The Barfly Chronicles

Night two of our diving adventures has just concluded, and what a night it was. A very fun night and we scored four for five tonight, excellent dive bar action.

We visited five bars tonight and all but one was nothing if not a great time and one was a very deep dive, but was very fun nonetheless.

Blog post coming up:

The Long Branch

Locker 8 - Visited / Reviewed

The Pink Cricket

Leo’s Bier Haus

The Dawg House

Mulligans

The Fair View

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The complete list of Lancaster dive bars:

1.Pauls Night Club - Visited / Reviewed

2.Hillbilly Heaven - Visited / Reviewed

3.The Bottle Cap

4.The Long Branch - Visited

5.The Orange Carpet Lounge

6.Citi Bar

7.The Minute Bar

8.Mulligan’s Bar and Grill - Visited

9.The Madison Bar and Grill

10.Old Road House Saloon

11.Locker 8 - Visited / Reviewed

12.Old Bill Baileys

13.The Main Event

14.The Dog House Tavern - Visited

15.Starlight Night Club

16.Pink Cricket - Visited

17.Sweeneys Pub

18.Coaches Corner - Visited

19.Leo’s Bier Haus

20.Stinking Dads Saloon

21.Just Another Saloon

22.Luckys Bar

23.Lincoln Bowling Alley

24.The Fair View

25.Hawkes Taverne at the Mill

26.JD’s Pizza Pub (188 W.)

27.Liberty Billiards

28.JD Henderson’s Sports Lounge - Visited / Reviewed

29.Castaways

30.Berne Station

One day soon there will be no more dive bars. The day of the neighborhood drinking establishment will be a thing of the past.  Like so many other institutions in our day, it will be replaced with slick corporate schmaltz and national advertising campaigns. There is just nothing organic about BW3’s or Applebees, they are stamped out of a mold and plopped on an out parcel pad in front of the mall and we go there, to drink and dine, but I for one almost always feel like I have been cheated somehow.

Today, most of the old neighborhood bars are nothing if not squalid and a bit run down, but this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when every neighborhood had a butcher, a baker and a bartender. Hard working men would flock to the watering hole each day after work to quench a powerful thirst, socialize with their friends and assuage aching muscles.

The demise of the old neighborhood bar wasn’t a quick thing, usually the owner died or fell on hard times, then the place was sold, perhaps several times and before you know it, the bar is a bit of a dive.  Old dive bars, no matter how dirty, dark or stinky all have a tale to tell.  I am completely fascinated by these stories. What was the place like back when the beer signs were new and the toilets still sparkled? Who were the dominant clientele that originally made the bar a success? How many fights were broken up at closing time by a burly bouncer? The stories are as varied and colorful as the rooms themselves are dim and smoky.

I want to document as many as I can, a true documentation would take years, but that is ok, starting with this blog I hope to at least showcase some of the local drinking culture and where that drinking happens. The project has some different names already. I am calling it Phresh’s Diving Adventures but I am sure we will think of something else clever before too long. We hit six bars the last trip out, some we had been warned never to enter. We went in anyway, and unanimously had a great time.

Enjoy