Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.
“Go down the rabbit hole,” as the sign suggests at Retox, and you’ll enter a subterranean lower music venue that is part low budget airline and part friend’s-parent’s-basement. Pieces of printed cloth are tacked to the walls as a sort of DIY interior decorating project, and airplane seats are lined up against the back wall and left side. Small, round, faux windows project blinking lights into the room, as though the band you’re listening to is rocking you into the future, DeLorean style, or like you actually crashed into someone’s basement and the band is playing loud enough to drown out the screams from the burning corpses above. Things get stuffy in the basement, but I can only assume the windows can’t be opened for fear of the main cabin depressurizing and audience members being sucked out the opening like in every airplane disaster movie ever.
As for the upstairs lounge area, I can only describe the scene as completely and unapologetically weird, which naturally makes for a fantastic dive bar. This may not serve as an indicator of the normal kind of shenanigans that occur in Retox, since I was there for a friend’s show, but I sincerely hope it does. There was quite the food spread in the corner, complete with chips, dips, and (much to my friend’s delight) brownie bites. An old guy, who I feel I can safely assume had at least one yellow tooth resembling a butter colored Chiclet, performed a wide shuffle of a two-step, head bowed down and arms swinging in the air. There was no music playing at the time. While ordering a round for my friend and I, I felt a tap on my shoulder. A grizzly-looking old dude politely informed me I was blocking his seat, which I assumed he occupied when not riding his Harley with his glamorous lady friend.
The first bartender to serve us introduced himself and made friendly, idle chitchat to put us at ease. The second one looked like he’d rather take a dump on my face than be interrupted while straightening up the bar and putting away glasses. I like to think it was part of a good bartender/bad bartender scheme, as my friend tipped the first one extremely well on her $10 tab, which was the credit card minimum. The second one warmed up later, and managed to keep a pretty clean bar to boot.