A little news from around Boston:

There are faux dives in town. Bars that are designed to look like the kind of cheap dive that opened just after Prohibition, and haven't been redecorated since. Behind the bar are stacks of expensive flavored vodka.

The Abbey Lounge in Somerville is the real thing. Not too long ago, they moved the bar from one side of the room to the other. Old timers will say the place isn't quite the same since they spruced it up. No one walking in off the street would believe it had been spruced up at all.

A few years ago, they hired a booking agent for their music who actually brought in a lot of really good bands, which makes for a very strangely mixed crowd -- half young local musicians, half old laborers out for a beer. There's a bumper sticker -- "The Abbey Lounge: Rock and Roll for Drunks and Hunks". The other day, I saw one of those up in the lounge itself. "And hunks" was crossed out. They all have something in common...