After hours in the bottom feeder lab (aka after 4 pitchers and a round of Jameson shots in the back of Brewer’s), we have scientifically re-engineered the bottom feeder review system from the ground up.
The heart of the review is still the diver’s tale, and it always will be. But we tweaked the bar rating system to more accurately describe the diving experience. Each bar’s set of ratings now consist simply of food (★ – ★★★★★), drink (★ -★★★★★), price ($ – $$$$) , and overall (★ – ★★★★★). Five stars is the best, and four dollar signs is the most expensive. Rating food is straightforward; drink ratings depend on beer quality (freshness, cleanliness of glassware, etc.), beer selection (nothing but MGD is bad), and possibly liquor considerations (e.g., what shot comes with the citywide special?) Overall is basically an average of the three, with upward or downward adjustments made on a dive-by-dive basis.
Our detailed analysis showed that atmosphere rating is a completely arbitrary measure for the purposes of a dive bar blog. There’s just no way to compare the atmosphere of Tower Tavern to the Old Rail on the same scale. So we did away with it. The body of the review does enough to cover the atmosphere and the experience of the visit.
Another big change – away with the depth meter. That graphic looked like shit. And the numbers were even more arbitrary than the atmosphere ratings. We did find it useful to compare the diviness of each bottom feeder dive though, so we went with a strict ranking system instead. I’ll leave one more ugly depth meter in this post just for old time’s sake, but from here on out, dives will be listed in depth order on the dives page.
TL;DR: the depth meter really made no sense so we deleted it and listed the bars in the order of diviness on the Dives page. While your’re here, check out all the new places on the map!
