Tabloid schlock like The Post or Daily News always cover the top of an old man bar just like dollar bills paper a strip club stage. Not books, certainly not smartphones (old men still have flip phones they keep turned off and in their cars' glove boxes), but newspapers. And while 'not being able to see' is quite the lure at most dingy dives, especially if you want an excuse to lower your sexual standards, an old man bar's lighting needs to be diner-bright so the old men can read. Why? Because old men would not be able to even see in your prototypical dark dive. Here's a point-by-point breakdown of what's similar between the two, what's different, and which one's winning. Making things even more nettlesome, during a dive bar's daylight hours those questionable drinkers are almost always old men, because who else has the free time and disregard for their liver to start drinking at 11 a.m.
Sure, both have bad lighting, low-class drinks, and countless questionable solo drinkers. Old man bars are often confused with dives, but I think it's time we finally differentiate between the two.
