AOL City’s Best
What makes a good dive bar? Cheap beer, everyone can agree on. The rest of the factors are subjective. This Hell's Kitchen hole, a holdover from the 1930s, makes a pretty good case. Among a street full of diners and so-so foreign restaurants, Rudy's is a neighborhood watering hole. Writers to welders to cab drivers brood over a pitcher of watered-down Bud or Rudy's Red at almost all hours. There is plenty of red leather to go around, from the tight booths to the tight pants of old-school denizens of this former seedy neighborhood. A good jukebox cranks out old jazz, classic rock and an increasing amount of more mainstream music. The backyard garden, if a concrete box can be called a garden, is splendid during summer months. But the three words that officially christen this bar as a dive? Free hot dogs.