Digital Jukeboxes Are Eroding the Dive-Bar Experience
By the time I moved to Chicago’s North Side, true dive bars had become rare as pearls in a sea of fakes. The wood paneling, fluorescent beer signage, and Spartan restroom facilities of the imitators conjure the working-class homeyness of the American classic, while the prices, clientele, and subsequent atmosphere undermine that nostalgia wholeheartedly. The transformation—from earnest to faux—is, of course, not unique to Chicago’s gentrified North and West Sides, but is a broadly urban phenomenon synonymous with the rise of brunch culture. Nearly two years ago, in Eater, Matthew Sedacca mourned the decline of the “great American dive bar” as it once existed in urban environments, hustled on as neighborhoods get hipper, rents go up, and middle-class patrons care more about a working-class aesthetic than the down-to-earth folks and cheap beer that occupy true dives.
On either side of economic crisis, dive bars traffic in fantasy. The supposed relic of Americana purity still exists in solidly ethnic neighborhoods and across the massive rural swaths of this country. Dive bars are romantic like pickup trucks are romantic, cherished as a symbol for a certain national way of life presumed to be fading. The fakes capitalize on this rosy vision, trotting out yellowed baseball memorabilia and putting American lagers front and center (never mind that that lager
