(bright music) (bright music continues) - Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of "The Bookmark."

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today we are celebrating our 100th episode, and in order to have a little fun for our 100th, we decided to come film on location in one of the places featured in today's book.

So let's dive right in.

Pun definitely intended, I'm sorry.

The book today is "Texas Dives: Enduring Neighborhood Bars of the Lone Star State."

My guests are Anthony Head, author, and Kirk Weddle, photographer.

Thank you both so much for being here.

- Pleasure.

- It is always a pleasure to be on "The Bookmark" with you, Christine.

- Oh, thank you.

You are returning guests, so thank you.

I'm gonna start with my only hard question.

What is a dive bar?

- Well, that's a hard question.

- Did you read the book?

- I did read the book, but I want our viewers to hear what your interpretation of a dive bar is.

- You wanna go?

- No, go.

- Dive bars are social clubs.

Dive bars are places where friends get together.

Dive bars are places that have very little agenda for their customers.

They just wanna open every day and serve their customers.

Dive bars outlast most other businesses around them.

Dive bars are very charitable locally and national, and dive bars are probably the most comfortable places in society.

- Well, that's perfect.

You do make a distinction in the book, though.

If people haven't been to a dive bar, they might have an idea of it being a dark or a dank place.

But you make the clarification that's more of a dump, not a dive.

Can you talk about the distinction?

- Yeah, I actually get that question a lot because there are certainly some bars in Texas that I personally don't wanna go to, and we call those places dumps.

- That we do.

- They tend to be, oh, intellectually challenged.

They don't tend to welcome outsiders.

A dive is just a place that has been around a long time.

It's got a lot of history in its rear view mirror.

It's been an ongoing conversation for a long time, and you can take part in that ongoing conversation when you're there.

A dump, not so much, you don't feel comfortable there.

That's really the distinction.

- Sure.

- And a dive is a simple place, you know?

It's basic drinks, you know, a lot of times just on cash.

You don't have to stand in line.

It's not a big decision.

"Gimme a beer and a shot," and off we go, we hang out.

- Just a very comfortable place to be.

So why do y'all love dive so much that you wrote a whole book about it?

What is it about it for you?

- Well, we, Kirk and I have been working together since the middle 2000s and working in the alcohol culture.

We have been a photography and writing team.

We've traveled the state 10 times maybe, and we have visited many wineries, breweries, vineyards, and bars.

And we found that almost before any job or after any job, we both felt like just going to get a drink and relaxing someplace, and it always ended up being a place that we would call a dive bar.

Again with no agenda, you could just go in and get a drink and relax.

And we were in a bar in West Texas, a place called Mynars, which is in the bar or in the book.

And within about two minutes of being in there, I turned to Kirk and said, "We've gotta write a book about these places," and that was 2011.

- Yeah, about that.

- It just took us about seven years to get our schedules together, so we started in 2018.

It's just a long-lived love for these places.

- Now, a lot of bars probably fit that description of what a dive is, but what makes a good dive a great dive, and what makes it book-worthy?

- Mm, good question.

That's a question for Kirk.

- It can't be a chain.

It can't be brand new.

You can't just manufacture a dive, right?

It's gotta have a little history.

It's gotta be kind of a neighborhood bar, and it's gotta have the right vibe.

- We made it very clear in the book that the 12 that we put in are not the best dives because that's purely opinion.

But these dives, including Duddley's Draw, is welcoming.

It's a place where everybody seems, they don't know your name, but they are happy that you're there.

And so the 12 that we chose for this, and it was very hard cutting it down to 12, just stood out to us as places that we had either been to so many times because we liked it or a place we knew we were coming back to.

It comes down to vibe, friendliness.

Cost is a big thing.

We like places that don't rob your wallet.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- And a dive bar tends to be very economically happy.

- (laughs) Well, we have to talk about, we are sitting in one of the bars in the book, Duddley's Draw here at College Station.

- Yay, Duddley's!

- Hooray Duddley's, definitely.

- And I was, I admit I was very personally happy when you picked Duddley's because it's a bar I love to come to.

