I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, but writing about dives makes me feel like a tourist. For starters, I don’t often go back to most of them, let alone become a regular. There are only so many hours in a week, and I’ve been trying to spend a lot of them functionally sober. But also, to properly convey the experience of a given watering hole, I have to accurately capture atmosphere, and part of that means reporting on the people who drink in these places all the time, because I’m a firm believer that a bar’s regulars are as much a part of a bar’s ambiance and (ugh, do I hate this word) “offerings” as what’s on the shelves. Unfortunately, that means sketching a lot of sketchy characters as respectfully as possible, even if they are wrecked and wretched on a near-Dickensian level.
[box_info]Rodeo Tavern
3403 Azle Av, FW.
817-378-9890.[/box_info]
These and other thoughts cycled through my head on Monday evening as I watched some old drunks being old drunks at Rodeo Tavern, a bar on Azle Avenue about halfway between the Stockyards and I-820W. Rodeo Tavern is a mid-sized dive with a long bar running the length of the room to the left of the front door and a pool table area to its right, the latter washed in the muted neon blue from a Natural Light sign. Above the pool table are a bunch of cowboy hats affixed to the ceiling. At one point I asked the bartender, a guy in his 60s named Jack, what those were all about. He speculated they were a hold-over from the bar’s previous owner.
I sat down at the far end of the bar near the back door. If I had to guess, the bar top’s ancient veneer was supposed to resemble pink marble, but it made me think of a slice of head cheese or one of those cross-sectioned human body specimens exhibited at the Perot Museum, except rectangular and extending for 20 or 30 feet –– or forever, if you happened to look in one of the mirrors hanging on the walls opposite the bar’s ends. I divided my gawking between the mirrors’ infinite reflections of the bar’s mises en scène and a Fox News program flashing stridently on a TV hanging from the ceiling in the corner where the back bar meets the room’s back wall. Next to the TV were racks of Lays and Doritos, beneath them a caddy full of white plastic swizzle sticks, their ends fashioned into the likeness of Jack Daniel.
Two bar stools to my left sat a biker and his old lady. He and another MC brother had come in to shoot pool and scope the place out for their club’s poker run. To his wife’s left festered a handful of variously aged haggard dudes in similarly advanced stages of inebriation. One of them peeled himself off the bar and made a point to introduce himself to the bikers. I wondered if it was because of the patches on their kuttes, or if the people here are just generally friendly.
I’m gonna go with the latter. When Jack brought me my Budweiser (served with a koozie, always a nice touch), he plopped down a couple of stainless-steel bottle openers, each about the size of a quarter and cut in the shape of Texas. I asked him what they were for.
“Oh,” he replied. “I got a bunch of them. You can just have ’em.”
I don’t know if Rodeo Tavern’s hospitality always includes free swag, so I’ll assume I was just having a great day.
Also having a great day: this weathered, leathery, middle-aged dude in a tank top and backward Longhorns ballcap laughing and yelling in a gravely baritone that reverberated out of his throat like an A/C unit grinding on rusted bearings. He totally lost it over his buddy’s story about some guy named (what else?) Randy who didn’t know how to drive a boat. I didn’t hear the lead-up, but the punchline part was evidently hilarious, as most stories involving guys named Randy tend to be.
The bikers left, and before long, so did that drunk guy’s friends. As I made my own exit, the guy turned to me and held out his hand.
“My name’s Douglas,” he said with a grin.
I shook his hand and told him my name. It was only later when I realized that at the time I was leaving, I wasn’t feeling like a tourist anymore. –– Steve Steward
Follow Steve @bryanburgertime.
