The Local Dive

I’m taking a risk here, but I’m going to call out one of the most feared subcultures in modern American history.

They wear leather. They walk tough. They have menacing tattoos of things like fire-breathing dragons being ripped apart by a squadron of red, white and blue eagles.

They are bikers, and they are supposedly scary people.

But the truth is–and you’ll learn this when you go to Red Bones Raw Bar in Chesapeake, a reputed biker bar–that bikers are actually pretty damn soft, decent people that on a Friday night just want to drink some beer, shoot some pool, and laugh at all the bullshit we call life.

You might not get that impression of Red Bones and its clientele if you never get so far as a barstool. There are Harleys in the parking lot. The back room is smoky, and your fingers feel sticky just looking at the tables. Red Bones is not a place that most people would call ‘classy’.

But you know what? Screw class. Class is confining. Class is the invented concept that leads us to spend too much money on clothes and hair gel and gym memberships.

That’s good money that, if saved properly, could be used to spend on Pabst “Pounders” at Red Bones.

Yes, you heard that right. One pound PBRs.

You walk into Red Bones and all of a sudden the accents are a little more Southern, so much so that you almost feel like you’re in a different state of the Union than Norfolk. The ’smoking area’ is a dude’s paradise–with two electric dart boards, a Foosball table, four pool tables, a Big Buck Hunter, a Golden Tee, and a team of waitresses as quick with a smile as they are with a Bud. A guy who identified himself as Jimmy Zzzz came up and basically just started talking.

Signage on a nearby business's window.

“When you see 40 bikes in the parking lot, you’re not going to stop,” he said. “But you should. Don’t be afraid of the ambiance you feel.”

Jimmy called it a regulars’ bar, but one that had the best bar food in the area, especially the steak and shrimp.

Something interesting about a bar like Red Bones is it creates, or at least encourages, certain types of conversation that you would never have when outside in proper society. For example, after a few drinks I ended up going on a 10-minute diatribe to Hannah about the beauty and tragedy of Spud Webb. That kind of thing just wouldn’t happen at a fancy bar in Norfolk.

We ended up talking to Katie, one of the waitresses, for a little while.

“Here everyone is ‘F this, F that, get me a beer’,” she said as she lovingly surveyed the bar.

Katie is from Chesapeake but then left for a while. She was disappointed when she came back.

“Shopping centers everywhere,” she said. “It changed so much.”

But Red Bones, to her, is different. Red Bones has kept the spirit of Chesapeake alive.

“All of the local yokels that have been here forever… they have heart.”

–JS

Red Bones Raw Bar Seafood Grille is located at 445 Battlefield Boulevard North in Chesapeake. Here’s their website: http://www.redbonesrawbar.com/.

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