You wouldn't think I'd like dive bars so much, having almost gotten beaten to death in one.
An exaggeration? Not really. My first job at The Arizona Republic (no azcentral.com then), as I've mentioned a time or 2,000, was on the newspaper's state desk, living in Kingman and covering the northwestern part of the state. I knew so little about life I used the price of beer and potato chips to compare the cost of living between Arizona and North Carolina, where I was coming from.
My first Saturday night in town, I went to the Sportsman's Club bar. Long story short: About 10 minutes into my first beer in a Kingman bar, a guy was holding a pool cue like a baseball bat, telling me he was about to knock my head off. His uncle, who was sitting at the bar, said,
"He's crazy. He'll do it. There's a back door. Use it."
I did.
Can dive bars teach us anything?
But I believe dive bars — real ones, not ones that charge $10 for a Pabst Blue Ribbon and think they're edgy — are in some ways the heart and soul of the country.
"You can just feel it when you walk into the place," Rebecca, a bartender at the World Famous Sultana Bar, said. "The people, the music, you can just tell that it's a fun place you want to be at, that's for sure."
Conveniently, I also believe the stretch of Route 66 that runs through Arizona is also the heart and soul of the country, the way West, a living, breathing monument to determination and ambition. I recently drove the length of the Arizona portion, as part of coverage of the 100th anniversary of what John Steinbeck called "the mother road."
Combine the two things and you have this week's question for Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com: What can you learn in dive bars along Route 66 in Arizona?
A lot, really. We hope you'll follow us along this journey. And you can get the long story of the Sportsman's Bar story.
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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Subscribe to the weekly Watchlist newsletter.
This episode was produced by Amanda Luberto and Tori Weiss. You can reach Amanda at amanda.luberto@arizonarepublic.com or follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @amandaluberto. Reach Tori at tkweiss@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What can you learn in dive bars on Route 66? A lot, actually
