House rules

What counts

A dive here is a bar first. Drinks are ordinary. The room is a little worn. Regulars outrank a reservation app. You can show up looking like yourself.

This directory is not for:

• Velvet-rope cocktail palaces
• Hotel bars that charge downtown rent for an old-fashioned
• Sports-betting warehouses with 40 televisions and a dress code
• Brand-new rooms styled to look dirty

Honky-tonks, cash-only strip-club basements, and 24-hour corner bars can all qualify if they still work as neighborhood rooms. We would rather miss a borderline spot than stretch the word.

How the catalog is built

Version one is a structured file in the repo, not a fake CMS. Every listing needs a public source that already calls the place a dive, or treats it as one in plain language. Addresses appear only when we are confident. Hours are omitted until they can be checked.

Photos are not scraped from the internet. Cards use generated matchbook posters so we never hotlink a copyrighted bar photo.

The site is maintained in public at github.com/travisrr/allthedives. If a bar closed, cleaned up into something else, or never belonged here, say so.