Club Sixty-Five

I went here a few years back at like 7 am when I woke up still drunk from the night before. The place was a real pit then & I listened to a stirring trove of stories from a toothless woman who had been basically been sitting on the same barstool for at least 20 years.
Sounds like the hipsters have made the place clean up a bit and drove up the drink prices.
What a shame.

A decent «dive» in the tl. Spurisingly clean. Suprisingly quiet. Suprisingly $ 7 for a JW Black, neat. However it was a double. Old school pool in the back. White mained one eyed guy in the back as well, for that matter…
«Regulars» tend to be 60+ males. Females, do not exist. The bartenders (any of them) can keep shit under control and have seen ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.
Not a particularly divey, or interesting establishment. But a GREAT place to hide out for a while and get shitfaced on the cheap without having to deal with a single human being, or light, for that matter…
reminds me of a smaller, bootleg version of Ms. Mays in the garden district of New Orleans. + 1 for that.

Whenever I see a show at the Warfield I try and hit Club 65 afterwards…
I was sadly dissapointed to see it closed a couple of weeks ago following the Nick Cave show — are they closed for good?
People watching is off the hook in this place… It is so seedy it makes the Ha-​Ra look like a mojito joint! The two or three times I’ve been here our bartender (Richard) was great! Older guy, told great stories/​jokes and managed to run the lowlifes out when need be.

The bartender at Club 65 is everything I really want to be in this life.
She’s hot. And she’s friendly to everyone. But she’s also totally kickass. I watched her throw some creepy coked-​up TL dude out of the bar. He tried to get up in her face and she was like, «Uh-​uh! OUT!» And she backed him right out the door. No one had to get her back.
And, she handled about 30 people from my pal Dicky’s dive bar luvahs’ group bombarding her joint without any help. So she can also tend bar pretty well.
I don’t know what the female equivalent of having cajones would be… How you say? Whatever. She rules. I was making polite conversation with her, but really, I was trying to work some of my mind tricks on her…
«Reveal your secrets to me, mystical Tenderloin bartendress… Show me the way to be kickass, not get my ass kicked… SHOW ME…»
Didn’t work, but whatever. I like this bar. This is a good dive bar. Whether it’s filled with 30 people you know or not. You don’t have to be afraid to come here, even though it’s on the shitty block of all shitty blocks in this town.
Because kickass bartender gal has EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL.

Oh, I’m terribly confused. Club 65 has so many makings of a dive bar– cheap beer, seedy neighborhood, tired regulars. But it’s so… so… clean! Seriously, clean restroom, clean floors, clean bar. The staff was even friendly.
I mean, who ever heard of a clean restroom in a dive bar? I’d possibly take my mother here if she drank beer.

When I’m 65 I will drink here with my toothless whore of a girlfriend who hasn’t seen her grand children in 15 years. Do the math and you’ll know the type of woman I’m gonna’ be with.
I will drink and she will dance around like a freak.
I love a dive

I dig this place as far as dive bars go. It’s hitting all the marks and firing on all cylinders. I love that they have a huge sign in the back of the place that reads: «Club 65 Welcomes You». I also really love that they’re rocking the Las Vegas spirit. There are not many windows, so you are less likely to be reminded of the fact that you’re totally hammered at 11:45am.

Piss weak beer? Check
Crazy one eyed dude at the end of the bar? Check
Interior like a nicotine yellow fly blown lung? Check
Miller High Life, the champaign of beers is what I was drinking here. I wish I had tried a mixed drink after reading some of the other reviews, as that seems to be a big plus. i’m afraid Club Sixty-​Five is not quite crazy enough to be a memorable dive bar, and falls into the category of being a bit of a boring bar. It seems to have taken on the dive bar moniker only because of its awful location. In fact getting to Club Sixty Five is somewhat more memorable than the bar itself. The one saving grace of this bar was the ancient one eyed crazy guy who is obviously a resident. He’s kind of interesting when he’s sitting at the end of the bar looking mysterious, but he becomes a pretty typical grouchy old guy when he decides he’s got to go somewhere, pushing by people to get where he’s going. He’s even scarier up close.

3.75 seagrams 7 on the rocks. Incredibly clean bathroom. And, the best salty dog regular I have ever seen: apparently, he is called «the general» and is part of the furniture. He had this absolutely amazing enormous belt buckle, loooong nails, and more gigantic rings than you can shake a stick at (i have no idea what this means, but you get the gist, right?). Oh, did I mention he’s half blind & has a big giant mane of white hair? Yeah, that too. Amazing.

