What makes a dive a dive?<\/p>\n
In New York, the debate may turn on a few key criteria. Can you buy a beer for less than $7? Is there a weird, damp smell coming from nowhere in particular? Is its name a possessive proper noun, like \u201cFrank\u2019s\u201d or \u201cRudy\u2019s\u201d? Is there a jukebox, and does it contain compact discs? Is the bathroom scary?<\/p>\n
These are important questions. But there\u2019s another, arguably more essential characteristic: A dive brings together people who would otherwise never be in the same room.<\/p>\n
Sit down at the bar and you may find yourself next to a retired firefighter on the stool to your right and a banker on your left. A group of students may pile in through the graffiti-tagged door, hoping this isn\u2019t the kind of place that cards. A writer alone in a worn booth may be scribbling notes for her screenplay, while a former boxing champ tends bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s this beautiful little universe within itself,\u201d said Izzy Tulloch, a bartender at Lucy\u2019s<\/a> in Manhattan\u2019s East Village, \u201cand you get to sit back and watch it all unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n A dive is a day-drunk American dream, a dingy oasis where dividing lines \u2014 race, class, background \u2014 blur and fade. It is a respite without reservations, where you can kill an hour or pass an afternoon. A place out of time.<\/p>\n But things change, even if dive bars are supposed to stay the same. In today\u2019s New York, the humble dive is at risk of becoming an endangered species as hole-in-the-wall establishments face high rents, rising costs and a disappearing clientele.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no day drinkers, they\u2019re dying out,\u201d said Peter Gonzalez, the owner of Johnny\u2019s in the West Village, as he stood behind the bar on a May afternoon. The wall behind him was plastered in stickers promoting bands and political catchphrases. \u201cYoung kids don\u2019t really drink as much,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd things have changed so much in the neighborhood, everything\u2019s very corporate now.\u201d<\/p>\n Several dives have closed in recent years. Billymark\u2019s West in Chelsea, which boasted its $4 beers and shots on a hand-marked sign on its facade, shuttered in 2024. Midtown\u2019s Subway Inn<\/a>, which had relocated thrice since its original opening in the 1930s, also had its last call that year.<\/p>\n Pencil Factory is gone. Holland Bar is no more. Irene\u2019s Place, Smith\u2019s Bar, Grassroots Tavern.<\/p>\n And those still standing face uncertain futures. \u201cThe Lower East Side keeps changing,\u201d read a January post on the 169 Bar Instagram account. \u201cNeighborhood staples like ours are being pushed out \u2014 but we\u2019re fighting to stay.\u201d Further uptown, people have been rallying to save Jimmy\u2019s Corner as it faces eviction<\/a>.<\/p>\n Which raises another important question: What will New York lose if its dive bars go away?<\/p>\n \u2018Freedom-Loving Spirits\u2019<\/p>\n The term \u201cdive\u201d dates back to at least the 1800s. It refers to the idea of physically descending into the bars, which were often in basements.<\/p>\n In \u201cLow Life,\u201d a book about the gritty history of Manhattan\u2019s underbelly, Lucy Sante wrote of how some early dives had no glasses. \u201cDrinks, at three cents per, were served from barrels stacked behind the bar via thin rubber tubes,\u201d Ms. Sante writes, \u201cthe stipulation being that the customer could drink all he wanted until he had to stop for a breath.\u201d<\/p>\n They were places that welcomed those who had nowhere else to go, often immigrants or other people on the margins.<\/p>\n There was community underground. In the 1860s Walt Whitman hung out at Pfaff\u2019s, a Manhattan haunt that was, in its time, a refuge for gay people and bohemians. \u201cLaugh on laughers!\u201d the poet wrote<\/a> of the bar. \u201cDrink on drinkers! Bandy the jest! Toss the theme from one to another!\u201d<\/p>\n Where the drinks flowed, so did talk of politics and ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are inherently social places where people can have conversations about the things they don\u2019t approve of, what they wish they had more of and matters of injustice,\u201d said Christine Sismondo, the author of \u201cAmerica Walks into a Bar.