{"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