Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.
Before you all start squawking at me about how Phone Booth isn’t a dive – I know. But after reading reviews of the place that kept throwing around the term “dive” like confetti on New Year’s Eve, I figured it was my duty to check it out. (Tough life, I know.) So I threw myself on a bus and traveled over to the area in the city best known for having dives that are anything but dive-y – the Mission.
At first glance, Phone Booth looks promising. The place is tiny, cramped, and dark. Cigarette smoke floats through the air, further obscuring vision, and a chandelier comprised of naked Barbies looks like a dead baby joke waiting to happen. Furry fake spiders crawl over another light fixture, and a lone pool table hunkers in the corner, with barely enough space around it for a proper shot. The mixed drinks are poured with a heavy hand by a no-nonsense bartender who looks like she could just as easily shoot the shit with you as she could tear you a new one.
Unfortunately, while the atmosphere feels right, the touches that make Phone Booth unique are also ultimately the cause of its fall from grace (or is it an upward crawl?) away from classification as a dive bar. Kitschy décor, seasoned bartenders, and cheap drinks do not a dive bar make. However, they do attract a certain kind of crowd, especially in that area.