You love the blog, so subscribe to the Beervana Podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud today!

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Dive Bar Challenge

There's a lot of talk--way, way too much, actually--about which city is the best beer city.  It's a pointless argument because no one can ever define the terms of debate.  Every city has at least one good brewery and some great beer.  Limit the variables, though, and then we're talkin.  When I travel around, I judge cities on a single dimension: how advanced is the culture of beer in the city?  There are a lot of ways to measure this (who's doing the drinking; what are they drinking; and where are they doing their drinking?), but one sure way is to see what they're drinking in places you don't expect to find good beer.  Like dive bars.

The notion is this.  Go into a dive bar, see what they're serving on tap.  We would expect that bars on the outer fringes of the city to have fewer good beers on tap, while in the heavily-breweried, hipster enclaves, there should be more.  I've been toying with the idea for awhile, but fate forced my hand when I found myself in the Clinton Street Pub, a dive in the pretty-cool 26th and Clinton nexus.  I decided in the moment that the time had come to issue the Dive Bar Challenge

Anyone can play.  I assume Portland will easily crush all comers, but I don't actually have the data yet.  Over the next few months I will tour the city's dive bars and report back to you, tavern by tavern.  Should you live in another city and like to participate, just follow my handy template.  If you fancy your city as "Beer City USA" or "The Napa Valley of Beer" or somesuch, let's put it to the test.  I'm pretty sure Portland is in a class all by itself, but I'd like to see for sure.

Okay, now onto the inaugural entry...

Clinton Street Pub
The Clinton Street isn't at ground zero for beer in Portland, but it's ground-zero adjacent.  Moreover, it is immediately next to the Clinton Street Theater, the kind of place that has hosted a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday since 1978.  One door down in the other direction is a vinyl record store (trivia note: I held the lease on that property for a year in the late 1980s when I has a teenage hippie artiste--way before that neighborhood was cool).  In other words, it's definitely a neighborhood where you should expect to find a decent beer.

Nevertheless, Clinton Street is a true dive bar festooned with old beer paraphernalia like a classic Meister Brau sign and the distant-yet-lingering scent of cigarette smoke from years gone by.  Clinton Street specializes in pinball, and on the night we were there, had a rousing pub quiz going on.  It caters to all ages, but gets a lot more young customers than some dives.  Of eight taps, only one was given over to mass market lager (Hamm's, my fave).  Perhaps tellingly, the pub also had an obscure-to-Amerians Czech pilsner on tap (Staropramen).

The Stats*
Breweries in ZIP code: 8
Distance from the heart of downtown: 2.8 miles
Neighborhood hipness factor (1-5): 4, pretty damn hip
Seediness factor (1-5): 1, not seedy
Beers on tap: 8
Mass market beers: 1
Craft beers: 5 (three IPAs, a sticke alt, and a stout)
Imports:  1
Ciders: 1
Verdict: Super crafty


________________________
*I may tune these up over time, but this seems like a good start.  Breweries in ZIP code determined by the Oregon Brewers Guild listing.  I selected Pioneer Courthouse Square, "Portland's living room" as the heart of downtown. 


14 comments:

  1. Like trying to name the world's best beer, identifying the best beer city is a fool's errand. A few weeks back I ran into a guy from San Diego at Belmont Station. He was in town for a few days and had hit a number of prime beer spots. The thing that impressed him the most was the fact that there are so many places packed into such limited space. He was walking or riding the bus system from place to place. It's not like that in San Diego, he said. Things are more spread out there. I truly wonder if any city in the world can match Portland in terms of the concentration of breweries and beer-centric places. You would know better than me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your metric. I also judge good beer cities by what's on tap at restaurants. Portland and San Diego have great craft beers on tap at local restaurants, but elsewhere in the country, Sam Adams is the one "craft" beer on tap lists.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great concept. Sorry to be "that guy", but I must administer an admonition to you on the execution.

    You have profiled a faux dive. Hamm's is "mass-market"? Don't think so. It's also the only cheap lager on tap at nearby beer-geek central Apex.

    You could have nailed it by hitting a true dive nearby, like Reel'M'Inn -- can I get a witness!?!? -- 1 block away. Which sells mostly mass-market lagers, but has a couple of potable taps like Mirror Pond.

