RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Local dive bar Bog Hill, an establishment notorious for over-serving customers, fights, and unsanitary conditions, shocked regulars and locals alike by rebranding itself as a “sober space” due to the revocation of its liquor license, confirmed painfully clear-headed customers.
“Used to be you could serve five or six minors a night and it would be no big deal, but now you serve ONE seventeen-year-old who looks twenty-one and they take your liquor license,” said owner Rob Denzel. “I hate what this place has become, but I gotta keep the lights on, so we’re embracing this whole sober thing and serving imported sodas and other bullshit until they reinstate my license. I’d pay most of the bands that play here in booze, and now I actually have to give them cash. It sucks.”
Townies who have been coming to the small, dimly-lit dive for years are not happy with the new changes.
“This place sucks now but I’m banned from every other spot in the city. You get drunk and kick one dog and all of a sudden you’re worse than Stalin,” said Bog Hill regular Jim Tracey. “You should’ve seen this bar in its hay day man. I did coke with Fat Mike here back in ‘91. Now there’s all these kids walking around with Xs on their hands drinking fucking seltzer, and I’m stuck sneaking in nips and doing them in the stall like a degenerate. I give Rob credit for still booking shows, but turns out most of the bands he books are only good when you’re shit piss drunk.”
Local man Brett Naples, who identifies as being in recovery, has started coming to Bog Hill after years of actively avoiding the establishment.
“It’s kinda weird that the walls are covered in alcohol paraphernalia, and that the floor is so sticky. But I’m just glad there’s finally a place in this neighborhood where I can go to shows without having beer spilled all over me,” said Naples. “It is pretty boring in here though. There were a couple of people playing Rock, Paper, Scissors in the corner, and another group having a Connect 4 tournament, it sort of makes me wish there was some element of drunken violence.”
At press time, a regular known as “Big Bob” was being kicked out of the bar for trying to smoke weed out of a Liquid Death can in the bathroom.