Opinion
Death of the dive bar
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Also by Badger Herald Editorial Board:
- The Invisible Man Award: Wyndham Manning (May 7, 2009)
- The People's Choice Award: Jacqueline Hitchon et. al (May 7, 2009)
- The Lifetime Achievement Award: ASM (May 7, 2009)
- Honest representation (May 5, 2009)
- Junger for ASM Chair (May 5, 2009)
Sharing tools:
E-mail this article:
The Plaza. The Pub. The Grid Iron. The Red Shed. The Silver Dollar.
Everyone has a favorite dive bar: a place he or she meets up with long-lost friends, has spiraling, increasingly irrational chats over endless pitchers of cheap beer, throws some darts and smokes some cigarettes …
Umm … wait. Strike that.
How’s this sound instead? “Everyone has a favorite dive bar: a place where he or she drags friends, has jumpy conversations — constantly interrupted by cigarette breaks, forced to choose between an increasingly stale beer and an increasingly mind-numbing craving — throws some darts and tries to ignore the disgusting stench his or her bar has taken on (a unique mixture of liquor-drenched floors, vomit, sweat and urine) since the smoking ban became law.
Get used to it because, soon enough, the Madison dive bar — a venerable Wisconsin tradition — begins the process of going the way of the cigarette.
In New York and Los Angeles (where, to be fair, it’s not clear that dive bars ever really existed), this trend has played out exactly as we fear it will next play out in Madison. Business at large bars rolls steadily on, even thrives (fear not, frat row: the KK, Johnny O’s and Madison Avenue will trudge on; flip night at Brat’s isn’t going anywhere), while smaller bars are hit head-on by the puritanical ploy.
Dive bars reap their customer base by allowing patrons to feel comfortable. Plain and simple, most of the regulars at Madison’s finest dives smoke. And most have made their chosen bars second homes: non-judgmental havens from an otherwise restrictive world.
Smoking isn’t just a part of the dive bar experience; it is the glue that holds that experience together.
So hit up your favorite dive bar as much as possible in the next few months. Load the jukebox with all the GNR you can afford. Wrap up all the lingering conversations you’ve started with the leathery old man who sits on his bar stool as proudly as a king on a throne. And play your last games on the Point-stained pool table.
Because when July 1 hits, your favorite dive bar’s death throes begin.
8 Comments | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Herald Blogs
The Beat Goes On
Muckrakers
President’s Visit Marked a Speech to One of the Last Groups Not Critical of Him
Extra Points
Top Classified Ads (view all)
HOUSES FOR Fall 2010. All houses are on W Dayton or N Bassett. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 bedrooms. All have parking. madisoncampusrentals.com
You guys totally suck for leaving the 'Dise and the 'Bou out of this.
Save the Silver Dollar! Stop the Ban!
I love all of those dive bars and I never once had the desire to smoke in there. I go there because they have cheap booze and better tunes. Usually your editorial board is pretty logical, but I have absolutely no idea where this one is coming from. As long as they keep serving Plaza burgers and have bubble hockey I'm there.
I agree with the above poster. I like going to dive bars and I don't smoke. And most of my friends who go to the dive bars with me don't smoke. I don't go to dive bars because it smells like smoke. Just think about how nice it will be when you get home from a night out and your whole body doesn't reek like a pack of cigarettes, and you don't feel like you smoked a pack of cigarettes when you didn't even touch one (being hung-over is bad enough without having to deal with this too). I'm counting the days until the ban goes into effect and I know I'm not alone.
New York has plenty of dive bars! Maybe your television and movie influenced vision of these places trained you to beleive these cities are playgrounds for the rich and famous when in fact they are home to millions of working class people that, much to your suprise, like to hang out at their local dive bar just as much as a Plaza regular. And guess what, they are still there. A classic dive bar is bigger than a cigarette, and it will take more than a 3 inch stick of tobacco to end the reign of classic joints.
Think of all the money smokers put into the pockets of lawyers, politicians and advertisers (guessing 80-90% of every dollar spent).
Now doesn't that just make you want to quit?
Not smelling like an ashtray is just gravy.
Oh, there is that better health and living longer thing going on too, if that matters to you.
Over the next 10 to 20 years or so one of two things will happen.
One, smoking in bars will go the way of smoking in restaurants. Either with special sections or there being no smoking whatsoever.
Two, there will be shown to be no real public health benefit, thus removing the original impetus for the enactment. Bars in cities, particularly in white collar areas where young people are a large portion of the patrons, will be fine. Bars in rural areas, who make a large portion of their money off blue collar workers coming in for a few cigarettes and a couple beers, are and will continue to lose business. A lot of these guys are going home where they can smoke instead.
Actually, a combination of the two would not surprise me. At some point the government is going to step out of this issue (I'd bet when the health evidence comes out in about a decade or 2 and shows no discernable improvement) and it will work much the way that smoking in restaurants works now. In middle class and up white collar areas smokers will either have separate sections or not be allowed to smoke at all, and in blue collar areas bars will, generally, be smoking facilities.
I should actually add an appendix to my last statement. The larger government units, as in the states, will get out of it. The smaller units, as in cities, counties, etc. will decide based on their populace.