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Waterfront loses two dive bars - where people actually dived

Atlantic Beer Garden gets torn down

Neil watched the Atlantic Beer Garden come down this morning to make way for one of those trendy waterfront residential towers.

Unlike other dive bars, the Beer Garden and the neighboring Whiskey Priest, also slated for demolition, were once literally dives - places where patrons would jump into the harbor - at least until they were cited by police and hauled before the Boston Licensing Board.

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Comments

Today is almost as sad as the day the Seaport Bar and Grille closed its doors only to be replaced by this generic turd of an establishment.

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has many a more turd establishments right up Summer Street in South Boston. So don't shed a tear.

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Might honestly have been the dumbest bar name in my 15 years (so far) in Boston. And we had a place named (expletive) Liquor Store.

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We're losing a lot of culture there.

And by that I clearly mean whatever fungus was growing between the ears of most of its patrons.

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Good fn riddance. these two bars were an embarrassment to our neighborhood. the only people that went here were suburbanite bud light bros that were sportsball fans.

The South Boston Waterfront deserves better.

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My co-workers called it "the Frisky Priest"

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Explain.

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is exactly why the City of Boston Licensing Board exists.

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The short lived Punk and Poet would like a word with you.

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Nope.

Not one bit.

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They were torn down on purpose to make way for the luxury condos we've all been pining for.

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You're kidding yourself if you think the replacement will feature any less base dumbfuckery. I'd say it was an insult to the notion of a serious whiskey / whisky bar, but that would be entirely beside the point. (I drank there a couple of times, found it unspeakable, a wretched hive of brah-dudeness and villainy. Ladies, take your drinks with you to the restroom.)

Kudos to businesspeople that know their audience. It's hard to be a profitable saloon-keeper in this town, what with our absurd liquor-licensing costs, but those folks have cracked the code. And they made a really smart, lucrative real-estate bet, which is probably the hardest thing to do in the hospitality business in Boston. Tough to gainsay that..

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Revealing that the only people sad about this are twenty-somethings who don’t realize these places weren’t around very long and had fake character. I have mourned the loss of many a dive bar in Boston. I do not mourn the loss of these two.

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We still have NoName.

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With the collapse of General Electric, who will occupy these luxury towers? Aren't there several "luxury" buildings downtown (not Seaport) that are having trouble finding buyers / renters?

As for one or two young drunks jumping off the upper deck of Whiskey Priest into the water to impress the crowd, that's very hard to prevent. Didn't we just see it on the Provincetown II with the kid drowning trying to do "pull-ups" off the side of the vessel after being told to knock it off earlier?

Be careful what you wish for. The few times I was there, I thought Whiskey Priest was well run. Only a matter of time before some of these luxury buildings go Section 8 when nobody else can afford them. I've seen it before.

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The site is 3/4 mile from South Station by foot. There will always be people who want to live walking distance from a job, and there are enough jobs there that folks will pay to keep the place afloat. I'm sure some will even be pied-à-terres. It's possible that prices will levelize or even come down 20% -- a developer or investor might even take a loss. But that's a far cry from Section 8.

And, pray tell, do tell us of luxury buildings that have gone Section 8, We'll each decide for ourselves if your examples sound at all like this scenario.

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GE was just the poster boy for the urban migration, not the magnetizing force. There were probably going to be maybe 50 GE employees that actually would live in the Seaport. People make it out like the sky is falling now that theyre not in the position they used to be. This isn't a 1 horse town, or a 5 horse town.

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Explain how a bar can be considered a “dive” when it was New and Trendy 10 years ago. The shine is hardly off the fake wood floors.

The old Seaport bar and the sketchy Chinese place that were there before these two were built were real dives. Nobody cared when one of their customers fell into the harbor - just another night. (Though h/t to Adam for the “dive” pun). They certainly didn’t hauled out infront of the Licensing Board for it.

You wouldn’t know a real dive bar if it hit you in the face.

discuss

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Both places got in trouble because patrons would dive off the roof into the harbor. That's all, just a lame joke.

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it wasn't a dive bar, it was a douchebag bar.

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I miss the sketchy Chinese place. It was great to go get a couple of drinks, some fried rice or noodles and watch the harbor on a summer evening.

Whiskey Priest - worked for getting out of BCEC on a long PAX weekend and when we got tired of the hotel bars. We'd grab a tall beer and gross apps for slightly less than in BCEC. Especially since the BCEC bars are closed for PAX now. I prefer Temazcal due to my tequila predilection. ;-)

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Here comes more money laundering from Chinese and Russians

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