Bar Remembrance: The Spot Club
Many of the taverns in my dive bar book have closed. Here is another.
The Spot Club
1732 W 18th
Longnecks are for lawyers and you won’t find any of the former and few of the latter at this near northwest side strip mall bar. It’s hard to believe, but the Spot has been there for over 40 years, ranking it among the oldest bars in the Inner Loop.
On the night of my visit, there was a bad smell, but you soon got accustomed to it. Pink sparkly curtains bring a touch of bedazzlement to the medium-sized room, where a stage for karaoke stands in one corner, and for those too sedentary to avail themselves of the bar’s two pool tables, there’s a paperback library with a couple hundred mysteries, potboilers and romances.
Party pics of the regulars line the walls, and once a year, the owners festoon the ceilings with dangling parrots and flamingos for the bar’s annual luau. Even Don Ho at his most chillaxed would sound like Guns N’ Roses compared to the sounds we heard coming from the jukebox – a soporific succession of Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli and other show tunes. The older Anglo crowd was nodding off over their light beers at the U-shaped bar, when the aging barmaid turned her attention to us.
“I’ve worked here 27 years and I don’t even drink,” she said a deep, smoke-cured Texas drawl. “I am on a ton of anti-depressants though. You’ve gotta have somethin’.”
Today: I think the old Spot Club space is vacant, but there is a new Spot Club at 4818 Dacoma.