The Dive Bar Tour of Providence

As I get older, it is a comfort to tell myself that I am getting more sophisticated. I enjoy a nice bottle of wine more than I would a six pack of beer. I like places that have cool music or interesting art or good lighting. But the reality is that I'm not a particularly sophisticated person, and I've always enjoyed the pleasures of cheap beer, weird crowds, and the ever-so-slight chance that there might be a bar fight. So, to fully celebrate the joys of the more blue collar watering holes in our capital city, I took my wife (who was the designated driver and reluctant participant) and a degenerate friend who we'll just refer to as Panda, and set out on a tour of our favorite sketchy bars.

(A quick note: there are more sketchy places than the five we went to. But there are fun dive bars and there are places where people get murdered.)

We started with a trip down memory lane. As all three of us are Providence College grads (thus the above-average tolerance), we thought to start the night with a trip to Louie's, a trashy place that was liberal in its over-21 policy. It also had a trough in the men's room in the place of urinals. But it must of suffered through one too many raids, because it is now closed. So we improvised and went to Elmhurst Pub on Smith Street as our alternate college dive.

We were a little disappointed at first glance. There were flat screen TV's on the wall. A decent assortment of beers, including several on tap, had replaced the old fridge full of domestic cans. The crowd seemed largely respectable, and they even had an ID scanner. (Sorry, college kids.) We weren't sure we could even qualify it as a dive bar.

But there were some redeeming features, like the very active Keno business taking place at the bar, and the retro, very ugly bar stools and wood panelling. But the most dive bar-ish feature of all was the on-tap Icehouse, a beer I haven't even thought about since I turned 21. So we ordered a pitcher (which cost $7.75) and settled in. We soon remembered the reason why no respectable adult drinks Icehouse. It tastes like feet and sour apples. But we quickly finished it up and headed on to bar number two.

And let me just say from the first that the Lithuanian Club (also on Smith Street, though the door is down the side street a bit) wins the best dive bar award of the night hands down. Leave aside the $7.00 pitcher of Miller Lite, the best drink deal of the night. Leave aside the probable crack addict in the back. Leave aside the $1 jello shots that were suddenly available, the ancient picture of Carl Yastremski tacked to the wall, or the big screen TV from 1982. No, you go to the Lithuanian club for two reasons: first, a crowd of crazy, fun people doing bad karaoke with gusto, and second, you can still smoke. That's right, it's a social club, and thus just about the only place you can still go in Providence to combine your two favorite vices. And, as a topper to all that, it has a glass cube bar:

So Panda got the pitcher, did his famous karaoke rendition of Dennis Leary's "Asshole", and I did my part by performing the Lumberjack Song.

Next up, we shot over to Ives Street to check out Captain Seaweed's. The only other time we'd been there, it was full of surly Portuguese guys and a friend of ours (who's a bit of a chicken) freaked out and ended up helping them put the chairs up so he wouldn't get stabbed. But it's really quite a friendly place, and indeed has been largely colonized by Brown kids, making it feel decidedly respectable. (Panda thought the mirrors over the bar completely took away the edge.) Still, the nautical decorations add a cool, funky touch, and there are plenty of respectable dive-ish entertainments, from pool and foosball to the Maxx Sapphire video game system on the corner of the bar (which, last I played it, has a bizarre strip poker game on it.) You could get the classic 16 ounce Narragansett cans for $2, which is another plus. So we left, but not before I showed my appreciation for their hospitality:



Next it was off to the Penalty Box on North Main Street. When Panda and I first went here, it was as big a dive as we'd ever been to, one of those Bud and Bud Light places. Now the inevitable gentrification of that part of town has somewhat taken the edge off, but made it much more fun, so it's worth including. While it's the only bar on the tour to lack a pool table (a major sin) it makes up for it by having Golden Tee, pinball and Ms. Pacman, as well as a regular slate of live music.

The night we went, a four piece rock band was playing, led by a guitarist who kept taking his clothes off while demanding someone buy him a shot. So despite the flatscreens and the nicer floors, it's still got some dive to it. Panda was a little distracted by some of the cute/scantily clad (or as the wife said 'slutty' girls at the bar, and bought Guiness, which cost $4 a pop. But they have Narragansett and other cheaper beers on tap, as well as a Yagermeister machine. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Our last stop was supposed to be the City Line Pub, also on North Main, but it was closed by the time we got there, so we broke one of our tour rules and crossed about a half mile into Pawtucket. There, we went to Murray's Pub on Main Street, which deserves inclusion if only because it embraces its low-rent status to the point that it is housed in a trailer and has a porch festooned in Christmas lights.

Like the Lithuanian Club, Murray's features pool (in a little back room) and Karaoke, although this crowd tends to go more to hip-hop songs than monster ballads. At this point, my wife was getting a bit impatient, so we quickly downed $5 shots of Yager, chased them with $2.25 Budweisers, and staggered off into the night, content that tomorrow's hangovers would be reminders of why we crave sophistication as we age. Basically, because we can't take the alternative any more.