Single Wide

Dallas, Texas

Field Note

While this may be a controversial decree to some, a bar can be an excellent place to grab a beer and not qualify as a true dive bar. And that can include places with heavy doses of character and authenticity like Single Wide, an intentionally created dive bar-like establishment that serves as sister to its divier sibling Double Wide that sits a handful of blocks away. This is the nature of the debate for Single Wide’s inclusion in a dive bar compendium like this one, every bit the place I’d love to grab a beer while still feeling a bit like a vibe has been orchestrated, rather than organically grown here.

If all of that is a little too much splitting of hairs when you’re looking for a place to grab a drink, that’s an understandable take and know that Single Wide is a great bar serving just that purpose. Single Wide’s location provides the first clue to its comprehensive dive bar credentials along a stretch of Dallas’ Greenville Avenue that includes some of the trendier restaurants and juicier juice bars in the city. Neighbors can sometimes be inherited and not chosen, so no harm there, but the contrast between frills next door and less frills inside Single Wide is probably the basis for its case as relative dive bar status.

Heady discussion of credentials aside, Single Wide exists thanks to the success of Double Wide, making this a spin off of the Deep Ellum-adjacent original. The pledge here was simple, embrace everything about the unflinching nature of trailer park culture and convert it into a bar. Limits exist thanks to the relatively upscale location of the dive bar, but a short front porch provides the best entrée possible, three logos adoring the glass over the front door: moonshine, tornado, skull-marked cocktail glass.

And with that skull glass in mind, maybe the best example of Single Wide’s crafted approach is the cocktail selection, a range of unique offerings that includes ingredients like Tang and Yoo-Hoo to make clear that the bar embodies something a bit different than its neighbors. Again on point with the theme, two signature visual elements can be found inside: a robust and colorful hubcap display and a varied array of stuffed animal heads extending over the stools that line the bar. The dive bar’s name is accurate as to the dimensions of the space, a narrow corridor of a bar that features a long bar counter in front and a bit of seating in back.

Mirrored glass shelving houses an array of liquor bottles under yet more taxidermy, this time fully animals depicted in a handful of poses on either side of a vintage Budweiser pool light and a set of longhorns. Toward the rear of the space, a multi-colored set of padded both seating is complemented by low tables in keeping with the open floor plan of a space that probably didn’t have any other choice. In addition to the aforementioned hub cabs that tower over this room with Christmas light accents, a first glimpse of flowing drapes and wallpaper can be found here, the theme a gift that keeps giving.

With nicer furniture and a few tweaks, Single Wide could probably pass as a rustic cupcake shop, planned elements of quirkiness intentionally added to the space. And while its standing as a planned dive bar spin-off in a nice part of town may disqualify Single Wide’s standing as dusty, historical dive, its intentional nature does nothing to detract from the enjoyment of drinking among hub caps and antlers, particularly when Yoo-Hoo is involved.