Montero, the beloved Brooklyn Heights dive bar that dates to the 1930s, has found new owners who have pledged to preserve it. (Photo by Sebastian Lange.)

I don’t want to live in a world without dive bars. It was in those sleazy, beer-soaked bat caves that I learned to be a man. I am thinking of a half dozen joints where, from 1990 to 2010, when my fourth child was born, I was welcomed as Norm was welcomed at Cheers. Miss Mae’s Place and Fat Harry’s in New Orleans—once, when I asked a friend to drive me home, he dropped me at Fat Harry’s, saying, “Everyone says you live at Fat Harry’s”—The Chipp Inn and the Gold Star Bar in Chicago, and more in New York—the Ear Inn, Corner Bistro, WXOU, Fanelli’s—than I can name, let alone remember.

There was, and possibly still is, a bar in the East Village which I could find only when stoned. Like Brigadoon, it appeared just to the worthy. Standing with a Budweiser at the pool table in what I called the Brigadoon Bar, I would think with wonder, “So here I am again.” But now the dive bar is in trouble, endangered by skyrocketing rents and a general turn among younger generations to a screen-centric abstemious life. Isn’t this why Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayor? To save the dive bar? Without it, where will the religion-averse go with their troubles? As Jimmy Stewart says in Harvey, “No one ever brings anything small into a bar around here.”

logo

Read the rest of the article by becoming a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers get full access to paywalled, weekly content from top journalists. Subscribe to stay in the know on the inside story of the restaurant business.

Subscribe

Keep Reading