A shot and a beer: the staples shared between working-class friends in American dive bars since forever.
Recently, on an average Tuesday, a drinking buddy and I went to Part Time Lover, a new bar in North Park, to test the affordability of our favorite combination. The results were not promising. Voice of San Diego coughed up $45.24, not including tip, for the round. Thank God the era of news organizations picking up a bar tab isn’t entirely extinct.
We chose Part Time Lover as the starting point of our investigation for obvious reasons. It was, in the recent past, among the very best of San Diego dives and, for those who knew it, still hurts to speak its name. Bar Pink had $2 happy hour Tecate. Bar Pink was a perfect place for a shot and a beer.
Part Time Lover – the bar that took its place – is a hipster Disneyland.
Part Time Lover is what happens to the world when investors and their capital descend on the beloved dive bars of this fine city. It is happening all around us. And we react with the apathy of a lush, too deep in his cups to care.
Enter Consortium Holdings: headwater of investment money, art director of ubiquitous dive bar chic, lord of Instagrammable interiors.
Consortium – which seems to own half the bars in San Diego – got its fat fingers on Bar Pink when it closed, during the pandemic.
Walk inside and behold: the decadence of budget art deco. Two large, glowing stars loom above the barroom. Soft pink light filters out from cylindrical shaped fixtures behind the bar. A live DJ spins just in front of an actual record store at the back of the space. The old stage is gone. It’s now a sitting area, with velvety curtains draped across the ceiling.
Peruse the $12 to $15 cocktail menu. Some of them look good. Goddamn you, Consortium.
Shoes no longer make that tacky, ripping sound when they cross the floor, but one actual vestige of the old Bar Pink remains. The bathrooms, from floor to ceiling, are still the same – except for the imported, heated Japanese toilets, that is. Old show posters from Bar Pink line the walls.
This appears to be homage – and an attempt at blending the grimy aesthetic of dives with the nuevo art deco that is universal in renovated bars from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
The sticky bathroom floors don’t really feel like homage, though. They feel more like a kick in the shin to everyone who ever loved Bar Pink.
Look up above those god-like stars and take in the exposed – not even in a retro kind of way – rafters. Like the dirty bathroom, they have another message for the punters.
We know you, they say. We have your number. We don’t even need to finalize the details.
The death of Bar Pink is just one loss in a steady stream of losses.
The most recent is Gilly’s, another North Park bar. Gilly’s was really disgusting. It had a townie vibe and almost always smelled a little bit like farts. Gilly’s was really beautiful.
It was like the greatest lines about a bar ever written: “Faces along the bar // Cling to their average day: // The lights must never go out, // The music must always play, // All the conventions conspire // To make this fort assume // The furniture of home.”
Two people spun from the Consortium universe recently bought Gilly’s, as San Diego Magazine reported last month. For now, the lights are out. Weirdly, if you peek through the windows, the TV is still on.
They plan to change the name to Gilly’s House of Cocktails – and make the drink menu more fancy. They say it’ll still be cheap.
San Diego Mag described the new ethos like this: “A hell of a cocktail program. An obsessive’s collection of spirits. Ice that’s clear as rain.”
Excuse me? No Gilly’s regular has ever given a shit about the clarity of the ice or the collection of spirits. We wanted a Jameson, with a Modelo on the side – and we wanted these mustachioed money men to never know we existed. We wanted them to keep their apron-wearing bartenders across the street in the new Lafayette Hotel.
The Lafayette, sigh. I know another reporter who temporarily lived in the Lafayette some years ago. It was cheap enough to do that. It had a bar. It had an amazing pool and, yes, sometimes there was glass in it. No one worth knowing minded.
Now, it is a dizzying place – owned by Consortium – obviously. I just checked the price of a room. You don’t want to know, but I’ll tell you, anyway. For a poolside room with a king bed, it is $412.46.
It doesn’t take a gilded makeover to shake the salt out a place.
