Manhattan’s East Village, which I am lucky enough to call home, boasts the highest density of bars in the city, if not the world. There are lounge bars, hookah bars, cigar bars, sports bars, karaoke bars, dance bars, tapas bars, college bars, blues bars, photo booth bars, gay bars, wine bars and even a secret bar you have to enter by passing through a telephone booth behind a hot dog joint.

But faced with so many options regarding whether you’re going to have a watermelon flavored hookah or a naked gyrating man with your pint of Bud Light, sometimes its a relief to just settle down by a graffiti covered window at a good old neighbourhood dive bar.

Dive bars seemingly comprise about half the the drinking establishments in the avenues between 3rd and D. Though even dives themselves boast an exhaustive list of sub-categories (there are old-man dives, hipster dives, punk dives and sports dives to name a few), they all have a few things in common besides unhygienic restrooms – They’re unpretentious, cheap, and there’s bound to be someone drunker than you are.

But there’s more to the phenomenon than just price point: Besides the fact that they’re cheap, the popularity of dive bars is also due to the fact that excess is no longer cool. It’s not cool to pay more than $15 for a T shirt produced in a sweatshop when you could buy one at a thrift store; it’s not cool to use two paper grocery bags for a loaf of bread and some chips (I’m looking at you Trader Joe’s), and it’s not cool to hang by the bar drinking cosmos when you could buy a pitcher of Bud and chill with your friends.

But why, you ask, would anybody want to drink from a glass which still displays the remnants of a hooker’s lipstick? And do so within a five meter radius of the same crackhead that was napping on Bowery Street 30 minutes prior? Despite the less than savory occupants of many dive bars, they are there with one intention: To drink. In the four years that I’ve been of a legal drinking age (it’s 18 in New Zealand), I’ve visited enough watering holes to establish that the crackhead is actually less likely to bother me and my friends than the college dude leaning on the bar drinking a Corona in a classier establishment. It’s not rocket science: One’s there for the booze, the other for the hot chicks.

However, this is only a general rule. “Dive” is simply the parent class, below which come a variety of sub-categories of dive, and each of those has their own guidelines. It follows that, upon entering one, it’s helpful to first establish which sub-category of dive it actually is. Useful pointers include the age demographic of its occupants, the brands of liquor stocked behind the counter, the general appearance of the barman or barmaid, and the choice of activities chosen to fill the extra space. If their occupants are all grey-haired males drinking “Black Label” served by a guy who could easily be a patron in a bar equipped with a sole pokie machine, you’re in an old man dive. If it’s a guy with square glasses serving Stella and Blue Moon next to a jukebox playing a genre of music that didn’t even exist when jukeboxes were invented, you’re in a hipster dive.

Ascertaining which sub-category of dive you are in aids in making safe choices. Choice of drink is probably the first one you’re going to be making: These places just don’t have the same appeal when you’re sober. And while most dives only offer a small selection of beer and a slightly larger selection of liquor (not liqueur), I still have some rough guidelines which I consider before handing over my change. Beer is always a safe option. It’s what the majority of the crowd is drinking, it’s always cheep, and there’s really no way the bartender can screw it up. However, if the dive is particularly divey, it’s a good idea to order bottled beer or a can of PBR, unless you really do want to replace your own lipstick with somebody else’s. If the place looks like it’s clean enough to make you okay with sucking on the ice from the ice bucket, then mixed drinks are also okay, as long as you don’t order anything where not all the contents are in the name of the drink.

But in the end, it’s more about what a dive bar doesn’t have than what it does. Despite the dangerously low-slung Christmas lights and tacky neon beer advertisements, it’s about simplicity and escape in a world where even ordering a salad precipitates a string of ensuing questions. It’s easier to see your reflection in a small puddle of liquid on a grimy counter top than it is in the busy window of Macy’s Herald Square. Just don’t lean in too close – It might not be Budweiser you’re looking in to.

Written by: Hannah Ongley

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 8:27 am and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.