazareth.
10. People fight over mat drinks.*
11. There’s a pay phone.
12. Happy Hour starts at 9 A.M.

So, yeah, it was a dive. And even though I was trying to be cool and all, I couldn’t stop the burbs from slipping out. The barmaid comes over to our bit of peeling Formica and asks what we want to drink. My first mistake: I shoulda ordered beer. But I wanted wine. Second mistake? Opening my mouth:

“Do you have a house red?”

She looked at me blankly for about a week before the light finally flickered on, “Oh, you mean wine?”

I nodded.

She grabbed a menu and peered at it, mouthing the words as she read. Then she found it.

“We have a car-bo-nay.”

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll have that.”

*Mat drink: An alcoholic beverage consisting of everything that slopped onto the bartender’s mat poured into a glass at the end of the night.

What would you add to the dive check list?

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