The Dive Bars of America: Irish Pub Parking in Rear (Quincy, MA)

by Dan Moore
@SouthieDanimal

This column features one of many beautiful dive bars in America. I love these places. The dive bar is my preferred destination when rambling about town and taking in a few pops. So join us, won’t you, as we venture forth into this vast, delicious wilderness?

As usual, I’ll be using a 5 category rating system which will be rated between 1 and 4 handlebar mustaches, which is the preferred mustache by 9 out of 10 old timers in dive bars.

IRISH PUB PARKING IN REAR 

51 Billings Rd, Quincy, MA 02171

(It seems the official name of this place is just The Irish Pub, but that gigantic, glowing neon sign says otherwise, so I refer to it by it’s full, Christian name)

In the last year, I moved to the Quincy area. What that means is I’m stuck in, essentially, Chinatown Jr. There are an abundance of Sushi joints, businesses with chickens in the window & small people walking around holding pink plastic bags EVERYWHERE. It’s damn near impossible to find a good dive bar in the area. There was a great one called the Alumni Café, alas, it has gone the way of my sobriety, dead & gone forever…to be replaced by another Chinese restaurant. How novel.


Desperate to find a dark, wooden hole where I could drain some booze, a female co-worker (typically I say ‘some broad I work with’, but I’m trying to be appropriate here) of mine brought me to this joint. This chick could DRINK, and she promised me a good spot to knock back some cold ones. She was a regular there, so much so that when she passed out a few hours later face down on a table, they barely noticed & said don’t worry, happens all the time. Good thing they knew her, or I woulda felt bad about leaving her there.

IPPIR is a long room, shaped like a wide alley, with booths on the right, and the bar on the left. It also has your requisite wooden paneling & toothless patrons.

Fun Factor: The bar opens into a back room type area, with dartboards, juke box and additional seating…and that’s it for entertainment. There’s a couple of badly placed TVs. This is an awful bar to try to catch a game in, unless you’re in the first four seats at the entrance of the bar. Other than that, your neck is straining as badly as the Sox pitching. The only other fun comes from the lotto & scratchie machine. It’s fun in the sense that you can watch your rent go into a machine and never come back out.  But it’s a bar, so there’s still fun involved in getting soused.

  
Cast of Regulars: Perhaps I don’t venture to this establishment as much as I should, but as far as local color, these regulars are a tad blah. There’s no one that sticks out, ya know? There’s no Tom, the belligerent veteran, or Sandy, the promiscuous octogenarian. It’s sad in its own way.

OUT OF FOUR

Beer Choices:  PLEASE DISPERSE THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Not much choice in this joint. Your typical Bud products, PBR, they do have Yeungling, and they carry the big bottle of Magners for skirt consumption. Pitcher of Bud Light sets you back $12, but be warned: I don’t think the lines have been cleaned since St. Patrick drove the frogs into the bogs & banished all the vermin

OUT OF FOUR

Stench:  Amazing dive bar stink in here. The combination of stale beer, bar pizza, daytime drinker body odor & shame really give out a top notch odor. If there was a Yankee Candle flavor called “Dive Bar” all they would hafta do is scrape the bottom of the rubber mats behind the bar & insert a wick.

Overall:  Now, it may seem that I’m down on Irish Pub Parking In Rear, but that is not at all the case. I love this joint. Piece by piece, sure it may not add up to a beautiful whole, but added together,  there’s a certain insurmountable charm to this place. The bartenders are a lotta fun, the beer is cheap, and when you got the right amount of idiots in there telling drunken stories, well, by God, you got a little piece of heaven. Drunk, stinky heaven.

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