Bill Ash's Lounge

RECENT UPDATES:

They've repainted the exterior of this place to resemble the Green Monster, and didn't do too bad of a job of it either.  The interior has been remodeled to more closely resemble a filthy shithole.  Especially the "men's bathroom".
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This place is a hole. A dive of the first water. A sleazy, weird place where all sorts of bizarro stuff is likely to happen to you. Many of the regulars are the sorts of...ahem..."characters" that you read about in books.

And It. Is. Awesome.

Seriously. From the gravel parking lot just off Revere Beach Boulevard, up the wooden steps to the well-populated smoking deck with benches and ash cans...through the swinging doors into the dimly lit barroom with tables off to the right, and a "stage" area that does double duty on weeknights as a dart area...

...this place screams dive. And it's glorious. Once you've gone there two or three times, the lady who runs the lotto (oh yeah, they have a separate lotto booth for keno, like you do) will remember your name.

Also, the skinny, leathery hooker will probably try to talk to you...you'll witness some kind of argument between a drunk couple....you'll get hungry and order a pizza from the place next door that has a window into the bar...you'll run out of cash and have to use the ghetto ATM in the back room with the ancient video poker/slot machines...you'll do some shots with the bikers who are playing Skynrd on the jukebox....you might even get lucky and witness one drunk chick trying to convince another drunk chick to be a stripper.

Bottom line is that something entertaining always happens here. You should go. You should have beers, a couple of shots, and smoke a cigarette (I know you quit two years ago, so did I - but I can't resist a couple of drags after a couple of bourbon shots) on the deck and watch the drama unfold.

Holy fuck!  We're a long way from Harvard Square, Toto.  

The sign on the front door boldly claims: "Shirts required after 8PM."   It was 5:30PM, I took off my shirt, entered the bar, and instantly fell in love.  

Surly locals, $4 whiskey with a splash of coke, a delightfully pissed off bartender, pinball, this bar had it all.   A crack head was using the outside window as a mirror, some Massholes tried to go fuck in the women's bathroom, and there was a pizza place connected to the bar through a small rectangular hole on one side of the bar.

My new home away from home.

It's hard to imagine having a rip roaring good time while also fearing that you're going to get your throat slit. But Bill Ash's Lounge pulls off that double as few bars in the greater Boston area can.

Several things make this place awesome ...

There is pizza in a hole. (Get your mind out of the gutter and ask the locals what it really means.) There is a trough urinal in the men's room -- a mark of any true dive bar or football stadium not named for some dopey corporation. There are cheap drinks; three bottled beers and a double vodka soda will run you $11.

Above all else, there is the intimidating bouncer (think Bob Marley on steroids in a wife beater) who pulls off a rare double of his own by relentlessly eye-molesting your female friend -- and eliciting terror and a good ol' fashioned bucket of laughs from your group. (Maybe not terror, but at least the sobering sense that this dude's fist could turn you into one of those cartoon human accordions.)

And since this is Revere Beach, you can sit in a booth next to the window and watch the, um, characters harmlessly stroll on by -- was that really a meth head with a toddler? -- as they enjoy a beautiful Saturday evening.

As others have mentioned, this isn't a bar for those with delicate sensibilities. This is a bar in the truest sense of the word, the type of place where you could imagine factory workers popping the top on those squat cans of Budweiser in the 1970s. This is cheap cold ones, a view of a beach that has seen better days and salt-of-the-earth people you'd never meet in Beacon Hill.

And what's so bad about that?