Some of my tens of readers who might also happen to be drinkers--I'm going to just go ahead and assume that translates to "all of you"--will appreciate the concept of the favorite dive. Most of us have one.

There's a few bars close to me, and we visit them regularly: the regular-Joe bar, with pool table and daily chalkboard specials advertising things like "$4 Jack and Pabst"; the upscaled new place with the high-toned liquor selections and freshly-squeezed fruity drinks; and occasionally, the delightfully atmosphere-free place that does nothing but serve Belgian beers. All great places, to be sure. But none of them are "our place."

No, "our place," somehow, is a recently-added bar adjunct to a laughably average Chinese food joint. A couple of years ago, the ailing restaurant insanely rented out the abandoned next-door space, knocked out a door in the intervening wall, and set up a bar space, whose layout also happens to be comically inept. It is wholly charmless and utterly without character, except for the large latch-hook thing that hangs on the wall and features a startlingly enormous panda, whose looming presence and penetrating latch-hook gaze stifles rational thought and murders casual conversation. This is the place that, for no earthly reason I can even think of, that we have adopted as our own.

I'm sure it's a lot of intangible things. There are, of course, the regulars, some of whom were rendered barless when the legendary Ileen's (formerly Ernie Steele's) went under: there's R., the ancient would-be raconteur, who nurses beers while telling halting, incomprehensible stories that feature sentences like, "I was, I was . . . (his mouth works stabbingly while making wet noises) . . . there was the boat! This was an admiral, you see? So I'm with this admiral, and he's got this bottle of scotch! And his wife is . . . (wet mouth noises) . . . she's scratching the hell out of his hardwood floors. With her heels! He just gets so pissed off, but he's the admiral! So I don't know." Then he roars with laughter.

Or there's G., a lovely woman who looks to be in her late forties or maybe early fifties. She's delightful and lucid, and tends to nurse what I think are vodka tonics and is just pretty great, and boy were we stunned when we found out that she is actually 73 years old. I hope I look that good when I'm 73, but that's all going to depend on whether or not I draw a quality embalmer.

There are the sisters, both in their sixties somewhere, who always sit next to each other and laugh their whiskey-smoked laughs and look like they're training for the 2008 Olympic Hip-Shattering team. In fact, just last weekend, one of the sisters fainted right in the bar and knocked her noggin a really good one; the noise was shocking and horrible. EMTs were summoned, and while we waited for them, clucking over her prone form, she moaned, "I don't want to see those guys! Oh, I don't want any ambulance!" The EMTs did their best when they got there--her blood pressure was low, and they really wanted to take her to the hospital--but she waved them off magnificently. "I'm fine! You boys are lovely, but I'm fine." They reluctantly left (I think they made her sign a form), and soon she was esconced in a booth (the stool she usually occupies was out for obvious reasons), smiling beatifically as she nipped at her water. I assume it was water. She grinned as she held up gauze on her nasty forehead wound. "I'm not as good looking as those firemen, but if you wanted attention, all you had to do was say so," I said. "AH HA HA HA," she cackled at me, and slapped my wrist.

There's some other weird cats, of course, like the guy whose name I do not know who solemnly grips my shoulder as he passes to go outside to smoke; the signal means, "We're going to smoke." It feels oddly conspiratorial, like "Join us outside for information about the rebels," but not creepy, like, "It's time for your alley blowjob." There's also the blown-out disaster drunk, who is there every single afternoon until six or so, and then slants his way over to the corner store where he buys more beer and his nightly provision of corn dogs or Hot Pockets.

And of course--of course--there is the tall blonde woman who is also seemingly always there, the one who could drink Rasputin under the table. She invariably wears things like alarmingly unflattering halter tops and denim skirts; her voice sounds like tectonic disagreement. She frankly terrifies me. I suspect that at some point in her life, she fucked some guy named Manny to death, and then chopped off his hands and head and threw them into Puget Sound.

It sounds seedy, and it kind of is, but in a harmless way (Ileen's was the definition of seedy). I mean, the place is clean, but it's also not-clean. It's sort of like how Pixar would depict a seedy bar, but with more profanity. And there is this feeling of . . . I don't know. Comeraderie? Last Christmastime, we would be in the place, and all of a sudden, here's our waiter, placing upside-down shot glasses next to each of our drinks. "G. over there just bought you guys a round. Merry Christmas." Things like that. R. is frequently fond of clipping out filthy cartoons from . . . well, I don't like to think of where . . . and gleefully sharing them with us. The last thing he showed me was some awful thing involving a guy getting his ass eaten out by a whore. I don't even remember what the hell the joke was; he watched me searchingly, waiting for my reaction. I stared for a while, and then manufactured a laugh. He clapped me on the back happily and said, "I knew you'd love that!" "That's awesome!" I yelped, and handed it back without showing the thing to the wife. And somehow, to me, this is charming? Lord.

And then there's the owners, D. and his wife S. The wife and I frequently have a friend join us at the place--in fact, he eats a lot of meals there, prompting D., a Chinese immigrant, to declare him, at shattering volume, "THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD!" D. has a horrible limp and spectacular arthritis, so watching him walk is sort of like watching some horrible, endless Noh theater performance. And S., whose English would verge on racist parody were it not of course completely genuine, is a tiny, energetic spitfire, given to shrieking things like, "YOUWANNABILLOKAYIGOGETFORYOU!" S. also does things like, if she's tending bar and wants to go home, will, at 11:00, simply dim the lights down to black hole levels and sit placidly, waiting for the remaining customers time to realize that they can't even find their drinks any more, and hey, I guess it's time to leave.

I used to play the horribly addictive MegaTouch games at this place, but then they were suddenly removed. I asked D., the owner, "Hey, are you getting new ones?" D. waved his arms as much as he could in obvious disgust. "Those things," he sneered. "Assholes, they sit around forever. They drink coffee!" He was spitting mad. "I tell them to fuck you," he continued, and then added a pricelessly spot-on Moe Szyslak moment, "People sit there and they don't drink so much."

D. would also invite us in for special events. "You here on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? You come up here for free food! We're going to have our friends here! You bring any friends you want! It's a big feed!" And sure enough, D. would prepare massive quantities of fried rice, barbecued pork, etc. Very Thanksgivingy! A couple years ago, when I invited a bunch of friends, one couple unfortunately showed up before we had gotten there, and D. attacked them like a Doberman. "Private party! I'm sorry! You must leave!" My friends stammered, "But--but Skot said to come over . . ." D. instantly transformed. "You friends of Skot? Sorry, sorry!" Then he shooed some people out of an occupied booth for them while my friends skittishly wondered what the hell I had gotten them into, and were occasionally terrorized by D., exhorting them to "EAT! EAT! WE HAVE SO MUCH FOOD!"

D. died of a massive stroke last weekend. I doubt if he was in his sixties, and his arthritis was so advanced, so crippling . . . it was awful to watch him try and move. My wife saw him last when she was shopping at an Asian food store; she said his knuckles had swollen to the size of overripe grapes. He must have been in agony. His wife is still tending bar; his daughter quietly invited us to the funeral. Some people are going; some, like proud G., the ageless grandmother, are not: "I'm not going. That's for family. I'll be right here." Dive bar as church. We worship in the ways we know how.

I didn't say what I thought at the time when she said that, which was, "But that is being family."

So long, D. I don't know if I'll go to the ceremony or not. I might just join G. at the bar and sit and talk to her for a while, and then maybe pay for poor D.'s too-late last drink, an upside-down shot glass in front of the empty stool next to me to represent. And I'll leave it there until I go home, and maybe it can stay there until S. dims down the lights, saying without words that it's time for everyone to go home.