David Moreira

America lost one in six of its neighborhood bars in a single decade, and the killer was real estate math. A bar like this can pour $3 beers because the building was paid off decades ago. The owner often lives upstairs. No rent, no investors, no debt service on a Pabst sign that's been hanging there for 40 years. The moment that building sells, the math dies with it. A new operator inherits a market-rate lease, which forces $9 drinks, which forces a renovation to justify $9 drinks, which produces another exposed-brick cocktail bar where the dive used to be. The Midwest kept its dive bars because of how they got built in the first place. Before Prohibition, Milwaukee's breweries put up corner taverns themselves. Pabst and Schlitz wanted guaranteed outlets for their beer, so they built bars directly into residential blocks. That's why these places sit on quiet snowy corners between houses instead of on commercial strips where rent explodes. Chicago had around 3,300 tavern licenses in 1990. It's down to about 1,200. At the worst of the decline, America was losing six neighborhood bars a day. And every single closure is permanent. You can't build a dive bar. You can only inherit one.