I fell in love the moment I walked inside.  What a dive.

It was close confines.  The air was thick with cigarette smoke.  The bar was lit by the glow from a single string of Christmas lights.  The low ceiling was plastered with beer cans and black plastic.  An old coin-op bowling machine clogged up the entrance.  Punks and hardscrabble clogged the bar.

We wouldn’t have known the place was there if Hack’s old roommate hadn’t showed us where it was.  There was no sign outside, just a couple of people smoking and a neon in the window.

The Bar With No Name.

Puke and piss and beer made the floor adhesive.  The bartender was a chubby blonde.  She worked her massive tits for all they were worth.  She comped our first round.

Hack and I sat at the far end of the bar.  There was no door on the back room, and even from 3 feet away we couldn’t see what was inside.

Coke and dirty sex.

The jukebox was everything you would expect.  Tom Waits.  Social D.  Dropkick Murphys.  Cadence to Arms played every 15 minutes.  Fights broke out on the hour.

And no one cared.

It was fucking beautiful.  It was every cliche of a roughneck dive bar ever written, and we had stumbled right into the middle of it.  It didn’t matter if you were young or old, drunk, dumb, or dirt poor.  If you could stand the smell, you could get a drink.

The cops never came.  When heads needed smashing, Do what thou Wilt was the extent of the law.

No one cared about the clothes you wore, or what you drove.  It didn’t matter if you were ugly or angry or try-hard.  If you didn’t belong anywhere else, or refused to fit in, this was the place for you.

I miss that bar.