{"id":1073,"date":"2015-03-06T01:44:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T08:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2015-03-06T01:44:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T08:44:21","slug":"are-dive-bars-going-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/are-dive-bars-going-extinct\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Dive Bars Going Extinct?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article from earlier today (yesterday? what day is this?) on the San Francisco Examiner’s website<\/a> caught my attention since it echoed something that I think we have all felt: hoity-toity cocktail bars seem to be killing off good ol’ American dives. Just as the craft beer revolution has gained more and more market share of beer sales<\/a> and produced more and more insufferable pedants explaining “IBUs” and “dry hopping” when no one asked, there seems to have been a recent trend toward posh cocktail joints. The word “mixology” is one that bears a particularly offensive kind of pseudo-sophistry, and its rise into common parlance goes hand-in-hand with the recent shift in American drinking culture. I blame the youth. I really do. (And if you haven’t read it, FKR gives us a compelling and damn accurate perspective on mixology here<\/a>. And if you had to click that link, get a damn MDM subscription <\/a>already, you skinflint. You have much to learn and we’re here to teach you.)<\/p>\n

However, the SFE article linked above does hit a little close to home. Personally,\u00a0shortly after I left Pittsburgh a few years back, my local, Fanattics (the misspelling was intentional due to legal issues), was bought out and replaced by a gastro-pub<\/a>\u00a0only a few short months after my departure. One cannot help but wonder if they\u00a0had to\u00a0close without my patronage, but it was just another example of a small, locals-only kind of joint that faded into obscurity only to be replaced by something that appeals to that certain kind of cretin that orders fair-trade mustache wax from ironically named Etsy accounts.<\/p>\n

We love our local dives with a depth and attachment that, should we happen to have children, they will never know. Hell, I spent enough time at my Pittsburgh local that I was asked to write the damn web copy, and then they closed. Its closure\u00a0felt personal. It hurt. And it’s happening everywhere, it seems.<\/p>\n

And this is where this editorial is going, I think (it’s been a long, unforgiving bottle of Weller). Although it’s damn easy to identify a place as a gastro-pub or a prohibition-era throwback cocktail bar or a horse-themed beer bong emporium, the definition of a “dive bar” remains in flux. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia is useless\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0in resolving it. Is it just a neighborhood bar? How sticky does everything in it have to be? Is just one on-premises stabbing enough, or does there have to be a history of them? Seriously, I can’t answer these questions, so please help me out in the comments.<\/p>\n

But wait! THIS is where this editorial is going, I promise. Bars are changing, and we’ve all seen it. There’s a slow, expensive wind blowing into our towns and ousting the tiny joints that have quietly and dutifully taken so many of our finest dollars while they graced us with an unassuming,\u00a0nonjudgmental place to shuffle off the baggage that saddles us during the day\u00a0so that we may\u00a0take a quick trip to the land of lubricious ambitions.<\/p>\n

Where once we had a place to grab a pint for a buck, they’ve swooped in and offered us a cocktail made from a “hand-selected variety of locally sourced organic ingredients crafted into a unique alco-culinary experience” that runs about the cost of five 40s of Old E. It feels like we are losing ground to both early 20-somethings who ride fixed gear bikes on principle as well as MBA flunkies-turned-day-traders. The thought alone should make you shudder.<\/p>\n

But the Brutal Hammer doesn’t want to resort to scare mongering–we speak many fine truths. And I feel like some field reporting is necessary. If you’ve read this far, you’re committed enough to give your perspective on this matter. I hereby deputize you all honorary Hammers (don’t get cocky), and you should let us know what’s happening on your end. Are dive bars, however you define them, disappearing near you? For that matter, how do you define a “dive bar?” And how do we preserve these delicate, beautiful creatures?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article from earlier today (yesterday? what day is this?) on the San Francisco Examiner’s website caught my attention since it echoed something that I think we have all felt: hoity-toity cocktail bars seem to be killing off good ol’ American dives. Just as the craft beer revolution has gained more and more market share […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":1081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[74,263,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}