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Try the large Midwestern cities. States like Wisconsin have more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country. You'll also find plenty of dive bars, even here in Chicago. There might not be as many as there once were, but the Midwest's bar culture means that there's still tons of them. Even the super gentrified non-hipster neighborhoods in Chicago still have their dives.
Try the large Midwestern cities. States like Wisconsin have more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country. You'll also find plenty of dive bars, even here in Chicago. There might not be as many as there once were, but the Midwest's bar culture means that there's still tons of them. Even the super gentrified non-hipster neighborhoods in Chicago still have their dives.
Yeah, I know what you're saying. In Seattle it used to be a bit more like that but like I said now it seems every week a neighborhood dive is closing, some of which have been institutions in the city for a long time.
Yeah, I know what you're saying. In Seattle it used to be a bit more like that but like I said now it seems every week a neighborhood dive is closing, some of which have been institutions in the city for a long time.
Many of the people I saw in Seattle didn't look like dive bar kinda people.
Many of the people I saw in Seattle didn't look like dive bar kinda people.
It depends on where you were - it's like spending time in Midtown Manhattan during the day and saying you didn't see many dive bar kinda people so you wouldn't expect there to be dive bars in NYC.
Seattle's roots are as a Boeing and Maritime Town (up until the 1980s the vast majority of workers either worked for Boeing or in the maritime industry.) As you'd expect from a blue collar working force, Seattle and the surrounding area had a pretty entrenched dive bar culture, with dive bars prolific everywhere. Even as Microsoft and Amazon have reshaped the work force, the dive bar culture endured, and there's still enough of a blue collar workforce and enough people who are interested to sustain dive bars (the nearby cities of Tacoma and Everett, still much more blue collar, have a ton of dive bars that aren't going anywhere - yet).
The point is demand is not the problem at all. Even Amazon yuppies like having old neighborhood haunts to visit. And there's plenty of new places opening aiming for the dive bar aesthetic despite catering primarily to hipsters and yuppies. A lot of the newer places sometimes keep the name of the dive that used to exist there, but they double the prices, add fancy food and cocktails, give it a complete shiny makeover, and then go for some half-assed dive bar aesthetic despite the fact that there's nothing divey about it. The worst example I've ever seen of this anywhere is the Canterbury Ale House in Seattle on Capitol Hill.
The problem is Seattle basically has the hottest real estate market in the country right now and all building owners apparently have their price. Seattle is also a city (the city government, I mean) not that interested in preserving historic institutions or older building (unless they meet a very high "historic" threshold) Dive bars tend to be in older, more run down buildings that are prime for being bought up and redeveloped. There is no law or clause to protect these establishments (unlike SF, for example, which does have one) so they're going down like flies, and it sucks.
Seattle is a city of many distinct neighborhoods and areas, and the dive bars represented those cultures as well as any other institution. It's a bummer that they are one of the biggest business casualties of the insane real estate market right now. (With all the people who have been forced out of the city being an even bigger issue, of course)
Yeah, I know what you're saying. In Seattle it used to be a bit more like that but like I said now it seems every week a neighborhood dive is closing, some of which have been institutions in the city for a long time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by annie_himself
Many of the people I saw in Seattle didn't look like dive bar kinda people.
Chicago still has your stereotypical idea of a dive with customers that are all predominantly neighborhood locals, but the ones that survived in more upscale neighborhoods managed to do so while competing with larger and nicer bars. My guess would be that things like their atmosphere, general prices and specials, and daily events like trivia helped to keep them going.
The dives in Chicago's more upscale neighborhoods might have gone the way of Seattle's dives though were it not for Chicago being such a bar city.
Chicago still has your stereotypical idea of a dive with customers that are all predominantly neighborhood locals, but the ones that survived in more upscale neighborhoods managed to do so while competing with larger and nicer bars. My guess would be that things like their atmosphere, general prices and specials, and daily events like trivia helped to keep them going.
The dives in Chicago's more upscale neighborhoods might have gone the way of Seattle's dives though were it not for Chicago being such a bar city.
Exactly - the same is actually true in Seattle. These places aren't closing because they don't have enough business or aren't popular enough - if anything, the opposite is true. They're closing because the building owners can't resist the insane offers they're getting from developers to buy their parcel of land. Seattle has more cranes that any other city in the country right now and the sheer volume of residential units being added is mind boggling.
The block on 2nd between Bell and Blanchard housing many bars (including 2-3 dive bars) got saved temporarily, at least, only because one of the buildings on the block was able to get historic status. That rarely happens, though. It's the exception and represents a rare victory in an otherwise overwhelmingly losing battle:
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