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| - Here's The Thing: This is not a dive bar. This is not a Thai dive. This is not even a dive opium den. As some of the world sees the ruse of faking orgasms as a ruse to make blood boil, if you fake being a dive on me, I get pissed. I get feisty. I become the tantrum you're not interested in. Don't fake being a dive bar. Bottom line. It's the epitome of why old people don't like young people: it's why Brooklyn in 1992 hates the current future that attempts to be Brooklyn in 1992.
I asked for: "Give me the dive-y-ist, dankest most bizarre earth house that's a bar that serves food." Answer: "well, there's this place that always had a cat, was shut down for rats in its kitchen known for dirt cheap thai food and serves shit sangrias." I then looked to The Source here and all the reviews said the same thing. It also passed the vaunted Sticky Floor Test: search "Sticky Floor" on Yelp, and you're 99 out of 100 times going to get a dive. This time I did not. Now I'll admit, I asked for a dive-y food dive bar, which is a twist on the classic. However, especially in this case when the world weaves in food into a dive it typically trends to the other end of the alley, where no one would ever go, let alone eat.
We walk in, and it's packed -- way too packed for a dive. And everyone was happy. We find a table for two in the back and I immediately realize... there's not even a bar here. Yeah, there's a corner of the room where they stock booze and serve from, but there is not a place for my Uncle to faint off a stool with bloody elbows. No bar. No bueno.
The allure of the $15 Sangria pitcher kept me there. And the noticeably $6 Pad Thai. 48 ounces of Sangria, two fists of noodles for $20. Four pints of more sprite than red wine later, I found myself next to the one I came to Toronto for in a nook in a corner in an entirely packed room under dim lights, dark walls and Amsterdam teenager art wondering: if this is Toronto's concept of a dive bar, how did a city survive for so long and prosper with 5 million people without having a true dive in their midst?
Don't worry, there's no cliffhanger: there are definitely dives in Toronto. Great ones. Maybe the best I've seen and I feel like I only tasted just the tip of the smut that happens in this town (read: I watched a man refuse the call from a woman to go to the House of Lancer, so there's more to go.) But for this place to attempt to pass as a dive bar, and for others to continue to tell them they are, they're wrong. If someone can promise me that the moment I step inside the Green Room, my foot sticks to the floor and that cat curls up on my leg in complete silence, and an old man tells me about the time he duped the Nazis with his Bayonet named The Fake Orgasm, then I'll call it a dive.
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