Part IV: Pete’s Place (the Irish Channel)

I was full-blown drunk when we got to Pete’s, and, at first glance, I worried I might end up on the floor there.

Pete’s has the look of a dive that drinkers like to keep a secret.

I would either end up on the floor because I, too, would fall in love with the place, then end up there on my own drunken volition, or one of the rough and tumble Irish Channel regulars would put me there for discovering and invading their neighborhood watering hole.

Luckily, I didn’t end up on the floor, but if you close your eyes and imagine what a no-frills dive bar should look like, Pete’s is it. It’s simply a bar. No tables, no chairs, no video poker, no pool table, just a bar, a jukebox and a regular-size, analog television set with sports on. It’s dive bar perfection.

Besides, anyone looking for trouble there would find it in the form of a half-hellhound, half-Godzilla-like beast named Kayleigh that, along with Pete, roams behind the bar. Kayleigh is an inordinately enormous black pit bull with a head like an anvil.

Pete, a stocky Boston transplant, looks like he could easily handle himself, and I’d bet he has a piece, or at the least a shillelagh behind the bar with him, but I think he brings Kayleigh to work to really hammer home the point that no bullshit is going to take place in his establishment.

We bellied up to Pete’s bar and got a round of High Lifes for $1.25 each. I had to close one eye to see the score of the Hornets game.

On a dare and out of sheer, alcohol-fueled bravery, I stuck my hand behind the bar to pet Pete’s dog’s massive head, and it turns out that Kayleigh is really quite the cupcake. Pete says she’s a sweet dog, “unless I tell her not to be.”

Pete’s bar also has the little window where people can walk up and buy booze to go, and Pete even sells pizza to go. The pizza is, however, a frozen Tombstone he cooks in a toaster oven.

We drank a few High Lifes, chatted with Pete and watched the end of the game. Pete’s Place was so impressive as a dive bar that later that evening (after more diving in and much more drinking), Mat ranked it as his favorite, and tried to take us back to Pete’s, then confessed during the ride that he couldn’t remember how to get there.

Click here for Part I: Pal’s Lounge, here for Part II: the Mayfair and here for Part III, the 801.