\u201d<\/p>\n In the late 19th century, Justus Schwab, a labor activist who emigrated from Germany, ran a small bar in the Lower East Side advertised as a place for \u201cfreedom-loving spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n Emma Goldman, an anarchist and women\u2019s rights activist, was a regular. In her autobiography, she described it as \u201ca Mecca for French Communards, Spanish and Italian refugees, Russian politicals, and German socialists and anarchists.\u201d People would come together at Justus\u2019s place, she wrote, to \u201cdrink his delicious beer and wine and argue world-problems far into the night.\u201d<\/p>\n Dives \u201cwere much more political prior to Prohibition,\u201d Ms. Sismondo said, which was part of the reason some people wanted to shut them down. For the prohibitionist Ku Klux Klan, she added, raiding bars became \u201ca pretext for harassing minorities.\u201d<\/p>\n But dives did not go extinct then, nor did their tradition of fermenting activism. In the 1960s, the Stonewall Inn<\/a>, a mafia-operated dive in the West Village, was a hangout for queer New Yorkers. Its main bar lacked running water, but it was a place where they could dance, hold hands and exist more freely.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the one place, for me, at 18, I could dance,\u201d said Mark Segal, who spent several nights at Stonewall back then, adding that \u201cit didn\u2019t matter if it was dirty and sold watered down drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1969, a police raid at Stonewall led to a violent clash and days-long protests. The incursion, and the resistance, expanded the meaning of the dive, which became a civil-rights landmark. It also changed patrons like Mr. Segal, whose presence at the raid and its aftermath led to him becoming a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front.<\/p>\n \u201cThat night at Stonewall,\u201d he said, \u201cwas the night I became an activist.\u201d<\/p>\n Democracy and the $3 Beer<\/p>\n At around that time, roughly 40 blocks north, Jimmy Glenn was creating his own place of belonging.<\/p>\n Mr. Glenn<\/a>, a Black man from South Carolina, and Swietlana Garbarska, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, met at a bar in Times Square, then a seedy part of town. They became a couple, and in 1971 took over that same bar space and made it their own, calling it Jimmy\u2019s Corner.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think my parents would\u2019ve met and been accepted together anywhere else in the world,\u201d said Adam Glenn, their son, who runs the bar now that his parents have passed away.<\/p>\n Growing up in the family dive, Mr. Glenn said he felt like he \u201ctraveled the world from a bar stool,\u201d constantly interacting with people from different backgrounds.<\/p>\n These days, the world of Jimmy\u2019s is not guaranteed. Mr. Glenn is currently fighting to save Jimmy\u2019s as the building transfers ownership and a legal battle plays out with its landlord.<\/p>\n \u201cProgress isn\u2019t a bad thing,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember when Times Square was dangerous. But if we don\u2019t protect the authentic parts of New York, why would anyone come if there\u2019s nothing real and original?\u201d<\/p>\n For now, Jimmy\u2019s is still serving $3 beers.<\/p>\n \u201cCould I sell them for $4? Yeah, but it\u2019s not about the price,\u201d Mr. Glenn said. \u201cI want a bar where I can have a struggling actor, a C.E.O., a homeless person all coming in. And as long as they all act the right way and do the right thing, they\u2019re all welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n The $3 beer is its own kind of democratic ideal. And these days, it\u2019s hard to find. The median price of a beer in New York is $9.16, more expensive than any other major American city, according to Toast<\/a>, a technology platform for restaurants.<\/p>\n Ms. Tulloch, the Lucy\u2019s bartender, said that drinks there range from around $6 to $13. \u201cPeople sometimes will get upset about the prices, because it\u2019s more expensive than you expect from a dive,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s really the cheapest you can make it and still keep your doors open and your people paid.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Good Bartenders and a Jukebox\u2019<\/p>\n Rising prices are not the only thing that may be diluting the appeal of the dive. Americans consume less alcohol<\/a> than they used to. People spend less time<\/a> with friends<\/a>. And the aesthetics of a dive \u2014 bad lighting, sticky floors \u2014 don\u2019t necessarily draw the Instagram set.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople want to take a picture of their $20 Cosmo,\u201d Mr. Gonzalez said. \u201cThe only thing we have to offer are good bartenders and a jukebox.\u201d<\/p>\n