Dive Bar
I’m standing at the bar in the South End String Band’s latest hangout after the last couple of dive bars closed. If you want to know why they closed, consider I’ve been here five minutes already, enough to write this much this far. The bartender watched me walk in, the fry cook apparently doesn’t serve liquor to people with a hat so here I stand, still scribbling in my notebook.
Ah … here comes my bartender now to take my drink order.
Oops, no, she’s going to serve the guy who followed me in three minutes after I came in, a regular, surely that justifies leaving the occasional customer to stand another few minutes while they catch up on gossip. There are four of us total in this shotgun alley of a bar. Trust me, only one of us ever leaves a tip. Oops, make that none of us today….
This particular tavern has always been a rough joint. Bikers back in the day, crack users next, meth heads for a time, now just down and outers idling away their afternoons, their evenings, their lives. If you are an aficionado of such places, a connoisseur of the hard drinking, chainsmoking denizens of these inns that the Liquor Board keeps on its permanent Watch List, you can’t really get upset with miserable service when the bartender cops an attitude. After all, the whole place comes with attitude and isn’t that why you come in the first place? You want brass and ferns, muted conversations, white wine in a stemmed glass, the hushed tones of incessant cellphones (‘Excuse me, I have to take this.’) and bartenders who enquire occasionally if you’d care for a refill or a ‘freshening’, you definitely leave town.
There’s some kind of ruckus among the three regulars down the bar but it ends as quickly as it ignited, too early for more than verbal violence anyway. My bandmates eventually arrive and after a short wait Charlene takes their orders. My glass sits empty, but just as she wheels suddenly I try to signal for another beer since she didn’t connect the empty glass with a possible refill. She strides away without turning. My kind of place, I realize, and sure, I’ll leave a tip.
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