The neighborhood squall that is brewing around the reopening of Ships looks like it will end up in a homeowners’ shakedown. The bar that had been operating near the intersection of Ross and Greenville Ave. since 1953 closed suddenly over the summer when longtime owner Charlie Red walked away from the establishment. There was rumor that the bar would reopen, and news broke that Twisted Root and Truck Yard proprietor Jason Boso was going to take the helm and keep Ships “as-is with just a minor tweak or two.”
At yesterday’s City Plan Commission meeting, however, it became clear that reopening wouldn’t be so simple. The Lower Greenville Neighborhood Association has come out against issuing an SUP that would allow the bar to stay open until 2 a.m. Forget the fact that Ships has operated until 2 a.m. since before many members of the LGNA were even born, or that the new owner couldn’t have a better track record with regards to operating drinking establishments on Greenville. And ignore that pesky little detail that Ships isn’t even within the boundaries of the LGNA. In Dallas politics, few things can trump the strong arm of a well-organized neighborhood group. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the circumstances. In this case, the LGNA seems to be acting like a bully.
That said, there was one line that stuck out to me in Wilonsky’s report that made me think that regardless of whether or not Boso pushes through the backlash and reopens the bar, Ships — the Ships Dallas has known for 62 years — is dead.
Before I relate the quote, some context is needed. Ships is perhaps Dallas’ most beloved and historic drinking institution for a certain set. It is called a dive, but what that really means is that it is a working class bar. It is also a place whose no-nonsense, un-fussy aesthetic drew generations of who you might call the upwardly mobile youth, the culturally in-tune, the hipsters, whatever. It served cheap beer, cheap wine, and free hot dogs, occasionally. It had a jukebox that was near perfect precisely because its record chamber probably hadn’t been unlocked in thirty years. You could bring your own liquor to Ships and participate in an ancient American ritual, taking stock of the distance between the promise of the land of opportunity and the measure of your personal failings, and filling up the space between with booze. It was the closest thing Dallas had to the bar from The Deer Hunter.
I have a difficult-to-decipher video on my phone that was shot after 1 a.m. on the second to last night before the bar closed this summer. It shows a skinny man with a thick drawl and straggly hair wearing a t-shirt and ratty jeans that hang off his hips. He is jabbering away about a trick shot he has just set up on the bar’s too tiny pool table. He misses. I was playing pool with a woman I had met while doing shots of tequila at the bar with her two friends who had brought the bottle (also complete strangers). Later I embarrassed myself with the girl and probably shouldn’t have driven home. That’s Ships.
And so when reading the report from yesterday’s City Plan Commission, I read this one quote from Boso that made me realize that regardless of whether or not Ships reopens and closes at midnight, or if the LGNA relents and allows them to get the 2 a.m. permit, Ships, as we knew it and loved it, has sailed into Dallas history:
[Boso] had hoped to keep Ships as-is, adding only a wine list curated by James Tidwell, the beverage manager and master sommelier at the Four Seasons Resort and Club in Las Colinas.