    That's how you will beat all comers -- hit the real dives: Yukon, Slammer, Sewickly's, Yur's... Claudia's, Triple Nickel.... Places that might serve hipsters (I use the term with affection in my heart) but which are not designed for them. You will see standard mass-market swill alongside good -- if not geeky -- beer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like this criteria, at least! It's a far more interesting conversation, because it's about culture, not commerce.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Welcome to...erm...20 years ago? Wasn't this something Lew was on about back then? Sure, show me all yer brewpubs, but let me get out to yer real dive's when I'm there.

    Agreed with Bill above, that ain't a real dive. A real dive bar in PDX has only Widmer and Full Sail Amber on in addition to whatever adjunct lagers are not hip these days. Or those days, 10 or 20 years ago. I can't keep up.

    Oh right, Widmer ain't "craft" (TM), whatever that means.

    Portland doesn't need anyone championing them any more, FWICT, IMO. Way, way too hip these days, I imagine.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Bill, I totally agree with your general point, and this is only the start. I'll be dipping in to disreputable dives across the city. (I'd like to have the data on strip clubs--surely the most disreputable--but I'm not excited about that research.) I think it's good to start out in the core and move further out.

    Now, however, as to this point you and Nick make:

    You have profiled a faux dive. Hamm's is "mass-market"? Don't think so. It's also the only cheap lager on tap at nearby beer-geek central Apex.

    and

    A real dive bar in PDX has only Widmer and Full Sail Amber on in addition to whatever adjunct lagers are not hip these days.

    You two are not the arbiters here, stylemakers though you may otherwise be. "Dive" is moving target, but you don't get to exempt it just because the beer don't conform to your expectations. You both pre-define "dive" as "that which does not have craft." Sorry, but if a dive bar puts on Gigantic IPA, it doesn't cease to be a dive bar.

    Which is not to say that all dive bars are made the same--and that's precisely why I give you all the ammo to shoot down any particular example as an outlier (distance from downtown, hipness factor, breweries in the ZIP code). We need to be able to compare apples in Portland with apples in Cleveland--and I'll grant you that Clinton Street is lousy with a young, fashionable class of patron (if not hipsters).

    But like Judge Potter Stewart I know a dive bar when I see it. Clinton Street is in.

    ReplyDelete
  7. For what it's worth: last time I was in Reel M'Inn, I enjoyed several pints of Breakside Woodlawn Pale. Certainly doesn't make that place a Dig A Pony

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just can't believe no one has posted this Simpsons clip: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=em6JCkxYAko

    ReplyDelete
  9. Question about your 'import' designation there, is that 'import craft' or 'import macro'? Staropramen is most definitely in the latter camp, along with Pilsner Urquell, Bass, Guinness, Leffe, and a whole slew of beers that get lumped into craft menus and charged at craft prices.

    ReplyDelete
  10. By all accounts, The Horse Brass is pretty dam divey! That being said, APEX put Hamms on because it wasn't the hipster beer. Check out The Bear Paw. Though hipsters frequent there, it's not designed for hipsters. An interesting side note is that it was also Don Younger's first bar.

    ReplyDelete
  11. By all accounts, The Horse Brass is pretty dam divey! That being said, APEX put Hamms on because it wasn't the hipster beer. Check out The Bear Paw. Though hipsters frequent there, it's not designed for hipsters. An interesting side note is that it was also Don Younger's first bar.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm going to take a somewhat reduced poke at this for Bend and Central Oregon, although my interest primarily lies in responding to Boak & Bailey's "healthy beer culture" post of a bit over a year ago.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Fear not, I intend on dragging my newly-located portland friend to a series of dive bars on my next visit. We've both spent plenty of time in dive bars across the country, and come well equipped for such objective polling. We hit Apex the very first night he got to town (I flew out the next day after helping him unload his stuff) but I was lusting for something a bit less overwhelming. Seriously, where do you start when you can't find half those bottles anywhere else in the country? I'm already searching yelp - anything with less than 10 reviews is a top candidate.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I used to read this blog all the time, but [long story] I've been remiss for a while. I saw the latest (last) entry on this DBC and therefore checked out this original post. This Challenge is not just a tongue-in-cheek metric, but possibly one of the best ways to evaluate a city's beer culture. Being originally from a less-than-stellar beer area, I've often noted and pointed out (loudly and with many wild gestures, probably) this same observation as a way of constantly reminding myself what an awesome place this is. I'd like to add that, even though "cities" are mentioned, Oregon can often boast some pretty nice beer options even in dives pretty far away from the urban areas. That still blows me away after being here 9 years.

    ReplyDelete