Bukowski Tavern

Back Bay, Boston –

Named after America’s literary “laureate of the lowlife,” Bukowski Tavern is a great combination of sloshy dive bar and beer aficionado’s paradise that attracts students, hipsters, and blue-collar types alike.

Dimly lit and featuring the requisite details of any good dive – namely, walls lined in beer bottles, blaring rock music, and a cluster of regulars hunched on stools – the venue also offers an impressive brew menu with everything from basic ales and lambics to exotic Japanese sake/ale hybrids and bacon-flavored German rauchbier (smoked beer).

Within walking distance of Fenway, the venue is fairly laid-back during the week when locals and Sox fans drop in for pre-game drinks at the bar or fill the tables to down some greasy bar food.

The place gets plenty rowdy on weekends, though, when hordes of trendy Berklee music students and hip twenty-somethings turn the narrow space into a drunken mess as they throw back more than a few unusual brews and scream over the music, while patrons overwhelmed by the selection of suds usually just spin the brightly-colored “beer wheel” and let chance decide their poison.

A grungy take on the gastropub, Bukowski Tavern is a great option for both weekday beer samplers and weekend partiers into elbow-to-elbow action.