The Dingo Bar is closed
a SUIT column by Chris Jungle

I'm not a big bar-hopping machine. Most of my excursions to drinking holes occur because I want to see a band playing there. I'll drop five to ten bucks on a cover and another ten to fifteen on overpriced pints of good beer. Twenty-five bucks dropped on a bar night, and that's on a good money blowing night. I'm not exactly the kind of patron who keeps a bar open, but even those who don't frequent local tavern regularly have their favorites. The Fabulous Dingo Bar was my favorite.

The Dingo was the kind of place where you could dress your best or worst, and it didn't matter. The stage consisted of a hollow box at one far end of the bar, a small checkered crowd area, tables and booths all with a decent view of the stage, and a long bar with bartenders ready to serve. Old flyers decorated an entire wall displaying shows I'd seen and missed since 1991 when the bar opened. Whenever conversations and people watching turned dull, my eyes always took the silent tour of the forever changing wall.

The venue always had a spot available for local bands just getting off the ground. Not only was it the best place to watch local bands, but several bigger names also graced the stage. Being the cheapskate that I am, I usually waited until a band I liked from out of town got booked to come in, but I saw my share of local and touring bands. Crash Worship, the Drags, Dandy Warhols, Irie Still, Dread Zeppelin, the Concentrators, No Knife, Chuck Fu, the Red Aunts, the Frontiersman, Billy Bacon, Alien Lovestock, the Beat Farmers (right before Country Dick died!), the Eyeliners, Buck o' Nine, and on and on. They may not have been the biggest names in music, but they were fun shows to see nonetheless. Entertained me just fine on some late nights.

This isn't the first time my favorite bar went under. When I was a sprightly youth with a fake ID, I spent most of my bar time at two places called the Golden West and the Fat Chance. Much like the Dingo, neither of those places had gimmicks. No light shows, no stereo systems blaring radio songs too loud, no glossy polish. Just simple dark drinking holes. The Fat Chance is now called Sprockets and has a neon spit shine to it. The Golden West closed then opened again under the same name looking much the same. It never felt the same hanging out in there with a stock blues band playing, though.

I can't complain too loudly about the Dingo Bar closing because it had been a month since I had visited when the doors were forever closed. Sometimes, I wouldn't go for two months, and then pop in four times in two weeks only to disappear again. I'm not a big patron of any business except Wal-Mart and Smith's Grocery Stores, but occasionally, the bug will bite me to get out of the house and pay four dollars for a pint of Guinness. It was nice to know the Dingo was around downtown to cure my bug bites.

The closing of the Dingo has left only one club-sized stage for bands downtown, and that is at the space-themed Launch Pad. It's an alternative hep cat bar renovated from an old sports pub, and a tolerable bar if nothing else. It has a couple pinball machines, so since there is no artistic wall to stare at, I entertain myself seeing what I can do with a ball and a couple flippers between bands.

There may be people who favor less dark bars with stages and more Hooters and fun-for-the-entire-family joints. But there is merit to places like the Dingo. They are for the lonely, the misunderstood, those getting over love, those who want to get out of the house but still don't want to smile all of the time, those who want to see other people (instead of megabands) put on a musical show, and all the other people with a flavor you don't want to taste in broad daylight.

I'm going to miss the Fabulous Dingo Bar. Not right now, and not tomorrow. I'm going to miss it when I'm sitting in a pub with too many televisions showing the World's Strongest Man competition, or wading through a club throwing out old eighties songs and revamped regurgitated nineties pop songs, or when I walk into a zoot suit lounge wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Most of all, I'll miss it on those special times when I get the craving for a beer and a unique little band and find there's nothing left but theme bars.

Chris Jungle drinks mostly at a bar called Home where there is no cover, no dress code, no expectations, an array of musical selections, and good beer at cheap prices.

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