The Nations Bar and Grill Takes a Dive
The thirteenth installment in Tales from the Westside
When I moved to the Nations in 2001, it was an industrial, working-class neighborhood with stranger danger overtones. There were no restaurants, bars or coffee spots to frequent; just a few gritty watering holes, crack houses and gnarled old dudes brown bagging it on random street corners, mumbling to themselves.
The singular bar on 51st Ave. was as gritty as they come. A shack with tar-paper shingles and a questionable tin roof, it featured live music and cheap beer. The gravel parking lot was perpetually filled with beaters and rusted-out trucks, and in the morning the stench of stale beer was so prevalent you could smell it from a block away. The bar’s most redeeming feature was its name: Area 51. And even though I found the play on words very clever (and still do to this day), I never went in; the thought of setting foot in there made me kind of queasy.
By 2010 a few bars and restaurants began to pop up along 51st, spurred on by a flood of young families buying and restoring the neighborhood’s historic homes. By this time, Area 51 had been remodeled and renamed The Stone Fox. The building featured a stuffed fox in a round window just below the roofline and continued to provide the neighborhood with live music but without the rancid bouquet of stale beer and cigarette smoke lingering well into dawn.
Around this time a little bar opened across the street where a used car lot had been for years. Repurposing the unassuming dealer’s shack, the new owner set out to create a dive bar. Small and unimpressive, the menu was pedestrian and the décor sparse, but the place was mighty. Paying homage to the towering Nations sign, which is the gateway to the neighborhood, that featured a neon arrow in tragic disrepair that points directly at the bar, he crowned it the Nations Bar and Grill. What the bar didn’t have in looks it made up for in attitude. The staff was outgoing and engaging, the pours generous and the atmosphere was chill. It wasn’t long before The Nations became a regular hang for neighborhood old timers and newcomers alike. It was the place where everybody knows your name.
As the Nations Bar and Grill gained popularity it expanded in size, adding a backroom to the existing structure and then another wing with lots of tables, a stage and a second bar. The poorly paved parking lot behind the building spilled into a wild back yard that was more dirt and gravel than grass. It looked like a trailer park had come and gone, leaving behind a rag-tag assemblage of picnic tables, high tops with mismatched stools and random equipment that looked as if it had seen better days. But that was the spot, weather depending, that my friends and I always gravitated to because there you were welcome to howl at the moon, laugh your loudest and let your guard way down.
The best part of the Nations for me personally was its proximity to my house, just a couple of blocks away. There was no need for a designated driver or reason to call an Uber. And although this was liberating, it could also be a little dangerous; I could drink with abandon if the spirit moved me and walk back the way I came, which most of the time was fine.
But there was this one night when things got out of hand, much to my chagrin and total surprise. It was a particularly festive evening, and it seemed like everyone I’d ever met in the neighborhood was hanging out in the grunge-fest of a courtyard. I was sipping my usual cocktail: tequila on the rocks with a splash of soda and a lime, when a friend offered to buy me another. Happy to accept, I finished the first drink and tucked into the next. The more I drank, the chattier I became, and the more I chatted, the less I paid attention to the fact that no matter how much I drank, my glass was never empty. Was it a magic trick, you ask? Did I just think I was sipping my drink while in reality, I was not? If you’re keeping score, the answers are “no” and "no."
Unbeknownst to me, while half a dozen generous friends were refreshing my drink, I had no idea it was happening. And although my head was fairly clear—I wasn’t seeing double or slurring my words—when the time came to head home and I tried to stand up, I couldn’t feel my feet. I didn’t know whether to laugh or panic, so I went with a combo platter, and turning to my friends, I explained my predicament. “We got you,” two of them laughed as they propped me up, one on either side.
Like a toddler still learning to walk, they reeducated me in the basics (step, step, that’s a good girl!) and guided me out of the bar, up the alley and through my back gate. I’d never felt so foolish and cared for in the same evening, and despite the mighty hangover I woke up with the next morning, I wouldn’t trade that night for anything.
The rumors began quickly and ended just as fast when a few weeks later, the Nations Bar closed its doors suddenly and without fanfare. There’d been a slowing-down period of sorts when they cut their hours in half and sent most of the bartenders running for their economic lives. We heard all kinds of things: that a corporate restauranteur had bought the place and was going to remodel it. That the land had been sold to a developer who would build apartment towers similar to the monstrous Camden, which has swallowed dozens of blocks along and around Centennial Blvd. The Nations Facebook page says they’re closed to “brew up a new public house," whatever the hell that means; that post hasn’t changed one iota since the day they closed.
The scruffy Nations sign that’s still the gateway to our neighborhood now points the way to a shuttered dive bar, the Marquee bearing the same message it has since the day they closed: “Paused for improvements. Pouring again soon.” We pray this is true and not just another rumor in Marquee’s clothing, but as I said, nobody knows for sure. All we do know is that we’re longing for a reprieve, for the doors to swing wide open again and for our favorite barkeeps to welcome us back in. Until that (hopefully) comes to pass, I’ll be drinking my tequila at home because there’s not a single spot in the neighborhood that can take The Nation’s place. Believe me, we’ve tried them all! But when and if the bar is back in business and we gather there again, I promise I’ll be keeping an eye on my glass to make sure it doesn’t keep on filling to the rim, seemingly all on its own.