There are few cities with an area as concentrated with dive bars as the Northeast neighborhood of Minneapolis. There’s something in the mixture of residential density, proximity to the urban core of the city, deep historical roots and that little something extra authentic that comes with drinking in the Upper Midwest. Referred to interchangeably as Northeast and Nordeast, the area is lined with neighborhood pubs, meat raffles, bingo nights and the kind of dive bar drinking befitting the city of Minneapolis.

The real difficulty here is where to draw the line. There are more potential dive bar destinations than a night could reasonably hold. There are probably more potential dive bars than an entire weekend could reasonably hold. And those dive bars come in great variation, music dives like Shaw’s, renovated properties like Mayslack’s, unique food items like the dago at Dusty’s, a weird green glow under a Ferris wheel at Tony Jaros’. Start anywhere, end anywhere, this is a free-form dive bar crawl in a particularly potent area to do just that.