Well, boys, I’ve found the bottom. I’ve been in dive bars all over this great expanse and this one is officially, undeniably, almost unbelievably, the lowest.

What hits you first is the smell. You don’t see it coming. You step inside from the half artisinal/half Disney confines of Jack London Square and you’re hit with a ringing kidney shot. Now you’re a boxer with no legs.

You walk up to the long bar manned by a brawny woman in her 30’s (only one bartender is needed here) and you order a drink. You order a Budweiser because you feel uncomfortable. The other three people in the bar stare at you with no expression on their rainy faces. They are neither unhappy nor happy to see you. Are they surprised?

You look to your right at the cutoff hallway that leads the bathroom. It’s dark. You will not go there. No, not you.

You get your beer and give the bartender $4. You walk around the corner of the bar and into an adjacent room with a pool table and a pinball machine. The ceiling is forty feet high. The floor is an unnatural grayish blue. There are boxes on the floor. There are no seats or tables. Why would there be? The pinball machine eats your quarter. You want to play pool but you don’t want to ask the bartender for change. You drink half your beer.

You used to think that all dive bars were on some level a joke. They were pretending to be worse than they were. They were high school girls smoking cigarettes. Now you know that this is not true. There are some enclosures that are simply foul and you can pay to get drunk there.

You finish your beer and leave.

I only look back once.