{"id":7771,"date":"2015-08-09T07:21:58","date_gmt":"2015-08-09T13:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=7771"},"modified":"2015-08-10T07:58:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T13:58:57","slug":"prairie-lights-lets-not-allow-yahoos-to-redefine-dive-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/08\/prairie-lights-lets-not-allow-yahoos-to-redefine-dive-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: Let’s not allow yahoos to redefine ‘dive bar’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Freeway\"<\/a>

Trip Advisor<\/p>

This is what you call a dive bar. Muzz and Stan’s Freeway, Butte.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I lived in Anaconda, Red\u2019s was a good dive bar. Strong drinks, cheap beer and a pool table in the middle of the main room. The jukebox had more than a few Merle Haggard songs.<\/p>\n

The bartenders may have been too kind, though. They\u2019d give you a free shot of Jack Daniels with every other beer. I hated to say no to a free drink and have the bartenders think badly of me, so sometimes I\u2019d go over in the corner, next to the jukebox, stand in profile to the bartender and toss the drink over my shoulder.<\/p>\n

\"Ed\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

Another good dive bar, coincidentally, was also called Red\u2019s, in Missoula. It\u2019s been popular with the college kids for many years now, but back in the \u201970s it was frequented by working stiffs who cleared out fairly early, leaving the joint to a few friends and me, and two or three old inebriates.<\/p>\n

It had a pool table in the middle of the floor, too, but there was a structural column right next to one side of the table. Half the fun of playing there was learning how to get a good shot off around that pole.<\/p>\n

There was the Dirty Shame Saloon in Yaak and the Stoneville Saloon in Alzada, both of them fine dives, and the memorable Hathaway Bar in\u2014where else?\u2014Hathaway. I have vague recollections of the Oasis Bar in Glendive, the Maverick Bar in Roundup and the Range Riders in Miles City. It\u2019s been so long since I did my research on this subject that I can\u2019t even come up with names for the joints I can picture in Philipsburg, Broadus, Circle, Rosebud and Culbertson.<\/p>\n

If I had to pick one\u2014not necessarily my favorite or the most entertaining, but the most emblematic of the dive-bar breed\u2014I\u2019d probably have to go with the Freeway in Butte. More properly known as Muzz and Stan\u2019s Freeway, this dive is a cinderblock rectangle with no real windows, just glass blocks.<\/p>\n

It was always famous as the home of the Wop Chop, its version of the pork chop sandwich, and as one of Evel Knievel\u2019s favorite haunts. A large picture of Knievel was pretty much the beginning and end of the bar\u2019s d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n

The one thing I know for sure is that the Rock Pile in Billings is not the best dive bar in Montana. It\u2019s not even a dive bar; not even close.<\/p>\n

But it was proclaimed one of the nation\u2019s 50 best\u00a0dive bars last week by Yahoo Travel<\/a>, apparently on the \u201cstrength\u201d of its chicken-fried steak. I\u2019m not blaming the Rock Pile. It\u2019s an OK sports bar, in a state teeming with OK sports bars.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>I\u2019m blaming the yahoos at Yahoo Travel, who appear to have compiled the list of best\u00a0dives by assigning an unpaid intern to spend 15 minutes searching online for at least one bar in every state. It was a naked attempt at luring in readers and courting free newspaper coverage<\/a>, even though its list had no bearing on reality.<\/p>\n

Among the \u201cdives\u201d that made the list was one in Massachusetts serving \u201ctruffled parmesan fries\u201d and a bar in New York serving \u201cjalapeno-infused tequila.\u201d In Wyoming, the alleged dive was in Jackson Hole, where a real dive is probably banned by local ordinance.<\/p>\n

I suppose there are a lot of ways to define a dive bar, but I think at a minimum it has to be on the small side, it has to serve strong drinks and it certainly can\u2019t be self-consciously divey. An extension of that rule applies to people: a person who knows he\u2019s a character is not an authentic character.<\/p>\n

Most dives don\u2019t even serve food, only near-foods like pickled pigs\u2019 feet, beer nuts and pork rinds. If a dive does have food, it ought to be something with a name like Wop Chop. The d\u00e9cor has to be either extremely spare or profuse and haphazard. If the owner or bartender has ever used the word \u201cambience,\u201d it\u2019s not a dive.<\/p>\n

The place doesn\u2019t have to be full of drunks or goons\u2014there is a difference between a dive and a downright shithole\u2014but if you feel entirely safe and cozy the whole time you\u2019re there, it\u2019s probably not a dive.<\/p>\n

A dive on the outskirts of Eden would have Hank Williams on the jukebox, beer served in glass pitchers, a pool table, two pinball machines, one dart board and a shuffleboard table. There\u2019d be shake-a-day dice behind the bar, maybe a few poker machines and a couple of old-timers who live nearby and could tell you the history of every other regular.<\/p>\n

The cops doing a walk-through would know the bartender\u2019s name and there\u2019d be a guy selling newspapers right after press time. If you talked too much politics the bartender would tell you to shut your piehole, and there wouldn\u2019t be a television. The bathroom walls would be covered in graffiti so good you\u2019d do all you could to remember a few lines back in the bar.<\/p>\n

There would be a house guitar, but you couldn\u2019t use it unless you could play at least one song all the way through without looking at the lyrics on your smart phone. Better yet, no smart phones, either. This dive bar would have a simple name, like Red\u2019s, a neon sign out front and a small neon sign above the back door in the alley that just said \u201cBeer.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the way, I didn\u2019t list any dive bars in Billings because it hasn\u2019t been that long since I did a roll call of local taverns<\/a>. In a dive-bar contest in this town, it\u2019d probably be a toss-up between the Rainbow and the Crystal Lounge.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that readers of Last Best News will have their own strong opinions about classic Montana dives. Make your nominations for the best dive bar in Montana, with a short description, under this column or on the Last Best News Facebook page.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll send the column and your ideas to the folks at Yahoo Travel. I doubt they\u2019ll publish a retraction or an updated story, but at least they\u2019ll know what they missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I lived in Anaconda, Red\u2019s was a good dive bar. Strong drinks, cheap beer and a pool table in the middle of the main room. The jukebox had more than a few Merle Haggard songs. The bartenders may have been too kind, though. They\u2019d give you a free shot of Jack Daniels with every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2918,2917,2921,2920,2916,2919,1531],"class_list":["post-7771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-dirty-shame-saloon","tag-freeway","tag-merle-haggard","tag-range-riders","tag-rock-pile","tag-stoneville-saloon","tag-yahoo-travel","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}