{"id":630151,"date":"2025-12-13T12:30:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T12:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630151\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T12:30:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T12:30:40","slug":"are-american-style-dive-bars-in-london-just-movie-sets-or-the-real-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630151\/","title":{"rendered":"Are American-style dive bars in London just movie sets or the real thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cFor those of us on a limited salary and [with] an unlimited thirst for alcohol and trouble, there is no better place to find it than in a New York City dive bar,\u201d writes Wendy Mitchell in the introduction to her 2003 guide to the city\u2019s best dives. \u201cFor those of us with limited space, your local bar can effectively function as your living room.\u201d Reading Mitchell\u2019s words, written more than two decades ago, I can\u2019t help but think of the twenty- and thirtysomething workers living in my city, London, today. Cash-tight and space-poor, they (by which I mean we) are the loneliest in the country<\/a>, unable to host in their homes and desperately lacking in third spaces. Could the American dive bar\u2014an unlikely import that is swiftly providing a template for London\u2019s coolest new bars\u2014be an alternative for community and, more importantly, fun?<\/p>\n

What Mitchell is selling sounds appealing. A collective craving for algorithm-free interactions grips the air on nights out, a tangible desire to meet people, whether friends or prospective partners, out in the wild. The dive bar seems like the perfect solution. At least, the idealized version we have in our heads does anyway: of a place where the drinks are cheap, strong, and designed to be consumed with your arm around the guy sitting next to you, whom you only just met but are now calling your best friend through slurred speech. It\u2019s <\/strong>an image constructed from Tarantino films and sitcoms and music videos that makes these spaces feel plump with possibility. Gritty dive bars are remarkable in their unremarkableness. You could meet anyone there.<\/p>\n

My fellow countrymen might be reading this, scoffing and sarcastically suggesting that we have a casual drinking place to meet new people\u2014it\u2019s called the pub. Outside London, I\u2019d be in agreement. But these fulcrums of British society aren\u2019t conducive to organic interaction like they once were, at least not in the capital. (I\u2019m not entirely sure how, but I do feel as if the arrival of the 8-plus-pound pint is to blame.) Others have felt the shift too. Greg Boyce owns one of the city\u2019s buzziest dive-ish bars, Rasputin\u2019s, and says the sociable pubs back home in Scotland inspired his bar as much as the New York dive scene. \u201cIn London, you get your table in the corner of a pub, and that\u2019s kind of your little bit. You don\u2019t really interact with other people,\u201d he says. And often, that\u2019s all you want. But sometimes it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Boyce\u2019s bar is a place where those interactions happen. Rasputin\u2019s has the drink-combo deals, the loud sound, and dim lighting we associate with this cheap and cheerful aesthetic. Others share a similar sensibility. But\u2014and here I turn an ear to my grumbling American readers\u2014are they actually dive bars? That\u2019s harder to answer. What happens when they\u2019re separated from their country\u2019s history and transplanted into another city? Stripped of context, are these authentic bars or artfully constructed sets?<\/p>\n

London\u2019s new dive-type bars, with their neon lighting and tequila-heavy menus, are very different from long-standing establishments that have been dive-y for decades. For one thing, the older dives don\u2019t shy from that title. For some, it\u2019s even a major selling point. For live music and cheap beers, rock fans have long been flocking to Blondies in Clapton, Helgi\u2019s in Hackney, Aces and Eights in Tufnell Park, Slim Jim\u2019s Liquor Store in Islington. In the other camp, predominantly in central London, you\u2019ll find the sportier \u201cAmerican-themed\u201d dive bars, like BLOODsports and the chain <\/strong>Passyunk Avenue. Dollar bills cover the walls of the latter company\u2019s bars, fluttering somewhat uncannily. It takes a lot of curation to look this lived in, the franchise\u2019s head of culture, Jessi Riley, told the New York Times<\/a>: \u201cI feel like I purvey more culture in this place than I ever did in any museum I ever worked in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lord knows Britain has a long and complex history around drinking, particularly in pubs. But dive bars aren\u2019t the integral part of our culture\u2014at least not yet\u2014that they are for <\/strong>Americans. To me, those sports bars sound more like theatrical immersive experiences than the casual boozing spots they claim to be. I\u2019m mulling over the authenticity question on a tepid Thursday (\u201cthe new Friday\u201d for London\u2019s hybrid workers) as I head out to Hackney, in East London. In the same strip as Helgi\u2019s, two different dive-adjacent bars with similar styling have opened in the past two years.<\/p>\n

From the outside, the only thing that connects these establishments is how easily you\u2019d walk past them. Yet peek around the blacked-out windows at Easy\u00a08 and you\u2019ll find another world within: a crammed, bustling bar that seats fewer than 20 people and stimulates all the senses simultaneously. The mise-en-sc\u00e8ne is equal parts sleazy (a nude calendar, a Modelo poster signed by the model with the words Especialmente para usted, Vicky), sacred (a framed Jesus portrait, prayer candles), and sentimental (family photos, customer drawings), all draped in rainbow-hued Christmas lights. It\u2019s the exact design I conjure in my mind when I hear the words dive bar. Were it created by a Brit, I would almost call it a pastiche.<\/p>\n

