I want to be clear about something before we begin: I have cried in this bar. Not emotionally collapsed in a TED Talk kind of way — I mean I sat on that particular stool, the one with the duct tape chevron pattern on the seat, and I wept quietly into a $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon while the jukebox played Tom Petty and nobody asked me a single question about my feelings. That was the deal. That was the covenant.
The covenant has been violated.
Last Tuesday, Ronnie's Bar & Tap — a proud, windowless institution that has been absorbing the sorrows of this neighborhood since 1987 — unveiled a laminated menu insert featuring, and I cannot stress this enough, a "curated snack experience." Smoked gouda. Marcona almonds. Something called a "rustic honey drizzle board" for $18.
There is a person named Bryce involved. There is always a person named Bryce.
Stage One: Denial (The Menu Insert Is a Mistake)
The first stage arrives fast and merciful. You pick up the insert, examine it, and conclude it must be a misprint. Someone left a catering brochure on the bar. A pharmaceutical rep had a meeting here earlier. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation that does not involve the word "charcuterie" appearing anywhere within forty feet of the Keno machine.
You order your beer. You look at the bartender — not Dave, who has been here since the Clinton administration, but a new one with forearm tattoos that appear to have been professionally composed — and you say nothing. You choose to believe.
Stage Two: Rage (They Installed Edison Bulbs)
The bulbs appear within two weeks of the menu insert. This is not a coincidence. This is a strategy.
Edison bulbs are the aerial bombardment of the gentrification snack complex. Once they go in, the exposed brick gets "highlighted." The exposed brick getting highlighted means someone is reconsidering the barstools. New barstools mean the old ones — the sacred duct-taped relics — get replaced with something "reclaimed" that costs four hundred dollars apiece and was manufactured in New Jersey three months ago.
You will feel rage. Let yourself feel it. You have earned it.
The rage is compounded by the discovery that Bryce — who is, in fact, real, and who has a business card that describes him as a "hospitality experience architect" — has also suggested the bar add a QR code to the menu insert. The QR code links to a Substack about "the philosophy of elevated bar snacking." Bryce has 4,200 subscribers. Bryce went to Emerson.
Stage Three: Bargaining (Maybe the Cheese Board Can Coexist)
This is the most dangerous stage because it sounds reasonable.
You will tell yourself: the PBRs are still $3 (they went up a dollar, but still). The Keno machine is still there. Dave works Thursdays. The pool table hasn't moved. Maybe this is fine. Maybe Bryce is just a temporary consultant. Maybe the smoked gouda is actually — and you will hate yourself for this thought — pretty good?
You will try the smoked gouda. It will be pretty good. This will feel like a betrayal of everything you have ever stood for.
Stage Four: Depression (The Yelp Reviews Are Calling It 'Charming')
Somewhere between the gouda and the grief, Ronnie's gets a write-up. Not in the local alt-weekly, which folded anyway. On a food blog. With a header photo. The photo is taken in portrait mode and is backlit by the Edison bulbs in a way that makes the duct-tape stool look "vintage" and "storied."
The comments say things like "hidden gem" and "surprisingly sophisticated" and "the charcuterie board is chef's kiss." Forty-seven people have already saved it to their Instagram collections under a highlight reel called "NYC Vibes."
You are in Cleveland.
Stage Five: Capitulation (You Ordered the Almonds)
It ends quietly. Not with a fight, not with a manifesto, but with you, on a Wednesday, ordering the Marcona almonds because you skipped lunch and the crackers looked fine and honestly the honey drizzle was kind of interesting.
Bryce waves at you from the end of the bar. You wave back. Something inside you dies. It dies peacefully, surrounded by ambient lo-fi music that has replaced the jukebox, and it does not go out fighting.
Survival Guide: Early Warning Signs Your Dive Bar Is Being Colonized
For those who still have time, here are the indicators to watch for before your neighborhood watering hole completes its transformation into a charcuterie deployment zone:
The Menu Gets Laminated Inserts. Original dive bar menus don't get updated. If something new appears — especially something with a descriptive adjective like "artisanal," "foraged," or "hand-selected" — treat it like a smoke alarm.
A New Hire Uses the Word 'Sourced.' As in, "the olives are sourced from a small family operation in California." Bartenders at real dive bars do not know where the olives are from. The olives have always just been there.
The Bar Gets a Secondary Instagram Account. Not the main account that posts blurry photos of the sign twice a year. A secondary account. Dedicated to the food. Run by Bryce.
Someone Describes the Vibe as 'Unpretentious.' The moment a bar is described as unpretentious, it has become pretentious. This is an immutable law. File it away.
The Bathroom Gets a Candle. I don't need to explain this one.
Ronnie's is still technically Ronnie's. The sign hasn't changed. Dave still works Thursdays. The duct-tape stool is still there, though it's been moved slightly to improve "traffic flow near the snack station."
I go back. Of course I go back. Where else am I going to cry in peace?
I just do it now with a $14 honey drizzle board and the faint awareness that I am part of the problem, which is, honestly, the most dive bar feeling of all.
