What's the difference between a dive bar and a neighborhood bar? I feel like they're both kind of dirty and cheap and like the kind of thing that I like. Until they get overrun with hipsters, and then I'm pissed.

There are too many corner Irish pubs around here for the dive bar to make many inroads. Mashed potatoes, polished wood, and game nights somehow don't say "dive" to me (despite their being, functionally, neighborhood bars). Downtown Crossing is infested with divey bars, and I've seen some in the ring towns -- Quincy, Braintree, Everett -- but the hipster ones are obnoxious and the not-hipster ones are depressing.

I bet if you took a hipster into a not-hipster dive bar, she'd run away.

What's the difference between a dive bar and a neighborhood bar?

"Dive" to me means cheap and a little skeevy. "Neighborhood" doesn't imply anything to me but locality.

"Neighborhood" doesn't imply anything to me but locality.

Good call. OK, then I question Sue's liking of neighborhood bars as a category, until she qualifies the type of neighborhood.

My bank put a fraud hold on my debit card. I paid $274.00 on a cable bill by phone this morning, but instead they charged me $2,740.00

Yikes. I'm assuming the cable company has already corrected their error?

When I was young and went to bars for the sake of drinking, it was always dive bars. I could drink alone, and no one would bug me, unless it was friends also seeking the cheap comforts of home away from our own liquor cabinets.

I'm weird among friends in that I don't care to go to bars. I just don't see the point in paying extra money for booze I can easily drink at home with the added aggravation of noise, cigarette smoke and obnoxious drunks that don't have friendship-earned leeway. I'd rather have a laidback party at home and share a few drinks with my friends that way.

Though given a choice I'd rather go to a dive bar than a hoidy-toidy one or a *shudder* sports bar.

My bank put a fraud hold on my debit card. I paid $274.00 on a cable bill by phone this morning, but instead they charged me $2,740.00.

My brother's bank mis-somethinged a check for $67 by several factors of 10. As his voicemail message, he now has the automated bank message telling him his account is overdrawn by six hundred and seventy something thousand dollars.

Of course, it happened when he was in Boston for a conference with only his debit card, so it was a royal pain in the ass. It took two weeks to get it all straightened out, checks cleared and fees refunded.

I like a bit of swank in my dive. My ideal bar would be dirt cheap and have cushy velvet armchairs. And serve really good wine. (Something like Divine Bar, but with lower prices.)

Hec makes me laugh, as usual. Although I suspect I may be more like those people than not. "Ooh, how gritty and authentic." In a related note, I heard "The Waterfront" which is not called that irl, is open again.

Ah. My cable company has no record of charging me $2740.00. Apparantly they credited the wrong account.

So I gotta get a statement from my bank, or something. Or else dispute the transaction.

Who is your cable provider, tommy?