Most Creepy and Disgusting Dive Bar

[kjohn]

Anyone here remember the Tiki Hut in HP.  Ultimate dive bar where the waitresaurus serve you food as the hack into it.  Frequent fights among the patrons roll into the street on Sat. night.

The Tiki was as sleazy as a bar could get. Totally gone to seed. You could always count on meeting "interesting" people there.

[hjshorter]

and the skinheads these days, they don't want to listen to me when i tell them that i was a "punk" before their mommy had her first piercing.  they just don't want to hear that at all.

Kids these days, they got no respect...

Here in DC, the rankest bar I ever frequented was the old 9:30 Club. The back bar had a vile aroma, sort of a stale beer/vomit/sweat amalgam. The club closed a few years ago, and the building has since been torn down, but I swear the smell is still there.

[hjshorter]

Good evening all.  This is my first post on this site,; came across it while surfing.

First of all, I am a professional chef in Louisiana (be kind) and this seems to be a very  knowledgable group of posters.

Can't speak for creepy, but I know the most vile odor I have ever encountered is Bourbon Street in New Oleans.  A mix of fried food, vomit, and urine is enough to turn the most hardened olfactory into a dripping, sniffing organ.  Now don't get me wrong, I love The City, but the title of the post intrigued me and I had to throwq in my 02 cents.

Heh, my husband grew up in New Orleans and says that Bourbon street is by far the vilest the morning after Mardi Gras. Just unbelievably disgusting.

[tommy]

Here in DC, the rankest bar I ever frequented was the old 9:30 Club.  The back bar had a vile aroma, sort of a stale beer/vomit/sweat amalgam.  The club closed a few years ago, and the building has since been torn down, but I swear the smell is still there.

the 9:30 club shut down years ago? the live music venue? that would be sad. very sad indeed.

[nerissa]

the 9:30 club shut down years ago?  the live music venue?  that would be sad.  very sad indeed.

9:30 is still around. They opened up a new one. Yuppified, but they bring good bands. Saw the Roots there several years ago.

[tommy]

9:30 is still around.  They opened up a new one.  Yuppified, but they bring good bands.  Saw the Roots there several years ago.

ah, duh. i missed the "old" bit in hjshorter's post.

[hjshorter]

9:30 is still around.  They opened up a new one.  Yuppified, but they bring good bands.  Saw the Roots there several years ago.

ah, duh. i missed the "old" bit in hjshorter's post.

Yeah, they have a new club, but it's sort of the Disney version of the 9:30: too clean, not much beer on the floor, no punk bands, mostly up-and-coming "alternative" stuff. No atmosphere at all.

[chefvic123]

I once walked into the back door of a grill/lunch bar at a large university. The smell was so foul, totally disqusting. The flies took up a collection and bought a screen door, for fear one of their comrades would wonder into the place.

[tommy]

Yeah, they have a new club, but it's sort of the Disney version of the 9:30: too clean, not much beer on the floor, no punk bands, mostly up-and-coming "alternative" stuff.  No atmosphere at all. 

nothing good comes out of old rock clubs selling out to "da man."

[Liza]

I remember having to peel a bass player off the ceiling at the old 9:30 club after hearing the 'mice' running around the inside of the walls of the backstage area. Shortest set of the tour.

[hjshorter]

I remember having to peel a bass player off the ceiling at the old 9:30 club after hearing the 'mice' running around the inside of the walls of the backstage area. Shortest set of the tour.

What band?

[stellabella]

There used to be an incredible bar near Little Five Points in Atlanta, GA, located on Austin Ave and aptly named the Austin Ave Buffet, know as the Buffet by those in the know. I lived across the street from it for about a year, in a mangy duplex, with a variety of roommates.

The Buffet regular clientele lived about a mile away in an area of Atlanta known as Cabbage Town--one of those early 19thC mill towns that springs up around factories [in this case the old Atl Mattress Factory], rows of narrow crappy shacks, never having been inhabited by any other family--the great-great offspring of the first mill workers still live here. I had a boyfriend who rented the upstairs apt. in one of the shanties. We woke up one night to the sound of banging doors and the gravelly twangy voice of a teenage girl across the street leaving home--again.

"It's my p****," she bellowed, "And I can do WHATEVER I want with it!"

The neighborhood's name is synonymous with early urban poverty--cabbage eaters. Hip edgy people have always taken advantage of the low rents over there; hip edgy people have always liked to drink Pabst with Cabbage Town's broken poor. I was no exception. The scene in the Buffet was always unpredictably besotted. In the late 1980s the Buffet became a regular venue for Slim Chance and the Convicts, one of Atlanta's premier urban hillbilly acts. Part of their shtick was passing the mike to the audience. The regulars sang Haggard favorites, danced, played the guitar. This was a favorite spot for Cabbage Towners celebrating birthdays; the crowd was always all-ages, and I can't recall the APD ever showing up to break things up.

