Drinksgiving isn’t on any calendar, but it behaves like a holiday anyway predictable, chaotic, and oddly comforting, the way familiar mistakes often are.
This year, instead of guessing which dive bars would be overflowing, we just asked the city. Our 2025 Support Local, Vote Local Readers’ Poll pulled in more than a few thousand votes, and while the full results are still under wraps, one category practically begged to be leaked early. If you want to know where Richmond will actually be hiding from its relatives, or drinking with them, on Wednesday night, these are your favorite 5 dive bars, as chosen by the people who know them best.
Full Readers’ Poll drops soon.
You can check the results from 2023 HERE. And 2022 results HERE. Also, you can check out our Drinksgiving list from over a decade ago HERE.
YOUR FAVORITE RICHMOND Dive Bars 2025
(Unreleased Poll Results)
WINNER!
Bamboo Cafe
1 S. Mulberry Street
Bamboo hasn’t moved an inch, because it never does. It was the top dive bar in 2023, and it’s still the top dive bar in 2025, sitting there like a stubborn geological feature in the middle of the Fan. Time, capital, and common sense have all taken their swings at it, and Bamboo has politely ignored them.
It’s cramped, loud, and warm in that unmistakably Richmond way, the kind of warmth you get when half the people inside have lived here for two or three presidential cycles and aren’t in any hurry to leave. Once upon a time it hosted rock shows; now it’s more of a Cheers situation where the bartenders know everyone, or pretend to, which is basically the same thing on a good night.
Some places collect history; Bamboo radiates it. It’s always packed, always humming, always somehow exactly what you need on Drinksgiving, a gravitational center for cheap beer and half-remembered stories. Richmond keeps changing around it, but Bamboo remains, well, Bamboo.
2ND PLACE
Cobra Cabana
901 W Marshall Street
The food is too good for a genuine dive bar, but life is full of contradictions, so we let it slide. The décor looks like someone let Heavy Metal magazine remodel the place after a few energy drinks. The crowd is a rotating cast of friendly misfits who somehow all know how to share a room. Out front, the motorcycles enforce their unspoken “no jerks” policy. Out back, the patio hosts live bands and the kinds of late-night conversations people later describe as “important,” though no one can remember why.
3RD PLACE
Patrick Henry Pub
2300 E Broad Street
Patrick Henry is the big climber this year. In 2023 it lingered in the middle of the pack; by 2025 it’s suddenly brushing elbows with the city’s favorites, as if everyone woke up and remembered they like wood paneling and semi damp basements after all. The place feels a little haunted, not in the ghost-story way, but in the “everybody here has lived a few lives” way. Older regulars rule the early hours, artists and night owls drift in later, and together they create a kind of Church Hill ecosystem that shouldn’t work but somehow does. It’s the sort of bar you drink at and then wander home from, or, at the very least, pretend you could. And if you’re new here, just tell the bartender you know James Menefee. It won’t get you a discount, but it’s a fun icebreaker.
4TH PLACE
The Locker Room
5035 Forest Hill Avenue
It didn’t take the top spot, but anyone who’s been knows The Locker Room is the diviest of the dives within city limits, the kind of place where pretension gets left outside. It’s one of the few bars in Richmond where people still smoke inside, and while that alone weeds out half the city, the other half considers it a feature, not a flaw. The result is a strangely harmonious mix of blue-collar regulars and tattooed hipsters sharing the same sticky shuffleboard table. Cheap drinks, loud laughs, and an air that still smells faintly like yesterday, no one here seems bothered by any of it.
The Locker Room didn’t crack the top five in 2023, but in 2025 it muscles its way in with confidence, a late-breaking reminder that Richmond still appreciates a bar that refuses to modernize on purpose. (Read our interview with our guy Austin, one of our favorite city bartenders, HERE.)
5TH PLACE
Sidewalk Cafe
2101 W Main Street
Dim lighting, affordable drinks, and the perfect Sunday Funday vibe, it’s the place you wander into for brunch and somehow end up closing out the night. Is it a dive? A neighborhood bar? Um, yeah, absolutely. Richmond voters have never cared much about the labels anyway. Sidewalk’s easy, lived-in energy gives it its own gravity. It slips a bit this year, dropping from #3 in 2023 after getting nudged by Patrick Henry and The Locker Room, but it’s comfortably in the top tier and Richmond still loves it.
