Down the sidelong steps of the cream-brick Victorian known as the Goodman building is Raf Miastkowski’s favorite Austin dive bar. His recommendation carries some weight, as the author of the recently released Texas Dive Bar Encyclopedia, so I waste little time digging into what makes the Cloak Room stand out.
“It’s a complete dice roll here,” the thirtysomething writer says, gesturing to the scant Tuesday evening crowd. It can be quiet, he tells me, or packed with UT alumni riled up from the game, or politicians fresh from the nearby Capitol floor. “There’s no other bar in Austin that you’re going to get that – the range of characters.”
As dive bars go, this politico haunt is relatively uncluttered and well-stocked, but its what-you-see-is-what-you-get menu and windowless interior more than ensure that the Cloak Room is well-suited to the category. In three and a half years of driving across Texas, documenting some of the state’s shabbiest and longest-standing watering holes, Miastkowski’s encountered plenty of opinions on what does and does not constitute a dive bar – including, probably, yours, if you’re one of the 80,000 vocal followers of his @texasdives Instagram account.
“A dive is a shabby and unpretentious bar that serves cheap drinks without a cocktail menu,” he proclaims succinctly both in person and in writing. Divey-ness, our earnest guide has come to discover, is a spectrum impacted by locale and age, bartenders and their clientele. It includes some places he’d rather not go – Miastkowski is hardly the first to have beef with review-maligned South First “rip off” bar G&S Lounge, but arguably the loudest – and others that the dingiest aficionados might find too kept. “Bars and objectivity have never gone well together,” wrote Miastkowski’s bar-cataloging predecessor, Texas Monthly’s Jim Atkinson, decades ago. Neither are interested in arguing semantics any further.
Though opinions about, and nostalgic love for, dive bars proliferate, Miastkowski isn’t hopeful about their future. He points out that they weathered the 2008 financial crisis with dependable grace and wonders if they might go out with a boom in the coming years: “People are depressed and money’s tight, [but] they’re still going to go out to drink.” Still, consumers’ tastes change, and the travel writer has yet to see a new dive bar open. No one can stop talking about declining drinking rates, and higher-margin specialty drinks and food seem in vogue for new establishments. “I’m sure there’s a small-town joint that just opened that’s very simple, but overall, I think if you look at the numbers, it’s not increasing. It’s decreasing,” he says.
It’s the threat of extinction that inspired Miastkowski to start crisscrossing the state, stepping in for a sip at 151 love-worn establishments. A UX writer by day, the road trip fanatic’s move to Austin just happened to coincide with the last week of business for Dry Creek Cafe, a Lake Austin staple for 68 years, whose picture adorns the encyclopedia’s introduction. On his first visit, he immediately felt the charm of the place, rushing to return a second time before the doors shut for good. The discovery sparked the inventorial project.
“Capturing these places while they’re still around will give a historical snapshot of the dive bars in this era,” he hopes. Whether collecting notes or not, Miastkowski says he tries to go to a dive bar everywhere he travels. They’re inexpensive, rarely crowded, and, at least for now, “That’s where you’re going to see the local culture, the local people, maybe see parts of local history on the walls.”
This article appears in November 21 • 2025.