Overview
History
The deep end of Amsterdam Avenue
The Dive Bar's own website tells the story from the early '80s, when its writer started out as a bartender at the Abbey Pub on 105th1. The Dive Bar came later: it has been open at 732 Amsterdam Avenue, at 96th Street, since 19892.
In 2003 it went before the community board for a one-year consent to run an unenclosed sidewalk café, seven tables and 17 seats, a rare trip to the surface for a dive3. By the time we listed it, we were calling it a loosely scuba-themed student bar.
By 2018 the site was describing a trio of bars that had been a neighborhood destination for real people, with good drinks, good food and good times, for nearly 30 years1. It's still at 732 Amsterdam, where the site calls it an Upper West Side institution of over a quarter of a century, which undersells it by about a decade2, 4.
Sources
Researched October 2026.