Dive Bar

I've never been certain of what someone means when they tell you that such-and-such is a "real dive bar." I have an idea of what they want me to picture, but even that I doubt is very accurate. Dirt always finds its way into these dive bars I create in my head and so do wooden floors. I don't know why, but they do. 

So I hesitate to call the place we went to last night a dive bar because there was very little dirt anywhere and no wooden floors to be found. There was, however, a plaque on the wall which read 'Voted best Dive Bar in Austin 2001" which left me no choice but to refer to it as such. 

Besides the plaque, there were those neon beer signs on the wall that I like for the same unexplainable reasons that I always conjure up dirty wooden floors when I think of dive bars. Dos XX, Budweiser, Miller Lite -- they were all there, glowing their bright blues and greens and reds. Interspersed among the signs were pictures of music legends, old UT football schedules, and signs that told you not to take pictures of the place and that they only accepted cash and served bottled beer.

An older bartender who looked strikingly like Elvis even though she was a woman told Joe and I once that "you come for the beer, and stay for the jukebox," and she was right about that. It was constantly playing some country or ZZ Top or somebody else that had been around before I was born. And if nobody put in any money the whole bar would go quiet for a minute or two until someone finally walked up and put a few dollars in and chose George Strait or Willie Nelson. Queen was about as radical as you'd get. 

The best way to describe this place is to tell you the story about a guy in a trenchcoat who yelled "WOOOOOOH!" as he did the global jerk-off motion with his hands towards his friend. Then he made the finishing motion, smiled, and said "Merry Fuckin' Christmas!" and hugged his buddy and then they walked off to the bar to buy some bottled beer. It was that sort of place. 

There were a few tables and chairs scattered across the non-wooden floor and when we were sitting at one of them Joe said that if he could be any animal he would be a stork so he could deliver babies. "They're the middlemen between God and Humans... You deliver a child in your mouth. Drop it off. Fly away." One of his closing points was that storks are the UPS of baby delivery. 

His backup choice of animal was the Loch Ness Monster. 

Whenever you sit and drink bottled beer for a few hours you inevitably have to go to the bathroom and I certainly did a few times. When you walked in, it didn't smell too bad, but the restroom was run-down and poorly lit. Running against one of the walls was a communal urinal that looked like a sink, and the first time I had to pee I was so confused by it all that it took me a while to realize that that was where you were supposed to do it. Everything about the bathroom, and I mean everything, fit so perfectly with the rest of the bar that it almost felt as though it had been designed that way; as if the original architects had pissed on the floor around the toilets until it had that stain you could never scrub out and they installed a mirror that had had so much smoke blown on it and water splashed on it and dirty hands rubbed up against it that it would always look like someone had taken a hot shower in there fifteen minutes earlier. 

One of the first things you noticed about the bathroom were some of the things people wrote on the wall.  You could read most, a few had faded to the point where you had to look closely and guess what they'd been going for. But all of them, you knew, had some story behind them. 

My sister Ellie, the only convicted vandal in the family, might be able to shed some light on the rush one gets from writing on bathroom walls, but to this day I still don't see it. Maybe that was what explained all the messages and ink on the wall. A rush. I'm guessing the bottled beer played a role, too. But still, you looked at it all and couldn't help but wonder: Why?

Anyways, the writing was there and I read it and then looked around and quickly snapped a few photos on my phone before anybody else came in. This wasn't the kind of place to be caught using your camera in the bathroom. 

Not sure, exactly. Though I could guess.

Just missed him. 

Hard to argue.

The wood on the doorway.
The first of many "Okie Roy" references.
But the first, and only Jenna Bush mention I could find. 

A lot of animosity towards Okie Roy.

Above the doorway. Notice the Okie Roy comment in the bottom left, proclaiming him
"the fuck king of shit mountain."  

I have a feeling Ethan didn't write this.

A bit too vague to be helpful. 

Really hammering the point home.

Clever.

Math even I can understand.

"Rugged and Ready" condoms for 75 cents. A steal, if you ask me. 

Some questionable advice. 

Here "it" is again, this time on the door frame.

My flash obscures the last word. It reads: "Okie Roy fuck'd the chick in Hansen."
Hansen was [and maybe still is] a band comprised of three teenage boys -- all brothers.
Though, in fairness to the author, the guitarist/singer did have long blonde hair
and in his pre-pubescent days, could be confused for a teenage girl.

I never asked the bartender about Okie Roy, in part because I wasn't sure how much time she'd spent in the men's room.

Every now and then a song would come on the jukebox and you could see everyone tapping their boots and shoes to it, especially if it was Creedence or some other upbeat song that was easy to tap to. In one corner, there was always a game of shuffleboard going on between grown men who'd cheer or groan depending on which team they were on and in a different corner was the pool table where there was never really much noise save the clack of cue against ball. Those guys didn't seem to care too much about the music and the rest of the bar didn't seem to care too much about them. 

It was a nice place to drink a beer; it sure beat the hell out of the crowds and speakers and standing-room-only you'd find at pretty much any other bar in Austin that night. 

When Stevie Ray Vaughan came on towards the end it was as though the song had been written to be played in a place like this, for people who dressed and talked and stood and sat like everyone in the bar did, and the bottled beer which was cold and that was the only nice thing you could really say about it was meant to be drunk in a place like this as Texas Flood played over a jukebox.