Where Have All the Dive Bars Gone?

Jon and Jesse and I played a show at the Wild Goose, one of the last smoky, smelly bars in town, a final holdover from all of the venerable old dives that were replaced by sushi bars and faux Irish pubs. Remember the Log Cabin on Main Street? They used to sell short beers for a dime during happy hour, dimers we called them. Pool table in the back, half a dozen Harleys out front and a tough blonde tending bar. And Cooks Tavern; how many nights did I lose in Cooks? Story goes that in the old days it was the union bar where the men lined up to wait for work. It had a trough under the foot rail so the waiting hopefuls could take a piss without losing their place in line. By the time I got to Ashland, Cooks had reinvented itself as a small town gay bar. On the weekends, we’d push the pool table out of the way and crank up the disco. God, I did I really dance to Madonna? It was no Studio 54, but a lot of drugs changed hands in the corners, and I saw more than one coked up college girl take her top off on the dance floor.

But that was years ago. What was I thinking all these many years later, playing acoustic music in smoky dive? You know the kind of place I'm talking about; Christmas lights hangin over the neon beer signs, laminate peeling off the tables, the ripped naugauhyde booth benches mended with duct tape. As of January 1, all public spaces in Oregon will be designated non-smoking, so this cold night in December was the last hurrah for the cigarette set and the air was thick. I tried to remember the last time I had seen people smoking inside. The floor was sticky, the toilets dark and dubious; in short, we were playing a genuine dump, and music was the last thing on regular’s minds. A group of friends had come out to support us and they whooped their appreciation like a bunch of stevedores, but the rest of sparse crowd couldn’t have cared less. A couple of old boozers sat indifferently at the bar, hollering to each other over the music. One old gal nodded in time until she started to nod off. A geezer wearing a tin sheriff star on his cowboy hat kept shambling in front of us, muttering intelligibly. A few students came in, assessed the situation from the doorway, and went into the next room to play pool, the sound of crashing balls clearly audible. We weren't exactly knocking them dead. But then, Jon would kick his finger picking into high gear with Jesse following right behind him on the banjo, I'd squeeze just the right wheeze out of the accordion, and the three of us would hit a perfect harmony. For one short moment the smokers and the pool players and the drunks and the college kids all stopped cold and listened. They listened. Just for a moment, we had them. It was heaven.