Brave Captain
729 W Cary Street
Quint, if you remember Jaws, is the grizzled shark hunter who laughs at danger, drinks like it’s a competitive sport, and tells stories that sound half-true and half-myth but you listen anyway. He’s equal parts charm and chaos, a man held together by sea air, stubbornness, and whatever he’s got in that tin cup. His grin hangs over the bar like a blessing, and the place lives up to it, the resurrection of Mojo’s, stubbornly unfancy, proudly rough around the edges.
City Beach
2416 W Cary Street
A beach bar without a beach, Richmond at its most charmingly literal. It’s kitschy, sure, but it works: plenty of room for a crew, cheap beer flowing, sports always flickering on the screens, and live music popping up when the mood strikes. And if you’re not posted up by Buck Hunter or that virtual golf game, you’re missing half the experience.
City Dogs In The Fan
1316 E Cary Street
City Dogs is basically a time capsule for anyone who went to VCU and never fully detached from the neighborhood. Greasy nostalgia, cheap drinks, and a happy hour that still feels like a small miracle, sometimes that’s all you need.
Dug Out Bar & Grille
1510 Mountain Road
This one’s for the people out in the county. Karaoke nights, pool tables, and locals who might size you up if you’re “from the city.” But don’t let that stop you. The booze is cheap, the atmosphere is laid-back, and it’s worth the drive, though we’d recommend catching a ride if you plan to drink like a local.
Fuzzy Cactus
221 W Brookland Park Blvd
Fuzzy Cactus has become an unofficial meeting hall for everyone flooding into the new, resurrected Northside. The place runs on a steady diet of rock and roll, from hair-metal to punk, and serves fried chicken so good it feels unfair to the rest of Richmond. Pinball machines clattering, live music most nights, brunch that makes no attempt at refinement, and a crowd that looks like someone hit shuffle on the neighborhood.
Get Tight Lounge
1104 West Main Street
Get Tight has quietly become one of Richmond’s best bars, the kind of place where creative folks, old-school Richmonders, and touring musicians all end up in the same room without anyone questioning it. It still has that “Austin honky-tonk dropped on Main Street” energy, rough around the edges in all the right ways. There’s always something happening: live music, oyster roasts, even the occasional Orioles bus trip. The pit beef sandwich is excellent, the hand-cut fries even better, and the lunch specials hit far above their weight for a bar next to campus.
GWAR BAR
217 W Clay Street
Only Richmond could produce a bar owned by a metal band plotting intergalactic domination. GWAR Bar is part haunted spaceship, part post-apocalyptic diner, and somehow still welcoming once your eyes adjust. The food is surprisingly pretty good, the crowd is a wild mix, and if the chaos inside gets overwhelming, there plenty of folks milling around outside. Loud, theatrical, and proudly ridiculous, exactly what a GWAR bar should be.
Home Sweet Home
3433 W Cary Street
Home Sweet Home is one of those places that proves adulthood is mostly about finding grilled cheese and beer in close proximity and calling it a night. The sandwiches hit exactly the way nostalgia says they should. The beer specials are cheap enough to make you question how money works, and the whole place feels like you accidentally wandered into your friend’s living room, if your friend also happened to run a bar and believed firmly in the healing power of buttered bread.
Honey Whyte’s
2116 E Main Street
A quintessential Shockoe Bottom dive, Honey Whyte’s is small, unassuming, and all about the essentials: strong drinks and some of the best burgers in town. It’s a staple for the downtown crowd, offering a cozy refuge for those looking to stay warm, fed, and happily buzzed.
Hot For Pizza
1301 W Leigh Street
Hot For Pizza is the rare dive where the pies have names that sound like they were brainstormed during a very good band practice, Temple of Boom, Reagle Beagle, Captain Planet, Thom Willis. And the thing is, they’re all legitimately great. Small enough to miss if you blink, with what, eight or nice barstools, but it’s become Carver’s unofficial refuge for cheap drinks and great slices. Weekly DJ nights keep the place lively without overwhelming the room. It’s friendly, unpretentious, and exactly the kind of spot where you stop in for a slice and end up staying longer than planned.
Lakeside Tavern
5406 Lakeside Avenue
Lakeside Tavern is one of those glorious relics that refuses to change simply because the rest of the world did. Karaoke every night, heavy pours, and a smoker’s room in the back that seems to operate outside the laws of time. It’s been holding down this strip mall since the seventies, run by a Korean family that casually serves bulgogi between power ballads.