The owners of Waterfront Bar and Grill – a place with plenty grime – bought Aero Club and Club Marina in recent years. The decor (aside from the new game room bar attached to Aero) and the prices haven’t changed drastically. But the fishermen and pilots who used to haunt those places have been partially displaced by a younger, brighter eyed crowd. A darker angel lost its wings.
The owners of Turf Club may be the best stewards of dive bars currently doing business in this city. They bought Nunu’s a few years ago and, despite fears that someone would let too much light in, Nunu’s soul remains.
I have nothing but love for the Stamatopoulos brothers for what they do with Turf and Nunu’s.
But if there is any lesson to learn from 21st century newspapers – another dying institution – it’s this: The largesse of people with money can not be relied on to save the things we love.
The asshole bartenders and sticky surfaces are only skin-deep qualities of a good dive bar. Their true beauty lies in their economy. They are cheap enough for a slice of community to take hold. Investors thrive on the tourist trade, date nights and people who wander around doing Instagram live videos of all the cool lighting features.
So, seek them out while they’re still here. In private, I can even recommend a few. Lay your money down. It’s that or church.
Jakob McWhinney contributed drinking and thoughts to this report.
Correction: This story previously stated that the new owners of Gilly’s fired all of the previous staff. The staff were informed that they would be let go from their jobs, but the new owners say that was a miscommunication from the previous owner. Employees were allowed to keep their job or take a cash buy-out.
More bars could stand to offer something to justify their existence and serve the community by providing something more than a seat and a place to buy alcohol by the serving. By booking (and paying) live music, for example, or hosting events such as trivia, karaoke, and so forth. The bottom tier of effort isn’t going to cut it any longer, if it ever did.
A bar is nothing more than the people who go there. The people you attract, that’s your bar.
Cute article. Seems to me there is plenty of room for both, and nothing wrong with having some nice places where you don’t stick to the seat.
Despite Bidenflation and a higher cost of living it seems there are still lots of dive bars in North County…I know Keno’s is being torn down but off the top of my head there is still the Saddle Bar, The office, Regal Seagull , new place coming on CV rd by Roberto’s ,
This isn’t North County though, this is North Park, a complete different scene
Respect. I live in North Park, hail from North County, and patronize establishments in both areas. I embrace the differences and know what I’m getting in each locale.
This, exactly. Write it straight about investors and the impact on housing shortage, because it affects young and old and it probably is being subsidized, yes?
This is a fun and well-written article but what I found ironic is that reporters for VOSD could get so worked up and morally outraged over the acquisition, and then closing, of affordable neighborhood bars by venture capitalist consortia, which then reopened them as more upscale with more expensive drink, when the exact same practice is happening in San Diego neighborhoods with regard to housing, especially rental housing, and VOSD reporters have no problem with it and no moral outrage. In fact, VOSD is a booster of the mayor’s housing agenda. While I think neighborhood bars are nice, housing is more important. In fact, the “neighborhood” goes beyond the bar and is affected by the same economic forces but Will doesn’t look beyond the confines of the bar to the neighborhood beyond it to see what is happening there.
I guess I was just struck by the disproportionality of the moral outrage and disdain shown by VOSD reporters for venture capital’s purchasing neighborhood bars compared to its loving coverage of these types of companies purchasing housing and jacking up rents and overall property values to make homeownership less and less affordable for ordinary San Diegans. The process is the same but only the one affecting elective leisure activity is castigated in an almost over-the-top fashion.
This is not a housing article! It’s an editorial POV lament about corporate greed ruining a once-great scene in San Diego. IMHO, VOSD does a fair job covering the housing affordability crisis, so perhaps you’re not paying attention. Mugs up, Will & Jakob. Next round on Scott Lewis! 🙂
C-Note, I think you missed Alex’s point. He did not suggest that this article talk about housing. Instead he asked that the VOSD reporters express the same level of moral outrage at the impacts of outside investors buying up housing and resulting in increasing rents and real estate prices, which contribute significantly to San Diego’s affordable housing and homelessness crises. I believe Alex’s comments were reasonable and well stated.
