Just Dive into It - NY and DC Edition

I love dive bars. Gridskipper has a review today of one of my favorite dive bars in New York City, Rudy's Bar & Grill. Cheap beer. Free hot dogs. What more could you want in a bar? And speaking of New York dive bars, I have yet to make it to the legendary Mars Bar (also reviewed recently by Gridskipper). But, after reading a great story at Leveraged Sell-Out about a group of investment banks who wander into the bar, I am definitely dropping by it the next time I'm in the city.

Our four fine, upper middle class young professionals had no idea the seediness of the shithole they were going to enter. They were clueless to the level of bleeding edgefulness, dirty hippery, and post-punk punkdom they were going to witness. Our unfortunate financial friends had merely all managed to all get out of work early and decided they’d go to a “dive.” Unfortunately for Blake, Seth, John, and Connor, they were thinking “dive” like Dive 75 or Off the Wagon-“dive”, not “dive” like “let’s jab each other in the eye with needles filled with H and then dance around dead baby carcasses”-“dive.”

Sadly, Gridskipper also gives DC's overrated Eighteenth Street Lounge a positive review today. Gross. If you visit DC, don't waste your time there. The real action is in DC's dive bars: Asylum, Black Cat, Lucky Bar, The Raven, etc. Unless you want martinis. In which case you should get the best dirty martini in town at Off the Record in the Hay-Adams Hotel. Big olives. Stuffed with blue cheese. Heaven in your mouth. The bar also has a great scotch list.