I grew up in this town, and to me what fits, what makes this place fit the description is that even though we are a college town with a lot of college bars, I think anybody of any age, well, over 21 can walk in this place and not feel out of place or not feel too old or not feel uncomfortable, which is exactly what you're talking about.

- Comforting for me.

- Yeah, so can you talk about why you chose Duddley's and what was it about this place that appealed to you?

- Well, we did get a lot of suggestions from people.

So we would often ask colleagues and friends in different parts of the state, "Give us the name of a bar you wouldn't take your mother to."

Then we just started hearing from them saying, "But I would take my mother to this place because mothers are just as welcome as anybody else."

I asked a number of people who live here in College Station and people at the university for suggestions, and this one just kept coming up.

And so we came in and did a secretive test run of the place, and it is as friendly as everyone says it is, and so we came back.

- This is also where you first met with the editor at the press and kind of that's how the book came to be here at Texas A&M.

- That's an interesting story that I didn't know you knew, but in fact that was true that I sat at that booth over there, had lunch with the editor, and he wondered, he wanted to know what I was writing.

And I said, "Well, I've got a project in mind with Kirk" and told him about the book, and he said, "If you write that book, we will publish it."

True to his word- - Bravo.

- He did.

- Yeah, here we are with the book!

- Here we are, here we are.

- Yeah.

- Now you've mentioned a rich history, that of course, there's no like time limit that you have to be open to be a dive.

But none of the book's, none of the bars in the book are brand new, and a lot of them have long storied histories.

Can you talk about some of the long-running, or Riley's especially has a very interesting- - Yeah, Riley's was the first bar to open after Prohibition.

Their liquor license is 00001.

- And that's in Hunter, Texas, near New Braunfels.

- Might be some more zeros in there, I don't know.

- Right, right.

- Or less, yeah.

- We did kind of have to come up with our own definition of a dive.

We kind of had to come up with parameters.

- And we disagree with that sometimes.

- We disagreed, but we disagreed in the book, but we did want these bars to have history to them and having a lot of history in the rear view mirror, such as Duddley's, which has been around since the '70s.

Riley's has been around since 1933.

So these bars are passed down from family member to family member.

So they're family businesses, they are generational, and because of that, the customers have gotten to know the people that own and work at the bars.

So there's just a lot of friendliness.

And when it comes down to writing about them, we wrote about what was going on with them right now, but we also told readers the story of how they got to be this way.

So it really is interesting to both of us that you can learn a lot of Texas history through talking with people, not just owners, but also the customers at the bars.

- Absolutely, I wanted to talk more about the people.

You mentioned that you kind of went incognito the first time, but then when it came out that you were working on a book, were the patrons and the regulars welcoming to being in the book or being photographed or- - Without a doubt, they were all welcoming.

There was never a little scary moment, you know, like, "Don't shoot me here, don't look at that."

You know, we eliminated a couple bars 'cause of that.

But these are all, you know, and when I shoot, I don't wanna dominate the thing.

You know, these guys come to get a pint and get out of there, you know, so you wanna work quick, and everybody was really cool.

- We actually, when we were at Duddley's and word got out what we were doing, I had a line of regulars at happy hour lined up to tell me their stories.

So that's another thing is that the customers are proud of their bar.

They consider it part of their circle, so they take care of it as much as the staff does.

That's another thing about a dive.

You're probably not gonna see that at a disco.

- No, for sure.

- Do they have discos?

- Or they're not gonna see us at a disco.

- Or they won't see us at a disco, that's right.

- And they don't even know what a disco is.

- Right.

(all laughing) - You also mentioned, we've mentioned that there are a couple different places, but the book does a good job of kind of covering a pretty broad portion of the state.

Dives can be in big cities like Dallas or Fort Worth.

They can be in small towns like West or Hunter.

There's no geographical necessity.

- You really did read the book.

I am so impressed.

- I really did.

I read the book, yeah.

- All right, bravo.

- Just talk about the geographical location, I guess, in the bars.

- Well, Kirk's number one rule of being a dive bar is that it can't be the only bar in the locality.