Amen! I had to laugh when my rent was increased by my rental company owned by another giant real-estate operation, SRM owned by Fenton. The increase was not funny of course, just the letter that explained the increase was due to competing “market rates”. The market is going up because the giant corporations that own so much of the rental properties have counted the beans and know the market is not quite tapped out yet. meanwhile if you are at the low end of income there is literally no place in San Diego to rent that won’t break the bank
The housing issue is serious, but with respect Alex, that’s not what this article is about. This article is about bars, so the author wrote it about bars.
That’s like me saying “yeah I see this comment is getting all worked up and morally outraged about rental insecurity, but says nothing about the homeless epidemic.” Or fentanyl. Or the humanitarian crisis in Angola.
Not everything can be about everything. This is a good and fun and well-written article, and neither Mr. Huntsberry nor this article can or should be held accountable for everything published on this domain.
With respect Jason, I wasn’t asking that the authors write about everything. I was simply pointing out that the (perhaps tongue-in-cheek, perhaps not) over-the-top moral outrage on the effects of gentrification (that was the real subject of the article) was misplaced or at least revealed a bias that usually goes unacknowledged: reporters only excoriate venture (or vulture) capitalists when their investments displace neighborhood watering holes, not when they displace whole neighborhoods. Having followed and enjoyed (for the most part) VOSD reporting closely for years now, the tone of the article just struck me as tone-deaf, a tempest in a teapot, when there are real tempests wrecking havoc on San Diego communities that our mayor and city council are stoking and encouraging, rather than mitigating, with changes to the city code that encourage the kind of gentrification that the author of the piece was lambasting. Editorially, VOSD supports these efforts but… as the neighborhood goes… so go the bars. I was surprised that the authors couldn’t see that.
This reporter sounds like a very handsome man.
Fun nostalgic article, I used to live near and enjoy Turf Club in the 80’s-90’s & now live near Nunu’s, didn’t know anout the owners 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼. As for the comments on housing, it’s complex (no excuse) but quality architecture, more public space (kids & dogs), walkable communities, protecting “Open Spaces,” are part of what we need in addition to primarily “Low & Very Low,” cost housing as outlined by the recent City Staff report for past 2 years. We need a fun article to balance the difficult challenges we and our elected officials face. Thanks Will, it’s very entertaining!
Great article, I think you missed the opportunity to showcase some other places that are doing it right. If I recall correctly Convoy Music Bar in Kearny Mesa opened first and it is the same listening bar concept. They are phenomenally better than what Consortium sloppily copied.
Consortium also bought a whole strip mall on Adams, right across from Blind Lady Ale House, putting 5 or 6 small businesses out. And all in a neighborhood where there are a lot of institutional neighborhood pubs.
Pretty sure the article was a POV lament about neighborhood dives getting eaten up by corporate conglomerates that are only interested in greed. Bar Pink was one of a kind. Listening bar concept? Try going to a show @ Casbah or Soda Bar — that’s my idea of a listening bar concept.
The grande dame Lafayette was where my parents bought me SD Charger season tickets in 1968. SD Charger headquarters. Tugs and Maynards were legend. Sonny Barger at Maynards and the SDPD chopper overhead as the cat busted up the place. Tom at Tugs was my competitor in triathlon around the world. Memory lane for an old SD Mayoral candidate. Are you boyz supporting Dan of Bills pick Mister Larry!
Lol Hat’s off for that Reporter… Awesome Scene story captured by this reporter 🙂
Really well-written – entertaining to read. I think this sums it all up nicely: “The largesse of people with money can not be relied on to save the things we love.”
Personally, I couldn’t care less about dive bars or bars at all, but it was a humorous read. However, it bothered me that a non-profit, investigative news organization let its donors pick up the tab for this puff piece. If that’s what VOSD is doing with my donations, I’m tempted take my annual membership donation and spend it at a bar (or maybe a restaurant).