Aug 3, 2007
Wikpedia defines a 'dive' as a rundown drinking establishment offering the cheap drinks of a high alcohol content to a questionable clientele frequenting the bar for the sole purpose of drinking and not petty drinking either.
New York City had been loaded with such dubious haunts on the Bowery ot the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. 50 cents a beer and $1 a shot and no red-faced stockbrokers lusting after big-haired secretariesb on a Friday night. Only busted-down drunks with a couple of front teeth like Pattaya during low season.
Wendy Mitchell who wrote NYC's BEST DIVE BARS considered a good jukebox, a seat at the bar, an affable bartender, and not-too-bright lighting as essentials for accreditation as a dive. Gotham Books' staff prided itself on having drank in most of them. My favorite was the beach bar in the Rockaways. Drunken Indians and transients at a end of a subway line. Everyone knew this was nowhere.
Pattaya is reputed to have 1400 bars
No one can claim to have drank at all of them, although some Englishmen have sacrificed their livers in the attempt.
For Queen and Country.
None really qualify as a dive, but a few come close.
I've never seen a juke box in my 20 years in Thailand. Not a pin ball machine either, although many have condom dispensers in the bathroom. The music tends to be HOTEL CALIFORNIA or pop music for the girls. Lights too bright with bar stool stressed by overweight drinkers and bartenders with moods rivaling the Wicked Witch of the West. Drinks might be cheap but the measures are more a whisper for hard-drinkers.
There are few exceptions.
The Welkom Inn on Soi 3 with its dim lighting comes close. You can usually get a seat and the old ladies behind the bar are good-tempered despite having to listen to the drivel of drunken farangs day after day after day.
Soi 6 bars are sleazy and dark, however no one goes to a short-time bar to drink. 90 baht for a thimble of vodka and tonic. The Bus Stop isn't bad because the music is almost punk. Viking Bar is awful, but Mint used to work there. maybe she will again once her boyfriend's money runs out.
The only actual dive is Maggie May's on Soi Chaiyapoon.
It only features drinking.
No girls.
Stale peanuts.
Sports on the TV.
The dregs of society on the bar stools.
"Drinks for me and my drink," Mickey Rourke called out in the movie BAR FLY about the poet Charles Bukowski's drinking life. People are shouting out the same in Maggie May's. The music sometimes sucks, but the beer is cold and during happy hours as cheap as it gets in Pattaya.
The other day I saw Dave from the old Dang Bar. We had fought on Soi 6 last winter. He had called me a spineless cunt too many times. Something about not liking that I didn't drink in his bar. 50 year-old men fighting on Soi 6. My mother should be crying in heaven over that sad spectacle.
At least I won, Ma.
I hadn't seen Dave since the fight and said, "Hello."
The bald Aussie nodded and drank his beer.
Maggie May's.
You wear it well.
#1 Dive of Pattaya
Still open in 2023
Maggie Mays, 383, 21 Soi Chalermphrakiat 25, Pattaya City, Bang Lamung District, Chon Buri 20150, Thailand
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