Tag Archives: birmingham

After last week’s overly frilly post, I feel the need to redeem what indie cred I have (which isn’t much, perhaps why I’m defensive about it). Thus, let me indulge the flip side of my girly-girl nature, don my combat boots, and hit my favorite dive bars.

There is an art to the dive bar. It must be dingy, but not depressing. It must have “denizens” rather than customers-and there must be a usual roster of suspects on any given night. It must come by its reputation organically, not manufactured to “feel” urban or crusty. It must be the sort of place you have to think twice about taking parents, visitors to the city, and first dates, lest they re-evaluate their opinions of you and your drinking habits. And lastly, it must have a bathroom that tries to achieve some standards of cleanliness, since that is the sign of honest pride in one’s establishment. If they’ve given up trying to tame the bathrooms, folks, they’ve given up the ghost on a lot of things. So the top three on my In Love With list are (in order of frequency of visits): Five Points’ Upside Down Plaza, Irondale’s Bourbon Street, and Avondale’s Brown Derby.

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