I Like My Bars Dirty

How do I like my bars? Dirty. I love a good dive bar. The more sections of wall that consist of tacky wood paneling, the better. The more creepy townie men who stare inappropriately before turning religiously back to the sporting show on the fuzzy TV, the better. I don't want to pay a cover, I don't want to have to look cute just to get sticky alcohol spilled all over me in on an overcrowded dance floor and I don't want to have everything bathed in a shade of weird purple 'trendy' lights.

Also, I am not skilled enough to order drinks at these hip bars filled with dancing, flirting, glittering 20somethings. I still order drinks like I'm in a frat house, because that's where I learned to drink. I like my drinks strong, and I prefer them in a solid glass mug or something non-breakable. Once, right after I moved here, I told a bartender that I wanted a Dr. Pepper and vodka. He was in shock. He asked me if that was a fancy drink from Michigan, because he had never heard of it. I just went with it and said yes. In reality, I could not tell you the difference between a mai thai, a cosmo, a martini or a rock collins. I am used to simple drinks: liquor, chaser. Two ingredients. Or maybe three, if we're going to get wild and make pink panty droppers (beer, vodka, pink lemonade).

So give me the dive bars: the ones with the best food, the weirdest people, the dimmest lights, the dirtiest floors, and the least decorated walls.

This is the actual level of lighting within the bar. I can barely see the back wall. 

Perfect.

Bars using posters of Gossip Girl will be given extra points in my book.

Just look at the dirt and the wood and the bottles. Clearly, you don't come here to flirt. You come here to drink. (Also, on the wall behind me there was a collection of mammoth beehives. Why? Because they can. Or maybe it's their version of a breathalyzer. When you start believing bees will actually come out of them, you've had enough.)

But the following really took the cake. This backwoods, old-man bar had squirrel decorations. That's right. Dead squirrels. Posed. Costumed. In shadow boxes. Like it was no big deal. Like this was a completely normal thing to do. And the closer you looked, the more squirrels you saw. 

Oh Missourah, you take the cake on old man bars. Cheers to you. 

Linking up with my boo Steph to celebrate her one-year blogiversary! Happy blogabirthaday, babay.