Let the Faux-Proletariat Raise Their Glasses!

File this in “LA Observations”.  Since moving out here, I have come to learn that my definition of many words and concepts is completely foreign to what the rest of reality, or at least my local LA reality, agrees upon.  The most puzzling to me is the term “dive bar”.

Background:  I am from, and learned to drink, in Wisconsin.  So I have a few general categories of bars:

• College bars, defined by the patrons.


• Sports Bars.


• Upscale bars that have some sort of dress code, and are populated by people usually classified as “adults”, or perhaps the average age is at least 35.


• Themed bars.


• LGBT Bars.


• “Scene” bars that are loud and filled with party people.


• Normal bars.


• Dive bars.

My problem out here is that to me a normal bar is where people go to just hang out with their friends and have a few drinks, without any other agenda such as watching the game.  This is the meta-drinkological equivalent of Cheers or the pub in How I Met Your Mother.  A dive bar is a step below this, to me.  Where you have 3 guys at the bar who were there when you got in, will be there after you leave, and will be there next week.  A place where you think you could get into a fight with a local through no fault of your own.  A place where you know getting completely tanked will probably not be noticed, or will have one of those three guys becoming your best friend for an hour.

So the conundrum becomes this:  As I try to find new places, I tend to go to Yelp! to see what people have said about prospective bars.  Inevitably I started finding the places I like to go, and they are all called dive bars.  Yet they seem to be populated by mostly 20-30 crowds who typify the normal bar crowd to me.  There seems to be a cultural perception in LA that if it’s not a club, it’s a dive bar.

I have been to a few real dives out in LA.  They are not pleasant, and I have the unfortunate honor to have actually been 86’d from one.  Living up to the preconception of the bar, perhaps?  But none of the people who talk about dive bars in LA would even stop at these true dives.

My hypothesis:  Many people in LA are drawn to both the Hollywood scene, but want to try and distance themselves from it at the same time.  Some manifestation of the precarious balance in the unconscious herd’s love/hate relationship with all things pop-culture played out on the internet and in conversation.  We want to show that we are not all those stereotypes that we love to hate, and secretly thrill to indulge in.  So the response is to oversell it both ways.  Make the posh clubs the height of sexualization of every possible facet of life, and make the rather normal bars and pubs into the dives where we can just go and be our ur-selves, reveling in our underclass awesomeness.

But I still want all those “dive bar” patrons to come with me to few little places in the Valley.  It would be an entertaining night.