dive bar.

I’m lucky enough to have had a local dive bar to drink at since, oh, before I was 21. Some people, it turns out, are not that lucky. My friend Megan, who hasn’t blogged at the blog I just linked in over three years, despite the fact that she’s an amazing writer, was recently married and moved to Australia. Now, you’d think, living in one of the larger cities down under, there would be a plethora of dive bars available to her in which she could make her drinking home. This, as it turns out, is not the case as she so eloquently posted on her Facebook page that she’d found a dive bar.

I asked, “It took you this long?” This was her reply…

Yes Hogs. Yes. Drinking here is a totally different game. A lovely game, but I was so excited to find this place, as it is lit by the flourescent glow of a single flickering neon sign on one end, and the faded light from bottle-filled coolers behind the bar. The non-descript rock n’ roll playing is just loud enough to cocoon each reveler in her own invisible booth, making the inevitable annoying hipster convos happening all around just disappear into the batter of the incredible (and shockingly accurate) deep-fried pickles. The bar peeps are unobtrusive and available for a chat, but know that they aren’t center stage here. No, the star of the show is one’s own failed dreams and hopes, sinking under the heady waves of a well-chosen local brew. Domestic longnecks (which mean something else completely on this side of the world) are available should you want them. The only thing missing is the sickly sweet stench of cigarettes and spilled pints, forever etched into the soul of bars lucky enough to have existed before the scourge of smoking bans of the ‘aughts. This place is six weeks old, the walls are bare, just waiting for a motley collection of foreign currency and license plates to clutter the vertical lines. Hogs. I’m in love.

I figure, if she’s not going to post stuff to her blog anymore, then I’ll post stuff she writes to my blog. Besides, I figured what she wrote was so gorgeous that it had to be shared with more than just the people she’s friends with on Facebook.

This is your brain on dive bars and beautiful prose.