I tend bar. I’ve done this on and off for about thirty years. My first job as a bartender was in Columbus, Ohio at a punk bar called Mean Mr. Mustard’s, but I’ve also worked the wells in Florida, South Carolina, and California. Most of my jobs have been at dive bars.
I’ve made some money at writing. I have a published novel titled One Worm that Russian Hill Press in San Francisco put out. I paid for half of a new Honda with that money. I rewrote a kids’ movie about soccer called Home Team that was released in Canada. I had to sue the producers for my money, and I insisted they remove my name from the credits. Don’t ever rent it.
I took up banjo late in life and have made more money at that than at writing. My biggest payday came when the band I play in opened for the Bellamy Brothers this Fall in Aspen. The Bellamy Brothers had several chart-toppers in the eighties, and their mega-hit was Let Your Love Flow, which they opened and closed their show with.
I now have small percentages in two Los Angeles bars. The dividends from those places might put a new roof on our house. But I am a bartender. That’s what pays the bills. It’s given me an expertise, however, and I was interviewed recently by an online magazine that wanted to know what makes a great dive bar. Here are a few of the things I told them.
1. No mirrors in the bathrooms. We want customers who drink, not primp.
2. A great jukebox with both accessible and underground cd’s. And no greatest hits! If the place doesn’t have either Let It Bleed or Get Yer YaYa’s Out, it ain’t divin’.
3. No energy drinks. Whenever someone asks me if I carry energy dinks, I tell them I have the original one; Coke.
4. No blenders, and we don’t make anything you can’t see through.
5. Reasonable prices. If you can’t get two drinks for $10, you’re not in a dive bar.
6. Year-round Christmas lights decorate the ceilings, either because the bartenders are too lazy to take them down, or they just need the light.
7. No uniforms on the bartenders.
8. Very few windows in the place. The sun is not a welcome customer.
9. A limited beer selection, and if there are more than two beers on tap, go somewhere else.
10. Offer chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon. If the customer requests a wine list, we tell them Napa Valley is only seven hours away by car.
11. Have a great Bloody Mary mix. The regulars will depend upon it. This could save lives.
12. No dress code.
13. No flat screen televisions, and especially directly behind the bar. That ends customer conversation at the bar.
14. Dive bars have their own matchbooks with great logos.
15. No dishwasher behind the bar. Three sinks are sufficient, and like blenders, the noise a dishwasher makes is just plain disruptive.
16. The bartenders must be friendly, but with a dose of surliness. They aren’t necessarily required to remember your name, but they absolutely must know what you drink.
17. And remember, in a dive bar, the customer is always wrong!
What elements do you think make a great dive bar?
Novelist Jim Kalin lives in Los Angeles, writes a monthly column for Amateur Wrestling News, and has traded in his speargun for a banjo. His wife and son sing harmony.