Your Lyft drops you off at the front, the concrete to the entrance is icee like a hockey game slush puppy.
A look of concern is on your drivers eyes as you thank him. He doesn’t say anything because he’s afraid to scold someone so pretty, but through his eyes you see the internal terror he has for what your night could be.
A smirk creeps into the corner of your mouth, this is why you go to the dive bar. It makes you look and feel like a bad ass.
I fully believe every person should have a local dive bar that theirs. There’s something special about claiming an ugly building, painted in neon light as your own. I go to the dive bar when I’m overwhelmed with the rat race of life. For me it’s centering to be in a shady place surrounded by people who live for each day, not the next.
What I’ve found is that the crowd at dive bars have stories that put your favorite novels to shame. Lives of unimaginable hardship, tales of winning lotto tickets that turn into 4 week benders in Vegas and stories of firing big guns at targets miles away.
These are the characters you get to meet and they can be exactly the mint you want use to get the dirty taste from yesterday’s mimosa brunch out of your mouth.
My Local dive bar is called Cricket’s and it’s where I go to drink a cheap beer and talk about things that don’t matter. My night normally starts with a pitcher PBR and some bullshit with the boys.
There’s a certain person I go with to my dive. They have to be absent of judgement, thick skinned and able to talk to anyone.
After the pitcher has a good dent in it I head to the pool table and slide my two quarters into the crease under the side of the bumper. The pool table is the sun of the bar, everything revolves around it.
Around the forest green felt is where you get to meet the blokes with the face tats. Normally they start out by harassing you, just give it back. That’s what they want. And once you know them, you know them. They are your dive bar friends.
Inside a dive bar the judgement is harsh, but that’s the point. Judge back. You don’t need to have your happy face that’s smiling, let the bitch out. A dive bar is the place where you can abstain from your positive emotions and embrace your disgust.
The life we live sometimes, the fakeness we dress up as our own, it can be tiresome. And my dive bar is my place where I go to remind myself that I’m still an animal, still just a human being.