Alotta’s Cocktail Lounge

OMG a waste if my gas to stop at this place. I question myself why I even walked in the door.
They take cash only and have little selection of beers. No food and the atmosphere is non-​existent.
I recommend you steer clear of this hole-​in-​the-​wall to put it politely.
They do have a TV, but either it was broke or they were saving electricity.

Chill but empty Dive Bar. They only take CASH! FYI!
The bar tender was a little sloppy due to the drinking she was doing along with the regulars that came in. This actually made is a great time!!! EVERYONE was having a blast singing and dancing to the juke box.

This IS a little hole in the wall… They Really Hook it Up on the Mixed Drinks for a Cheap Price!!!

Came back here again, and I take all the crap talking back. This place is the poo. Take a sniff!

It’s questionable who this bar is named after. Alotta Fagina? If so, by the sweet gyrations of fembots, a classy man like Austin Powers would not set foot in this watering hole. It is possible that this establishment’s heyday was in the 60’s as well, because it looks a couple of decades past its prime (if it ever had a prime time). This bar pretty much scrapes the bottom of the dive bar barrel, and that is a cavernous and decrepit barrel.
The stuff hanging on the walls here is downright outlandish. One of the first things our hero noticed when walking in was the giant marlin to the right of the door. On the far wall, there is a cork board of pictures of the senior-​aged regulars, some of whom are posing with women half their age. In the back of the room, there’s also a huge heater hanging on the ceiling. A heater in San Diego? Was this place built before global warming was an issue? Or is the heater simply there to ward off the patrons’ arthritis?
When our hero walked in with his two friends on a weekend night, they doubled the crowd in this tiny bar. Aside from them, there was a couple playing pool on the «better» table, and an old guy talking to the bartender about growing his own marijuana plants. Who knew that growing up to a dozen of them is considered legal in California if you have a prescription for it on the basis of depression? Alas, the homegrown ganja farmer couldn’t convince her to go to his place to try out some of his bud. Better luck next time, pal.
PROS:
— Two super cheap pool tables. One sub-​standard sized table that has seen better days costs only a quarter to play on. The other average quality table is only fifty cents.
CONS:
— Dirty, dingy, depressing.

i’m not sure if i’d even consider this place a dive bar.
it’s located on a side street that makes it out of place and not somewhere one would expect a bar to be. the building itself was probably built in 1980, and making it a bar was probably an afterthought only because they were somehow able to get a liquor license (at least that’s my interpretation to the birth of alotta’s). parking looks limited, but i don’t think that makes a difference; it doesn’t ever look like there’s anyone even there. as for prices, i’m assuming that they’re decent because a corona cost $ 3 (that’s the one and only drink i had there).
the inside is basically a bar counter with stools, a tv or 2, jukebox, and a pool table. it’s like they decided to make a bar, but changed their minds halfway through the build. since the bar counter was already there, they figured that they might as well keep the bar and add a pool table. this is yet another interpretation to what i believe to be the conception of their interior design.
their bartender seemed friendly, and the service prompt (go figure, there were only 6 people in there). the ambiance well… hmmm…ok. this is a place where people come to drink in the area that really, really, really, need a drink and are not willing to brown bag it in an empty parking lot. if i ever hit rock bottom and needed a drink that was away from the world, this is where i’d be. as for the crowd, well it seemed to be locals, construction workers, and day laborers. the one guy that did talk to us was in his 40’s, wearing a flannel, probably an ex-​gangbanger, and yelling at someone on his cell phone.
it was hard to figure out if the one guy talking to us was:
a. drunk and talking to us just to talk
b. being nice to us
c. threatening us
i would have derived the same amount of satisfaction drinking in front of my house… by myself. how do they stay in business? better yet, how did they get a liquor license?
* what i liked
— cheap drinks
— i didn’t get robbed
— i didn’t get stabbed
— talc dispenser for the pool table
* what i didn’t like
— wondering if i was going to be robbed
— wondering if I was going to be stabbed