And we've spoke of Riley's, it's an unincorporated place called Hunter, and it would not have made the book because Hunter only has- - I insisted it make the book.

- Well, he did, but it only has two bars.

So there was another bar with which we could contrast it.

- Say, "It's better than that bar."

- Yes, yeah.

- So we can put it in the book.

- Exactly.

- Because I want it in the book.

- Right.

- I need it in the book, and it's in the book.

- Dive bars in big cities are the exact same as they are in the smaller places because nothing changes.

It's still about comfort, a lack of agenda.

Again, we could have written a book about a hundred bars that we've been in that we loved, which is why we go out of our way and say, "These aren't the best because there are others out there that are just great."

And I think we've started a nice conversation about what a dive bar means to the people who go to it and to the community it serves.

And that, I was really happy to take the word dive and not have it be a four-letter word.

- You, after the book came out, you kind of went on a world tour of dives and went back to all these places with the book.

What was that experience like?

How were you received, as conquering heroes?

- Yes, indeed.

- Boy, howdy.

- Yeah, they loved us, you know?

It was nice, you know?

It was homage to their place, and everybody was, I was kind of worried, 'cause not every single picture I took was super flattering and- - [Christine] But it's real, I guess.

- Yeah, and it was great.

It was fun to catch up and see how people had changed.

It takes a long time to get a book out, you know, and it's a big state, so you drive a long way from the first bar to the last bar, and it was great to come back in.

Anthony put the old book tour together, and we were little rock stars for a few days, you know?

- We were, we were.

I can tell you, the most meaningful part of every stop on the tour was after we would do our little spiel, and we had a musical guest.

Sid Grimes out of Austin, Texas, played some music, and while she was playing music, we would sign the books.

After that, it was charming because the people who got their books signed would then run around and get them signed by other regulars and owners and other staff.

It was like yearbook day in high school, and it was so charming.

And we've also heard of several people who are using it as a bucket list book and are trying to get signatures in every bar in the book.

So our tour was really one of the highlights of my career.

- And some of these people, this is the first book they've ever bought.

They're like, "I'm gonna put it on my coffee table."

And I'm like, "Okay."

(laughs) - And what I really, we were appreciated because these were people who never thought anyone would ask their opinion, especially about where they like to drink.

And because we think bars are just social clubs, they were more than happy to tell us the stories, tell us their histories, tell us the people that they loved at the bar.

And we got to know, we got to make a lot of friends, and I think we've got friends all over the state now and a lot of free drinks coming, too.

Thanks, Duddley's.

(Christine laughing) - I did get to, I came to the signing here, and that was really fun- - Yeah, that was cool.

- Watching all the regulars crowd around looking for their pictures and signing.

It was one of those community moments like you talk about that these places are so good for.

Another thing about all these bars, they all have, you know, they're a dive, they have that in common, but they are also varied.

Some of them have live music.

Some of them have karaoke nights.

Some of them only serve beer and no liquor.

I mean, there's a lot of variety in a dive.

It's not just the same old place every town.

- And I think that was one of the concepts that we wanted to demonstrate, especially through Kirk's photos.

We wanted to demonstrate that these, there are links to, from dive bar to dive bar, but each is very much a place unto itself.

I heard from somebody, and I can't remember that person's name, but I've stolen that line that wherever we went, it wasn't the same people, but it was always the same crowd, and I think that's what it was.

In the end, our last bar was Shorty's down in Port A, and at the very end of that bars tour, Kirk said, "You know, everybody smiled.

Everybody was so happy in this bar."

And that was the way I ended the book because that was our experience everywhere we went.

- And a lot of the bars, women own them, women bartenders.

So it's not like a spooky place, or you think, "Oh, we're gonna get jacked when we go in here."

Everything looks nice and accommodating.

- Yeah, that's what- - It's wholesome, yeah?

- That's what stood out to me is that they're, I guess people might have an idea in their head, but these places are diverse.

They're, like you said, a lot of women, if they don't own it, there's almost always one behind the bar serving you the drink.

It's open to everyone, literally.

