I don't think anyone saw this one coming.
Last time I was there was about 17 years ago, and it was a fad at the time. It was brightly lit, cheap (recycled) beer, overflowing with fratboys and retards, with blasting music, no service to speak of and a lousy layout. I was not expecting much when it was next on our list, and some of us tried to skip it.
Now it's a classic dive bar. VLT's in one corner, pool tables in the back, only one beer on tap (and it's cheap), conference hall 'metal chair' furnishings, with Kokanee ads from 1987 on the walls. The crowd is a mix of geezers, professional alcoholics, and university kids. Some yelling but no fighting. Plenty of floor space between tables, and it's usually only half-full. Service is somewhere between 'meh' and 'none' (at one point the only waitress quit and stormed out at the start of the night). 'Food' consists of popcorn and pickled eggs.
I don't know why, but it's awesome. I love dive bars, and it hits it well. It's 'actual-dive' not 'faux-dive'. The tables only occasionally smell like someone peed. The prostitutes are obvious, and not pushy. The beer is adequately cold. The glasses look like they've been washed in the past 24 hours. The jukebox music selection of the regulars is mysteriously, shockingly good. Nobody seems to take themselves too seriously; everyone seems pretty laid back. It's a great end-of-night place to go for a pitcher and to shoot the shit, and not worry about anything.
I suspect it's going to be a regular part of the rotation moving forward. We go to some mediocre places, and the standard question when a place sucks is already "wanna just say 'fuck it' and go to the Strat?" There may be a larger message here about the direction of my life, but I refuse to worry about it.
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