Dive Bars

[CatsbyAZ]

Dropping this obscure media in the Dive Bars thread—

A 2008 low production documentary lamenting the relentless, multi-decades corporatization of Tempe’s Mill Ave leading to the loss of its dive bars and vibrant music scene.

Highlight quotes:

"I went to Mill Avenue in 1969 and there were bikers everywhere and…I never seen a street rocking like this. It’s one of the reasons I decided to stay in Arizona…"

"Mill Avenue had a real nice mixture of artists…nights of streets blocked off, people coming out to see the bands play…you could see nine bands in one night."

"I went to college in Tucson so I’d come up to Mill Ave and I would walk through there and my mind would just explode…people used to reenact Shakespeare right there on Mill. When I came back in 2000; the scene, the art, everybody I was looking for was gone. Just Starbucks and Gap. No longer the guy with a guitar or this really cool energy of artists."

"…we lost all the dive bars, all the good drinking bars, the music bars, so we went out to Austin and had to leave Arizona …which is a shock to me that we can live in a city that at one point had the potential of being Austin. To have that and to blow it to this extreme just blows my mind."

"…what is really being lost more than anything else is a sense of place, a feeling that you are in Tempe Arizona when you walk down the street…down in Tucson you walk Fourth Avenue or the neighborhoods by the University of Arizona and you know that you’re in Tucson Arizona. Even as recently as six years ago when I first moved to Tempe I could walk down Mill and know that I was on Mill Avenue which I’d been hearing about forever. I grew up in Tucson and everybody talked about how cool Mill was…now it’s completely different…condos and rowhouses…rowhouses have never been a part of Arizona architecture. Even the Mill, which is what Mill Avenue is named after, the flower mill, is being turned into a shopping center."

[84Cat]

The Bambi bar was sold and is going to be turned into some kind of drive thru business. The Bay Horse Tavern is also for sale.

https://tucsonfoodie.com/2024/04/30/bambi-bar-sold/