Dive bar
A dive bar is an informal bar or pub. Such bars are sometimes referred to as "neighborhood bars," where local residents gather to drink and socialize.
Individual bars may be considered to be disreputable, sinister, or even a detriment to the community. This was especially true in earlier times:
“A plot to entrap young women for the dives of Northern Wisconsin has been discovered.”[1][2]
“The dives themselves are nuisances, per se, and that is why they have to pay such high license prices.”[3]
A 1961 dictionary defined a "dive" as "a disreputable resort for drinking or entertainment".[4]
In an article in its August 2010 issue, Playboy magazine described a dive bar as:
A church for down-and-outers and those who romanticize them, a rare place where high and low rub elbows—bums and poets, thieves and slumming celebrities. It’s a place that wears its history proudly.[5]
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary indicates that, in the United States in the 1880s, the term referred to an illegal drinking den or other place of ill repute, especially one located in a basement. However, this usage has since become obsolete.
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Popular culture [edit]
Music [edit]
- "I Love This Bar," a song performed by Toby Keith, is about a dive bar.
- The Pet Shop Boys' hit song "West End Girls" mentions "a dive bar in a West End town."
- "Papa Was A Rodeo," a song by The Magnetic Fields, asks "What are we doing in this dive bar, how can you live in a place like this?"
- "Longhaired Redneck" by David Allan Coe. "They'd never come to see me in this dive."
Film [edit]
- In the film Fight Club, the fight club was started in the basement of a dive bar.
Television [edit]
- The television show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is set in a dive bar in South Philadelphia.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ Troy Daily Times (Troy, Michigan). 7 February 1888.
- ^ Odd Wisconsin Archive, third paragraph.
- ^ Chicago Tribune. 17 September 1948. p. 8/1.
- ^ Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Co. 1961. p. 662.
- ^ Wallace, Glenn (24 July 2010). "Jasper’s makes list of top ‘dive bars’". Lompoc Record.
Further reading [edit]
- Moehringer, J.R. (2005). The Tender Bar: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0064-2.
- Dayton, Todd (2009). San Francisco's Best Dive Bars. New York: Ig Publishing. ISBN 0-9703125-8-X.
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