McCormack’s Irish Pub
12 N 18th Street
McCormack’s isn’t just another Shockoe Bottom dive, it’s an institution with teeth. When the owner rolled out an anti-Nazi T-shirt that went viral (11 million+ views), it sparked a national debate about business, politics, and free speech. The pub’s roots trace back to the ’90s punk scene, which means the place didn’t find subculture: subculture found it. And now, with new momentum (and new customers drawn by the drama), McCormack’s is having a resurgence while still being true to the chaos that made it.
Penny Lane Pub
421 E Franklin Street
Penny Lane is one of those rare Richmond bars where worlds collide without anyone making a big deal about it. On any given night, you’ll find professionals unwinding after work, people spilling out from shows at the amphitheater or Brown’s Island, media folks nursing post-deadline drinks, and political staffers pretending they’re off the clock. Everyone squeezes in together, and somehow it all works.
It’s a long-time favorite of the magazine, partly because the bartenders are unflappable, partly because the drinks never stop flowing, and partly because the fish and chips are still the best in the city, no debate. Penny Lane has that old-school pub warmth that makes you think you’re just stopping by for one, even though you know perfectly well you’re staying longer.
Poe’s Pub
2706 E Main Street
Poe’s sits at the base of the hill, where Church Hill folks come down the hill, Shockoe Bottom folks come up the street, and Fulton Hill regulars drift over. The patio is a cloud of chain-smokers, the pours inside are heavy, and there is always someone up for a conversation.
Rockfall Tavern
2813 Hathaway Road
Rockfall Tavern is a sprawling Southside dive best known for two things: darts and drink specials that regulars swear are the best this side of the James. It’s the kind of place where half the bar is practicing for league night and the other half is just here for cheap beer, bar food, and plenty of room to wander.
Rose Marie Inn
8923 Patterson Avenue
Rose Marie Inn is where people who’ve been drinking for decades come to keep the streak alive. It’s a throwback to another era, a bar untouched by trends, timelines, or anything resembling modern expectations. The pours are strong, the regulars have tenure, and every now and then a wandering hipster shows up hoping for irony and ends up staying for the prices.
Sheppard Street Tavern
2922 Park Avenue
Sheppard Street Tavern has been holding its ground since back when the neighborhood was still called the Devil’s Triangle, long before developers tried to rebrand it into something tidier. The place keeps things simple. Smokes on the patio, straightforward drinks at the bar, and a brunch menu priced like someone remembers what brunch used to cost. Nothing fancy, nothing forced, just a steady Museum District hang that knows its identity and isn’t in any rush to change it.
Stanley’s
2601 Park Avenue
Stanley’s has quietly become the go-to spot for anyone living on the outer edge of the Fan, the Museum District, or that stretch of Monument Avenue where people insist they “don’t really go out anymore” but somehow end up here anyway. The place hits all the essentials: lively crowd, strong drinks, and subs so huge and so good they feel like a challenge you’re happy to lose.
Sticky Rice
2232 W Main Street
Sticky Rice is its own ecosystem forever young, forever loud, forever a little Asian fusion funky. Equal parts sushi joint and dive bar, it’s where tots, karaoke, and strong drinks collide with a crowd that treats every night like it might become a story. The sushi is better than it has any right to be, the day-into-night vibe never really slows down, and the room fills with people who are either young or simply committed to acting like it. Sticky has been a rite of passage for Richmond nightlife for years, and it still feels that way. Read our story on them HERE.
Wonderland
1727 East Main Street
Wonderland isn’t just a punk horror-and-wrestling-themed bar, it’s where Richmond’s modern wrestling scene first took shape about twenty years ago, and it still carries that scrappy, all-heart energy. The place looks like an 80s horror marathon collided with a punk show, and somehow the décor, the regulars, and the vibe all agreed to get along.
But the real story here is community. Owner Chad Painter is a driving force behind Punks for Presents, a Richmond punk-rock Christmas tradition since 2005 where Christmas-themed punk and metal parody bands put on charity shows every year. That alone tells you everything about Wonderland: wild on the surface, generous underneath.
Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.
At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.
But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. DONATE HERE.
We’ve got merch HERE
Subscribe to the Substack HERE
And Reddit HERE
And YouTube HERE
