BAR HOP
By Sloane Carvell
(@crumbs_and_corks)
Joe’s Juice Joint W
hen my editor suggested a review of the number one dive bar in the world so many thoughts ran through my head. Firstly, we’re number one in the world for something? Go us! Secondly, a dive bar hasn’t been my scene since uni days (they were some years back, for those wondering). Third, a quick check online to make sure a dive bar was what I still understood it to be (because often words change meaning over time where things with negative connotations are now the opposite) confirms what I thought. A ‘dive’, according to Merriam-Webster, is ‘a shabby and disreputable establishment’, the same meaning as I still expected. So it was with some trepidation that I donned my faux leather pants and headed out with the best friend for drinks on a Saturday night to get to the bottom of just how Joe’s Juice Joint in Northbridge attained this worldwide gold star status according to the global travel company ‘Big 7 Travel’ list of the world’s best dive bars. We head down a graffitied laneway behind William Street and in through a dodgy doorway manned by friendly
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doormen, and here we are, about to discover Joe’s Juice Joint. Down a peeling band poster-plastered stairway you enter a dimly lit, dark and moody bar with booths and tables, Elvis pinball machines and rock music. The bar shines with bottles of American bourbon and a huge range of whiskeys. There are cocktails like the Tequilaquarium, served in a fishbowl for sharing, frozen Long Island cocktails, rum and whiskey cocktails, craft beers, wine;, a plethora of booze choices in fact. I order a delicious whiskey sour and a bowl of complimentary unshelled peanuts was delivered too; we settle into one of the
