Best Dive Bars In Boston

There's something about a great dive bar that you just can't explain. They're dark, dirty and smell like stale beer, but time and time again you keep going back. Because the booze is cheap, the crowd is alive, and the music is loud. If there's one thing Boston has a lot of, it's dive bars. So grab your scuba gear and your favorite beer cozy for a magically drunken tour of Boston's greatest dive bars.

Sullivan's Tap

168 Canal St,
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 617-7617

When you can hear and smell a bar before you even walk in the door, you know you're in for a good time. Surrounded by larger, flashier, more pretentious watering holes like The Greatest Bar and The Fours, Sully's is as blue-collar as it gets. The beer is cheap and the crowd is rowdy. And like any good dive bar worth its weight in PBR, they have the classic dive bar video game trifecta: Golden Tee, Buck Hunt and Pop-a-Shot.

Silhouette Lounge

200 Brighton Ave.
Allston, MA 02134
(617) 206-4565

If your bar is cheap, dirty, and full of hipsters, you know you must be in Allston. This place has all the trademark dive bar staples including an old school sign out front that looks like it's never been changed. And in this case, no change is good. They offer free darts, pool tables and beer by the pitcher. What else could you possibly need? A jukebox? Well, they have that too.

The Sevens Ale House

77 Charles Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02114
(617) 523-9074

In what many consider to be Boston's most elitist neighborhood, there are actually several great dive bars. There's the 21st Amendment, the Beacon Hill Pub (affectionately knows as the BHP), and then there's the class of the dive bars – The Sevens. It's smaller than the others, but that's part of its charm: having to bend, twist and spin your way to the bar or to the dart board in back. But they have an amazing bottled beer selection, great food if you can find a table, and there's always a game on TV.

The Tam

222 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02118

Smack dab in the heart of Theater District, there's a weird poetic irony to the Tam. It's really the anti-Tremont Street. But with a great bar game area in the back, saloon doors on men's room, touch screen video games on the bar, and a bar staff as gritty as they are friendly, this place is dive bar heaven. Leave your plastic at home because this place is straight cash, homey.

By Evan Berenson