But Easy\u00a08\u2019s owner knows a thing or two about dives. Raised in Los Angeles, Julian Denis runs another neon-lit spot around the corner, the vegan Sichuan Chinese restaurant Facing Heaven (my personal favorite restaurant in London, for what it\u2019s worth). Denis opened Easy\u00a08 in spring 2023, squishing the bar into the teensy space once occupied by his former restaurant Mao Chow. His only desire had been to re-create the dive bars he \u201cmissed most from home\u201d in L.A. and found lacking on the \u201cpolished and sterile\u201d London scene. \u201cWe literally have local drug dealers brushing shoulders with ambassadors on a regular basis. A dive should be the great equalizer for anyone who walks through the door,\u201d he muses.<\/p>\n

Easy\u00a08\u2019s extremely limited capacity means it can\u2019t be a place for everyone, but it is a place that gets people talking due to proximity, if nothing else. That works well with Mitchell\u2019s top tips for \u201csuccessful diving\u201d: \u201cAlways sit at the bar,\u201d and \u201cno matter how many pals you\u2019re with, talk to at least one stranger.\u201d The low prices act as an appropriate and useful leveler. Tacos are just 2\u00a0pounds ($2, according to a sign on the wall) and served on paper plates. They\u2019re unreasonably delicious too. To drink, there are well-priced cocktails and the obligatory Pabst Blue Ribbon. Only upon rising to continue our miniature bar crawl do I realize quite how surreptitiously strong the margaritas have been. On a night of dive bar hopping, it\u2019s a feeling I relish.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Jaya Saxena
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\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

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We turn left out of the door and totter precisely five doors up the road. One year after Easy\u00a08 arrived on the scene, another dive bar (although that title is more hotly contested here) also opened its doors. The latest venture from East London sandwich aficionados Dom\u2019s Subs, Rasputin\u2019s is a more spacious, less brightly lit affair, built where the team\u2019s old prep kitchen was. Customers sit sprawled across low sofas, at high tables, and at the bar, engaged in vigorous conversation with one another.<\/p>\n

Like Denis, Boyce built Rasputin\u2019s in the image of the kind of bar he wanted to visit. It should be \u201clow stakes,\u201d a place for him and his friends to hang out, with his favorite artwork on the walls and something \u201ca little bit nostalgic and weird\u201d playing on a small TV above the bar. Today it is the 1988 film She-Wolves of the Wasteland. The bartenders aren\u2019t told what films to put on, Boyce insists, but it does help that \u201ceveryone that works there is really into B movies or The X-Files.\u201d There are local beers on tap and Guinness, while you can nab a \u201cmystery shot\u201d for 3\u00a0pounds that I, admittedly, have never been brave enough to try. Hackney\u2019s drinking establishments are as easy to stereotype as New York\u2019s\u2014Rasputin\u2019s is a heady amalgamation of both.<\/p>\n

Here, the star of the show is the \u201cReaganomics special,\u201d which offers a crisp, vermouth-heavy five-olive martini and two hot dogs for 13\u00a0pounds. Boyce got the idea from Rudy\u2019s, in New York\u2019s Hell\u2019s Kitchen neighborhood, where the hot dogs come free with every drink. That\u2019s the kind of environment Boyce wants to create. When their regulars grumbled about the bar becoming overrun with \u201cnormies or whatever\u201d after placing eighth on Time Out London\u2019s Best Bars list, Boyce told them: good. \u201cI want them to be sitting next to some weathered East London hipster guy,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the experience, right? When you go to dive bars in New York or L.A., obviously people go there all the time, and they\u2019re a bit annoyed that you\u2019re there as tourists. But that adds to it. You\u2019ve got to earn being there by people being a bit shady to you.\u201d Believing that suffering is an integral part of the experience\u2014well, there\u2019s nothing more British than that.<\/p>\n

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    Still, Boyce is reluctant to use the words dive bar when it comes to Rasputin\u2019s. \u201cI get why it\u2019s called a dive bar, I get why it\u2019s called \u2018American-themed\u2019 and all this,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely channeling some of the things that\u2019s good about dive bars. But we didn\u2019t\u00a0\u2026\u201d He trails off. \u201cIt\u2019s just a bar\u00a0\u2026 more like Moe\u2019s Tavern [of The Simpsons fame] than trying to be a dive bar.\u201d That Boyce is happy to reference another American establishment (albeit an animated one) tells us a lot. We Brits can mock your enduring enthusiasm and pep\u2014and we regularly do\u2014but, deep down, I think we know that our stiff upper lips are getting in the way of connection. In order to have the organic interactions many of us crave, we might need to set that cynicism aside and be a bit more, well, American. Dive bars, or places that feel different from pubs, allow us that freedom.<\/p>\n

    Still, I can understand Boyce\u2019s hesitancy to identify as a dive, knowing that doing so would leave Rasputin\u2019s open to accusations of inauthenticity. <\/strong>Clearly, he\u2019s learned that the key to a dive bar keeping its cool is not shouting about it too loudly. The New York dives can serve as inspiration, but Londoners wanting to build a new bar can never loudly declare it if they want their establishment to be seen as a regular bar rather than a novelty. It\u2019s something Denis clearly knows from life experience: The secret to a great dive bar is \u201cequal parts giving a shit and not giving a shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

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