A dive bar is a thing to behold. At a lonely crossroad on the prairie or the heart of a city, dive bars are not selling lifestyle, or class. They are selling liquor. And we go to drink.
The Elbow Room, which is featured prominently in the book, held the illustrious title of the "most despicable bar in America" according to a mythical magazine article, purported to be Playboy.
Coke lines spidered across tables, knives flashed, smelly hordes of crab fishermen crushed around the bar. Money flowed, tempers flared, and reputations were won and lost.
In April 2005, the Elbow Room closed
For good. For the best. The Elbow, which began life as the Blue Fox Cocktail Lounge, a military watering hole, during WW II, survived Japanese bombs, Aleutian weather, thousands of crab fisherman, but it couldn’t survive the new Unalaska, with pavement and street lights and fire codes and more discerning visitors. It couldn’t survive civilization.
The new owners, Belinda and Lisa, have renamed the joint Latitudes. They’ll keep the old building until spring 2006, when the old blue icon will be ripped down to make way for something nicer, with open rafters and a better smell.
People from Washington D.C. to Seattle called the Elbow after they heard the news, shocked and saddened that it could happen. With its passing, the end of an era, a last frontier, is gone.
Read more by visiting these sites
| the book | the author | the bookclub | bookworld | the cave |