One night I was there to hear the band with a guy I had dated in college. Someone was celebrating a birthday that night, and during the band's break, one of the waitresses brought out a giant sheet cake. There were several regular waitresses; some of them had obviously made a career out of opening long-necks. The woman working that night was well into her 70s, missing more than half of her front teeth, her hair lank and greasy, skinny and stringy as a piece of spaghetti.

She placed the cake in front of the birthday boy. The crowd sang. He blew out the candles. And then the waitress, whom we all assumed to be his mother, lifetd up her sweatshirt and dangled her

Well, I think I can't finish this story. But you get the idea. And this is a TRUE story. And afterwards my friend and I were forced to go elsewhere in search of a liquor drink.

[Wilfrid]

You should write a book about these bars, Stella.

[Liza]

I remember having to peel a bass player off the ceiling at the old 9:30 club after hearing the 'mice' running around the inside of the walls of the backstage area. Shortest set of the tour.

What band?

Therapy? from Belfast.

And yes, Stellabella, please write.

Edited January 27, 2003 by Liza (log)

[hjshorter]

Therapy? from Belfast.

I liked Troublegum, but haven't kept up since then.

[Liza]

Neither have I.

[hjshorter]

I had forgotten, well repressed the memory of, a place I used to frequent near the U of Maryland called the Rondezvous Inn, or the 'Vous as everyone called it. Wearing boots was a must because there was usually an inch of beer on the floor, and one could occasionally see frat guys using the space between pinball machines as a urinal.

Edited January 27, 2003 by hjshorter (log)

[pnapoli]

manny's super burrito in berkeley had only one toilet in the bathroom, so the sink often served as a surrogate john. problem was, the sink had no drainpipe.

[ideefixe]

I don't know if the Tune Inn is still around in DC, but I once saw the fry cook blow his nose into some guy's soup. I figured it was safer to just drink there, after than.

[Wilfrid]

Wearing boots was a must because there was usually an inch of beer on the floor, and one could occasionally see frat guys using the space between pinball machines as a urinal.

Ah, the good old days when a typical working man's bar would have a gutter running along the foot of the bar so one could relieve onself without pausing in the intoxication process, plus a communal towel to wipe moustaches. Of course, that would be in the last century. Nice to know some of these old traditions survive.

[g.johnson]

The first time Yvonne came down to Suffolk to stay with me I took her to a series of what I thought were great pubs, which I’d described as being much better than anything in Aberdeen. That was true but I hadn’t realized that being an effete city girl, Yvonne expected indoor toilets. The worst was The Ship in Levington which was a delightful old pub where the parlour bar was, quite literally, the landlord’s parlour, complete with family photos, sofas and antimacassars. He only let locals in there. But the toilets were in a field. The gents was a sheet of corrugated iron over a ditch. I don’t know what the ladies was like and Yvonne didn’t stay to find out.

Not a creepy dive bar, but somewhere with character.

[Elissa]

In NY: does Rudy's count as a dive bar? They have likely the world's best jukebox and if I recall correctly, which indeed I may not, authentic sawdust on the floor.

What's the 'cowboy' bar on 9th St and A? They make a good attempt at authenticity, though it does not smell *quite* as bad as Coyote Ugly, or so I am gleaning from your memorable description, W.

And there's a bar up on Amsterdam at maybe 89th that HAS NO NAME it's such a dive. When you go in, the two TVs play sports and no matter what you've had to drink, the locals have had more.

[Wilfrid]

Ah, Lissome, questions I can answer at last. If Rudy's is the place where free hot dogs glow perpetually under a cruel light, then a dive bar it is, and those dogs give it a distinctive smell all its own.

The cowboy bar would be Doc Holliday's, correct? Do you know, I've never ventured in, but it does look pretty gruesome. I noticed recently that Coyote Ugly has brushed up its facade a little. Wonder if they've bought some air freshener too?

[Joy]

In NY: does Rudy's count as a dive bar? They have likely the world's best jukebox and if I recall correctly, which indeed I may not, authentic sawdust on the floor.

Any bar that has a bartender with a few missing teeth (extra points for front teeth) is a dive bar.

Also, any bar that has afternoon old men drinkers surely constitutes dive.

One of my proudest NY moments is when I walked into Rudys, was fishing around my bag for my ID and the bouncer says "you've been here before, you dont need to give me your ID." A tear to my eye, I tell you.

[Simon Majumdar]

There are some bars in the East end of London that are so rough they have bouncers outside chucking people in and where, if you have your own teeth, you are barred

I have, of course, never been to such a place but I know they exist from watching the news

S