Spirit and blue-collar roots, crumbling temples of simpler times. Indeed, these bars are intertwined in Baltimore’s identity-frayed tethers to its underdog “People come here from other places and find their own families. “When one place goes, a little piece of you goes with them,” says Andy Norris, second-generation owner of Bertha’s Mussels, which will shutter on South Broadway this month after 50 years in business. Then the coronavirus pandemic closed even more of these one-of-a-kind haunts for good. In 1968, there were 2,200 liquor licenses to today’s 1,221, and by 1979, Baltimore magazine predicted that, soon enough, “New bars will all look the same, and how a drinker is to tell one hanging-fern/exposed-brick/butcher-block-tabled spot from another escapes. Would probably strike if we closed, so we keep going,” says Ana Marie Cushing of Cat’s Eye Pub on Thames Street, even as neighbors like BAR and The Wharf Rat fall like dominoes.īars were once a dime a dozen-some straightlaced, some rowdy-with seemingly everyīlock offering a beer and a shot to a mix of shift workers, sailors, artists, newspapermen, and other street-roving souls. Night and day, there are regulars, many of whom live within crawling distance. Don’t expect a website or social media-just know that they close late (or at a last-minute time of their choosing) and a handful still open at sunrise.
The faint whiff of cigarette smoke is commonplace. Maybe there’s a jukebox, or a dartboard, and often, a well-worn pool Always, they sell affordable drinks and lack most modern amenities.
As longtime owners age out, new developers increasingly move in, leaving a sleek homogeny of high-end cocktail bars and hipsterfied microbreweries in their wake.ĭive bars, by contrast, defy definition, ranging in the eye of the beholder from simple, old-school, corner taverns, beloved for their bouffanted barkeeps, to rough-around-the-edges drinking dens, with loud music and dim lighting. now an undeniable term of endearment, particularly in these changing times. Today, we call them dive bars, which was once heard as an insult but is. Like 1919 have become an endangered species. Of course, such stardust does not grace every drinking establishment, and bars “But at the end of the day, it’s just a bar. Got pregnant because of my drinks,” says Hutchins. “We’ve had two deaths here, one wedding, and some people have even told me that they “Put something up and it never comes down,” she says, lookingĪround the shrine-like walls, where every inch is covered in fading photographs, folk art, bumper stickers, cattle skulls, and Christmas lights that glow year-round-an eclectic patina that reflects the cast of local characters who have made this place their bar. Hangout, tucked back from busy Fleet Street on the eastern edge of Fells Point. Usually, though, she’s downstairs, amidst the tchk of beer cans andĪbove the other loose-leashed dogs who mosey in through the alley of this neighborhood Sign back in 1984, and she now lives upstairs with her husband, John, and theirīull terrier, Sniffy. “Hi, Dominic-what can I get for ya?” she shouts to a regular, her gray braid swinging as she lets out a raspy laugh and The Young Rascals’ 1967 “Groovin’” plays softly on the stereo.īy all accounts, Hutchins is at home here, as her family bought the place and its blue neon Who arrive as soon as the door opens at 5 p.m. Native stands with her back to the register, taking drink orders from patrons On a Wednesday evening in late October, the 60-year-old Baltimore
ALLY HUTCHINS HAS SPENT MOST OF HER LIFE behind the barĪt 1919.
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