- I have heard from many owners that the days of the big bar brawl are over, especially in dive bars, and that goes back to, again, the staff and the regulars both think of this place as their own.

So you don't mess with what's going on here.

There are very few fights.

- Yeah, we never ran into any trouble, any of these.

- No, no.

- The whole time, yeah.

- Kirk, I wanted to ask you a bit about the photography specifically because a dive bar is not necessarily known for being a bright, well-lit, easily photographable place.

So how do you go about taking pictures in dive bars?

- Well, it's all about mixing light, right?

So you got neon, you got darkness, you got window light, and then you got people, so that's movement.

So you gotta get these guys a little bit still, and you wanna, I wanna shoot quickly so I'm not in their face, I'm not interrupting their time.

And I did, you know, just balancing of light, a little bit of flash here and there, sometimes no, sometimes yes, and just worked my way through it.

And then it's a target-rich environment because it's just cool stuff everywhere.

- Sure, there are no bare walls in a dive.

- And interesting people.

- Right, and you know, I don't like really shooting models.

Shooting real people, doing portraits is a beautiful thing, yeah.

So that's a great, it was a great thing for us to, for me to do.

That's the kind of work I like to do.

- We did want to have as little unnatural light as possible because we wanted the readers to know what the place looks like when they go.

So if we had lit it all, kind of like what this is.

- Yeah, we cheated a little bit today.

- Not to give anything away, this isn't what the bar usually looks like.

I was very, I hounded Kirk to keep his flash in his pocket, and he did.

- Yeah, he pushed me a lot on this, you know?

- But I really, authentic, real and natural.

- Well, and that'll serve the readers who are wanting to treat this like a bucket list, 'cause they're gonna go in and see in person what they saw on the page.

- One of 'em, the one in- - And the people.

- In Galveston.

- Yes?

- Was that when the hurricane was coming?

- We had one tropical storm.

Maybe it was a hurricane coming.

- Yeah, kinda was a hurricane.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You know?

And we were like, you know, no one in the bar.

My wife's on the phone going, "Hey, get out, get out," you know?

And I'm shooting out in the back, and you can just see the lightning and the rain and the thunder and all the furniture's piled up.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It was pretty cool.

- I wanted to ask again about Shorty's in Port A, though, because it seemed like that was foreshadowed throughout the book.

It's one of those places where people in other parts of the state- - Everybody said- - Not just the locals, everyone's telling you to go there.

What's so special about that place that it's statewide famous?

- I don't know, no, it is- - Second that.

- It is, well, it's been around a long time, been in the same family up until just recently, and the family hand-selected the new owner.

Shorty's has a, their thing is that they have a bunch of hats, like mostly baseball caps tacked to the ceiling, and it's their thing.

And so people who go to visit Shorty's like to leave a little memento of themselves there, which is kind of the opposite of what you do when you travel, you take something.

And I think Shorty's was just so special because it's so long-lived, and also you can leave a little bit of yourself there.

And so it goes back, again, to customers being a part of the bar, and it had a very good location near the water.

It has just moved, and we are keeping a close eye on it, because moving from one location to another can impact the dive quality of a bar.

- Because they moved to Phoenix.

- They did not move to Phoenix.

They moved just a couple miles away.

They're still in Port A.

But we did find in other bars we went to, we were told, "You know, if you're really doing this book, you gotta go to Shorty's," and we finally did.

- And it feels like it's at the end of the world, you know, like it's the bottom of Texas, you know?

We're like, "All right, we covered the state," you know?

- Yeah, yeah.

- We can wrap this up.

- But it really did have an international renown to it.

- Now, I wanna specify, when we say they moved, they didn't just like pack up and go.

Like, they literally picked up the bar- - They jacked the building up and moved it away.

- And moved it somewhere else.

And I was checking their Facebook to see where they, it seems like they're hoping to reopen, if not already very soon.

- [Anthony] Should be in the middle of June.

- Okay.

- [Kirk] There's gonna be a very nice condo where the bar used to be.

- Oh, of course, of course.

But hopefully they can, since they literally just picked it up, it can keep that feeling and that vibe.

