Stumpy’s Blues Bar

Keri is awesome! Great service Great Prices! Really good! ! Pool tables and darts!

Cool place ! A dive but in a good way. Great juke box music. Heard the bands on the weekend are good. Great dive bar

Expectations can be a terrible thing. I remember the first time I went to see «Austin Powers; International Man of Mystery» at the theaters. I had pretty high expectations, and was pretty disappointed. The following year when I watched it on cable, it was amazing how, with little or no expectations, I found myself really enjoying the movie. And every time I watched it thereafter, I found a little something more to appreciate in it. Is is Academy Award material? No, of course not, but it does what it does well. It was just such expectations that have long kept me from this Arlington haunt.
So it was that on the weekend of this most recent Halloween that a friend invited me to come to Stumpy’s to see a band his buddy played in. Having lived little more than a mile away for many years back in the 00’s, I remembered the place. Pool hall, biker bar, it all painted a picture that did not appeal to me in my head. But I had no plans, and the buddy in the band is a TKD Master whose tournaments I have participated in on several occasions, so I gave it a shot.
The crowd was older than most of the bars I frequent. But they were no less enthusiastic, and the change ended up being a welcome one. Not a fedora in sight! The people are genuine, and the dive is a dive because it is a dive, not because it has been decorated to look like a dive (e.g. Double Wide).
The band played covers, but the crowd ate it up. The drinks were as cheap as I have seen in recent memory. And the smoky atmosphere noted by some was not a problem when I wandered out onto the pleasant patio in the back, sipped a few drinks, and smoked a Montecristo.
All the while my friend, who it turns out had managed the place in decades past when it was Fast Freddy’s, was regaling me with stories of its glories past. But all I could see was that its glory had not yet faded.
So don’t let its looks, or its reputation, convince you that you should pass this place by. Don’t surrender to those preconceptions. Give this place a chance, and prepare to have a good time at Stumpy’s.

Do you like BBQ? I mean, do you REALLY like BBQ? Do you like it so much that you sometimes wish you knew exactly what the brisket feels like when it’s being cooked? Then Stumpy’s is for you!
Absolutely the single smokiest place I have ever been. Perhaps because the party inside is just that damn hot? Of their ventilation just sucks. Or because it’s filled with legit bikers and their babes playing pool, drinking liquor, and listening to people play the blues.
Like most of the legit bars in Arlington/​Ft. Worth, this place is an absolute hole that most people don’t know exists. It’s not a dive bar in the Dallas sense – you won’t find hipster style and PBR. Or at least not the hipster style. It’s low prices for liquor, pool tables, loud music, old dudes in leather who may or may not be carrying weapons, and women with too much make up, fake breasts, bright colored sweaters that are a size too small, and the leathery complexion that can only come from 40 years of smoking.
That said, if you’re looking for any of those things – or you just like cheap drinks and old guys wailing on their axes and doing an impression of Stevie Ray, then this just might be the place for you.
In the very least, it’s something to be experienced, in my opinion. Especially if you hate corporate bar and aren’t in love with faux-​dive bars filled with aspiring writers and artists who are really 30 year old alcoholic On the Border employees.