I would give this place 5 stars, because it is divey… but to get 5 stars from me you need to earn it, damnit!
Whoever cleaned the bathrooms in this place was clearly unaware I was coming here, because they were… well… clean. No self respecting dive has a clean bathroom, with soap to boot! I would give 4.5 stars if it were possible because there were enough burn marks in the linoleum in the bathroom to nearly make up for the pine fresh scent that greeted me.
Outside of the bathrooms this place was a quality, quality dive. I had a lovely conversation with Dennis, the coolest homeless guy I have ever met, and Randy, the gay American Indian who is friends for life with anyone who says Gavin rocks, despite the fact that he cant keep it in his pants (Damn all of you Unilocalers who thought I wouldnt remember these fine fellows names by the end of the evening).
The overall feeling is, if you dont have teeth the people here wont judge, because neither do most of them. In fact I think the teeth intact population at this bar are a huge minority.
Eeerie lighting, the smell of BO, $ 2.75 Miller High Life (the cheapest of the evening while carousing in the TL), and über cool toothless customers. I will definitely be back to Club Sixty-​Five!

As I began to enter Club 21, a huge piece of ice flew out the door grazing my large nose. This, coupled with the terse statement of a local street entrepeneur («I RULE FUCKING TAYLOR STREET» — I hadn’t the heart to correct his grammar) made me opt for Club 65 across the street. My two friends and I immediately won over the barkeep with our lavish $ 3/​round tip. Subsequent rounds were poured with appreciation. Mike W speaks of an old guy with a huge beard and huger belt buckle. He was there. Mike neglected to tell of his (the old guy’s, note Mike’s) single functioning eye. The belt buckle is really the biggest I’ve ever seen — at least 8″ by 6″ The best part? I’m PRETTY sure I heard someone call him and his ladyfriend Patty & Ringo. I’d really like to believe that’s what I heard.

Although the Club Sixty-​Five looks as if it could’ve been a pretty cool hangout back it’s heyday, it obviously entered a period of decline many moons ago, and consequently it’s luster has been fading steadily ever since. The wooden cubicle-​grid over the ceiling hearkens back to late 50’s, and the aging hardwood to the rear of the bar probably wasn’t cheap when it went in sometime around the end of the Korean War. But the passage of time hasn’t been kind to the Sixty-​Five Club, nor the neighborhood that surrounds it, and years of hard use without a shred of upkeep have taken their toll. It’s walls, paint, ceiling, and décor seem trapped in a painfully slow, downwardly-​spiraling vortex that’s affected every business in the surrounding neighborhood. Consequently, «dive bar chic» has become the highest mark that any watering hole in the area could logically shoot for. The Sixty-​Five Club not only misses this mark… it’s given up achieving it altogether.
Cracking paint. Dinged walls. Woodwork that cries out in vain for a dab of linseed oil on a soft cloth. A forlorn specter looms over the pool table… that of an establishment who once hosted shot-​callers and deal-​makers in it’s first phase of life, cried out for it’s lost soul during it’s second, and quietly resigned itself to an existence of continual decay in the third.
No beer is on tap, but bottled domestics are plentiful and the liquor selection doesn’t differ that much from that of an average neighborhood bar. When I visited one Friday night, dueling televisions at either end of the bar showed an A’s game at one end, and a pro-​wresting «Smackdown» match at the other. Clientele was 100% male with the exception of a lone elderly woman that munched pizza with an older man sporting a massive gray mane and a huge homemade belt-​buckle. An electronic engineer that lived in the neighborhood sat immediately to my right. He confirmed that female visitors younger than sixty were rare… almost to the point being unheard of. The bartender was a lone saving grace. Talkative and friendly, he gave me some tips on what to check out and what to avoid in the immediate area. He also filled us on some of the finer points of «Smackdown» style pro-​wrestling, of which he was an avid fan.
Old-​school décor, but with little sense of tradition or history. No beer on tap. Patrons seem friendly. They aren’t attractive or intelligent, nor are they crazy and amusing. I hung around through two bottled MGDs, and ran out of reasons to stick around about halfway into the second.
Perhaps I’ll come by sometime to check out the day vibe… but on a Friday night this place was mighty slow…

well, this is one of those places where you go and upon reflection say, «i will only return if already blazingly drunk and unaware of my surroundings, or maybe if i need to use the bathroom so badly that the interior of this place is a slight step up from the alleyway.» clearly this place is about as dive as it can get, which may be fine for some. i must admit, the drinks were strong and the elderly barkeep was, um, sweet? however, the fellow clientele were some of the mangiest and sketchiest bunch i’ve seen since watching that video of dingoes fighting over meat. besides the strong drinks, its only saving grace is its proximity to the warfield. so basically, it’s the sort of place that you run into, order a round, chug heartily, and make your way to the show. otherwise, don’t say i didn’t warn you.

When we were debating whether to brave the Arrow Bar, the guy who lives above it told us to come here. It’s a small neighborhood bar that doesn’t cater to a particular crowd – there are young people and old, people coming from the Warfield shows and those from the neighborhood, even people whose conversations are in a mysterious language unfamiliar to the ear. There is a little old woman who tends bar; she is so sweet yet mixes her drinks deadly strong. She carded us, then gently put her hand on our hands and said, «You’re still so YOUNG!» even though we’re waaay past the age of being carded. When we finished our first round, she didn’t hurry us to order the next but said she wanted us to just relax and have a good time. Who can argue with that?