- And we didn't know that when we were writing about that, yet almost to a person, the people we interviewed and photographed said, "Port A's changing, and Shorty's is one of the last bits of old Port A.

This is getting a little scary."

So when we found out that they were literally moving the bar to a different location on Mustang Island, that was a bit of prophecy as well.

It seemed like everyone kind of knew or felt this was going to happen.

And yet for being such an old rough-around-the-edges bar, there was too much love for that bar to just let it close.

- Yeah, right, good, well said.

- Thank you.

- You should be a writer.

- I try.

(Christine laughing) - We talked about the history of dive bars and how they're long lasting.

Are they safe?

Are they future proof?

What's the future of dives?

- Spooky, man, it's tough, you know?

Real estate, Texas booming and everything, and so I think they're a gem.

You gotta hang onto 'em and support 'em.

But I don't know, it's tough.

There's been a couple that have gone away that are in the book.

- The pandemic wiped out a lot of, not a lot in the book, just two in the book, but the pandemic, as we all know, has just shifted everything.

And we do hear that a lot of dive bars are having challenges holding on to their clientele.

So I wouldn't put dive bars on the endangered species list because- - I would.

- Bars are aging into being dives every day.

- Up-and-coming dives, you know.

- There are, yeah.

- Hopeful dives.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- You know, baby dives.

- Baby dives, absolutely.

So I would not write them off just yet.

Until artificial intelligence comes up with a way to simulate a bar experience, I think we're gonna be okay in Texas.

- Wonderful, well, we are running outta time, so that's a good place to start closing up.

I do wanna, in our final two minutes, what do you want people to take away from this book, from this project, just generally?

- Go ahead.

- Okay, well, a few months ago I was on campus, and I made a promise to the Texas A&M University Press and it's backers that I would do my solid best to get this book a James Beard Award, and this paper has the names of this year's James Beard nominations on it.

We're not on it, but I am so proud of this book.

We worked long and hard on this book, and Texas A&M University Press put together a gorgeous book that belongs on your coffee table.

So it's certainly the best thing I've written.

- Oh, wonderful.

- No, I got enough.

That's good, man.

- Okay.

- That's the best thing I think he's photographed.

- Well, thank you both so much for being here.

I just, I loved working on this book with you guys.

It's been really fun to promote, and I'm so grateful that you could be here for our special 100th show.

I couldn't have asked for better guests.

- Congratulations!

Congratulations.

- Yeah, bravo.

- Thank you very much.

- We got you a Quarter Pounder.

This has been in Duddley's since July 5th, 2013.

- Look inside, it looks pretty good.

- It's still, it's going strong, just like Christine.

- (laughing) Thank you very much.

I wanna thank Duddley's, too, for opening the doors and welcoming us here today.

- Thank you!

- This has been a really fun place to come and shoot, so thank you to them.

The book again is "Texas Dives: Enduring Neighborhood Bars in The Lone Star State," and if I may, I wanna take just some extra minute here to say a few more thank yous for our 100th show.

First and foremost, I have to thank KAMU, without whom we would not have a show.

So thank you guys so much.

I grew up here, I grew up watching KAMU, so I appreciate and thank you for the many years of bringing public television radio to our community.

I wanna thank the wonderful people at the Texas A&M University Press, without whom, again, we would not have a book.

You guys are the best people to work with, and thank you for supporting me in doing the show.

As far as we know, we're the only university press with a television show.

- All right!

- So that's pretty special and unique.

I wanna thank my family for always watching, hi, and for encouraging me and nurturing my love of reading as a child.

That's very important.

And finally, I wanna thank you for watching and for tuning in and listening and finding me at open shows to tell me you love watching the program.

It really does mean a lot.

I love reading books, talking to authors.

To know that other people like it, too, is very special, so thank you.

We're gonna keep doing a hundred more.

- Cheers!

- Cheers to a hundred more.

- Cheers to Christine and the program.

- It's bad luck to cheers water, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

- It's gin, it's gin.

(Christine laughing) - Thank you so much for joining us, and as always, I will see you again soon.