#82: Dirty Dog

The Bar

Dirty Dog. 505 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 5/3/17 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Black tooth. Whiskey, Coke. $2.

A whiskey Coke is one of the fundamental drinks of bar-hopping, for its simplicity and ease of concoction, for its reliable and predictable taste, for its balance of flavors between Coke's acidulous syrup and whiskey's aromatic pungency, and perhaps most of all, for its traditional cheapness. Dirty Dog doubled down on that last virtue, serving up what was by far the cheapest drink I've had so far. Granted, it's not like it was a full cocktail, but compared to some of the other shots I've gotten, this was a welcome surprise. We've mostly stuck to a round system on this journey, and the incredible sense of relief on someone's face when they discover that a whole round will cost them less than $20 is a sight to behold. No breaking the bank at Dirty Dog! Granted, we only discovered this drink after the bartender begged off of making anything fancier, but he was right: Dirty Dog is a dive bar, and a steady, reliable drink like a whiskey Coke is what you get.

The Crew

Chris, Karen, Hannah, Aaron, Travis, Kyle, Cristy, Louis.

Notes

I'd been to Dirty Dog a few times before in its capacity as a concert venue; they play mostly metal but also other bands in the hard rock vein. My fondest show memory is probably seeing The Life and Times there one SXSW, and my fondest non-show memory is drunkenly standing out in the street while Eve 6 blasted out the door during another SXSW, watching everyone else groove to their 30th favorite FM radio rock band. Dirty Dog also runs a tailgating tent during football season which is pretty decent. They're pretty regular-driven, which every bar likes to claim but which I can attest to in the case of Dirty Dog since one of my friends has been coming here for years and years. They have what is unquestionably the stupidest logo on all of Sixth Street, which tells you something about the kind of image they want to project. In general I'm a defender of what many would consider slovenly, unkempt, dirty dive bars, but something about the grossness of the logo is a little beyond the pale, even if it does represent the name. Still, one of the things that regulars appreciate about their dive bars is the barriers to entry that they place to repel outsiders, and if plastering a little cartoon dog humping a woman's leg all over the place helps build some solidarity among the regulars, then  that logo will have done its job. Whatever: you're here for the cheap drinks, not to have your morals elevated.