slummy bars

i guess my fondness for dive bars, in large part, is thanks to my mother's proclivities.

during college, when i would go back home on holiday, there were usually one or two nights where we'd end up at one or more of Galveston's seedier establishments. and now that i'm older, i still take her out to the places that remain, and you don't have to twist her arm either.

in general, i don't think you could say that my mom is really comfortable around fancy places, or fancy people. she would never say this, but i think the pretension is not all that appealing, and the self-imposed stress of trying to behave properly, whatever that means, is just too much of a hassle.

at a dive bar, no one really cares how you dress, or really, how you behave, in terms of proper behavior, manners, that kind of thing. having said that, because of the level of comfort established in a dive, there is a corresponding closeness, of humanity, in patron behavior. people drink in dive bars, and some drink for good reasons. you get a sense that it's okay to be a little depressed, or a lot happy, that people will be okay with that. people will support you, commiserate or laugh out loud if you tell a funny joke. and if someone is getting to be a mean drunk, which happens, there is a kind of commaraderie, where others will tell the guy to take a seat and relax. bad behavior in a dive is the norm, but hostile behavior is usually not tolerated.

the idea of slumming, of hitting the dives, is appealing to many. you see this a lot. there's a place that hipsters in Denver call the "Bar" bar, because it has a big neon sign out front, BAR. the actual name is the carioca cafe. it's the kind of place with a happy hour that starts at 7am, and with a bartender that only has one arm. it's close to the homeless shelters and the day labor centers, so the clientelle is typically pretty interesting, and local to the area. but at nights, especially on weekends, you can see a change in the atmosphere, when the hipsters arrive. the best wear trashed out clothes on these excursions, to fit in. others are more blatently tourist. sometimes, with some dives, the hipsters take over, and the locals concede the effort and disappear into a less exotic watering hole. but generally, the dive tends to be a resilliant institution. it can tolerate the tourist, and oftentimes converts the tourist into a regular.

i guess there's a part of me that will always feel at home in certain kinds of places, and always a little estranged in others. thanks ma.