Sad hour

[George Thompson]

My father used the word "dive" to indicate a low joint.  He was born in
Brooklyn in the early 1890s, and not unacquainted with low joints.  The
best advice he ever gave me -- indeed, the only good advice he ever gave me
-- was, that if I should ever pass a bar with a sign in the window "Tables
for ladies" I should stay out of it, for it would undoubtedly turn out to
be a dive.  He proved right, every time.
 In the early 1970s, when I first moved to Greenwich Village, I told this
to a young woman I was working with.  A couple of weeks later, she told me
she had been walking in the West Village with her boyfriend, and they had
passed a joint with the "tables for ladies" sign.  She wanted to go in, but
the boyfriend wouldn't.  She was still miffed.

All this is preamble to the observation that it is my impression that "dive
bar" is now a term of art indicating the sort of joint frequented by young
fashionables when they want to feel louche.

GAT


On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> Good question. It might be a retronym to distinguish it from dive
> restaurants. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dive says "A seedy bar,
> nightclub, etc."
>
> On Jan 7, 2014, at 12:49 AM, John Doe <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 1:54 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> dive bar
> >
> >
> > In what way does a "dive *bar*" distinguish itself from an ordinary
> "dive"?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org