Parkview Nite Club

Cleveland, Ohio

Field Note

Were this a dive bar edition of Family Feud, and someone asked for descriptors that match the term “Cleveland dive bar,” 100 out of 100 surveyed respondents would name traits true about Parkview Nite Club. The sign alone screams Cleveland, understated solid black lettering proclaiming the two keys to life, “Food-Liquor.”

As Cleveland as the Browns, Parkview Nite Club embodies the city and really the entirety of the Midwest in every conceivable way, the deep history, the refusal to update most (or all) of the features within, the presence of an old-school bowling game, the commitment to resisting the financial pressure to price gouge neighborhood regulars who have been showing up for decades.

Just as its regulars, Parkview is embedded within the Cleveland neighborhood that surrounds it, a corner plot that looks more like a brick wall than a dive bar at first glance. There are signs of gentrification, to be sure, with new-build apartments nearby, but the character of the area is unmistakable and that’s really a testament to Cleveland itself, an old-soul city if ever there was one, and Parkview Nite Club soaks it up.

It may just be the dive bar romantic in this reviewer, but there’s something about front doors. Of course there are amazing dives that look quite the opposite on the outside, but an amazing front door rarely lies. Parkview’s front door lives at the top of a two-step staircase that looks like it may have been discovered the same time Cleveland was founded, needless to say, a good sign.

Inside, the space is a diner crossed with an Italian restaurant crossed with a turn-of-the-century British tavern. A series of booths line one wall, red and plus and nicely remote in relation to the rest of the bar. Low tables dot the intervening space, but the bar is where the beauty lies, a satisfyingly deep woodgrain drinking tray with a collection of wall art that does nothing if not ignite curiosity. Classic Cleveland sports memorabilia, framed photos in tribute to Cleveland’s urban history and a bird cage, because bird cage.

Outside of the gravity of the bar itself, the visual appeal continues, inclusive of a stand-up piano that looks old enough to have played the national anthem at Taft’s inauguration. The marquee attraction is a classic bar bowling machine, a phenomenon among Cleveland dive bars, a proliferation of arcade machinery that this reviewer has never seen elsewhere, with Parkview in possession of one such example.

The place is comfortable, in the best possible way. And maybe ‘dive bar’ is a bit too flippant of a term for a place as legitimately nice as Parkview, but it’s a dive bar in the most Midwestern of senses, a neighborhood haunt that hasn’t been absorbed by gentrification or $6 unpronounceable Smirnoff shots. Parkview Nite Club is the everyman of diev bars in maybe the everyman of cities, and that’s exactly what makes it special.