My definition of a dive bar is when you pay for a drink; there is 95% alcohol in the drink rather then some sugary Sex and the City drink special of the week. Most of the people there are not pretentious but love to talk.

One of the first local dive bars I visited with my friend, we nick-named the ‘Opium Den’ since it’s so friendly that after one drink and you end up staying all night. The only set-back is that the bartender there controls the music selection and that’s not cool with my controlling personality.

The friend of Type A personalities at any bar is the jukebox.

We journeyed to another dive bar with a jukebox and some interesting history. The new dive bar we stumbled into was notorious in the 70’s and some how related to the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The premise of this movie was that a single girl teaching deaf mutes in NYC during the day would go out to bars each night and bring home a different guy. The movie includes good dysfunctional family scenes including a sister who was a true ‘swinger.’ Swinging back in the 70’s meant participating in orgies.

Diane Keaton stars in the movie looking young and fresh before she started wearing men’s suits and going out with Woody Allen (pre-taking naked pictures and marrying his Korean step-daughter days…I still can’t watch his movies). Some surprising performances by Richard Gere and Tom Berenger who both are looking young and very fit. Richard (pre-gerbil rumor days) is the scary one-night stand who keeps coming back and Tom is a coked out homosexual/bisexual who ends Diane’s good time. This is one of my favorite movies so I had to give my own synopsis.

I really loved the way NYC looked in the 70s’ when it was raw, seedy and dirty. That’s when I really wanted to live here.

The real story, which I found out from one of the staff, is just as seedy. It seems that a girl and her boyfriend picked up another guy at the bar and took him back to her place. She lived directly across the street from the bar. The boyfriend was freaked out by the guy and left. The guy kills the girl and it becomes a pretty big story in the 70’s. Parents used this story to warn young girls of having too much of a good time in the city. Maybe that was just my mom.

Even though threesomes did not work in the 70’s there still might be hope for the future.

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