What is a "dive"?

Question

in reference to a bar.

Answer 1

A bar that you leave with its stink on you. The first tell-tale sign is your urge to vomit when you smell the place when first stepping in. The bathrooms have no ventilation, are hot, and provide the rest of the establishment with a stench that permeates your clothes and skin for a couple days. The patrons at this bar are usually not the most sophisticated and might have a few missing teeth, eyepatches, nasty scars, etc. The bartender is usually a big guy that looks like he can handle himself pretty well or a has-been-a-prostitute-looking kind of woman that chainsmokes and has a raspy quality to her voice. The establishment floors are littered with peanut shells and slightly sticky from the spilled drinks that are never mopped up. The windows of the place are heavily tinted so no daylight seeps into the place and everyone inside can sit in the relative darkness and drink away their troubles without interruption from others. The place seems to have its own dark atmosphere and after a few stiff drinks, you might start to get an idea that this place is exempt from the sense of time and the rest of the world. This has a lot to do with the aforementioned tinted windows. You get accustomed to the stench and forget yourself for a while, almost like travelling in time to a not-too-distant future. When you realize that you have either spent all your cash or spent most of the day in a place that is not on the map, you walk outside and are blinded by daylight or greeted by darkness. You can clean yourself as well as you can but you still are wearing the stench of the place on you. It is embedded in your nasal cavities and you can still smell it coming out of the pores of your skin. I used to hustle pool at places like this around the less affluent areas of Tampa, FL. I made a lot of money pretending to be drunk and ruined a lot of clothes because the smell never seems to wash out. Many different bars but almost all have the same atmosphere.

Answer 2

These are the sort of bars in which beer is cheap, the bathrooms are smelly, nobody gets kicked out unless they start a fight. People sometimes bring pets and its ok.

If its ok to throw food on the floor cuz the dogs will get it, its probably a dive.

Answer 3

A dive bar is a term used to represent a cheap, dingy drinking establishment.

Answer 4

A dive is generlly a small Run down place, or a place where the regulars are known to be Shady or have made the place known as a shady place or a "bad place" where drugs are, where there are lots of fights etc.

another word for it is "a hole in the wall"

I use the term Hole in the wall as an endearing refrence. smaller places are cozier and get to know you, your drink, and who you hng out with quicker. not all dives and hole in the walls are bad places they just arent main frame or "hip"
I love them!

Answer 5

A hole-in-the-wall bar. Not trendy, kind of on the scary side, but a place where you could go and relax and not care if anyone is going to hit on you or bother you... A place to have a drink, play pool, and kick your feet up on the table with your pint of beer and burp really loud and nobody will care!

Answer 6

A dive bar is a term used to represent a cheap, dingy drinking establishment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_bar

Answer 7

A unkempt, run-down bar. Sometimes with not the classiest cliential.

Answer 8

you have to take a dive to get so low to go to one of these places

Answer 9

a hole in the wall bar.. the kind you go into look around and say noway and leave.. only the lowest go there and mostly people that drunks i mean the alcholic type of drunks

Answer 10

My favorite places to go
Like hole in the wall bars
you know the local bar, nothin fancy