The 19th Hole

Toledo, Ohio

What better place to find a dive bar than northwest Toledo in a small strip of businesses with a tattoo parlor as a neighbor. Such is the case for 19th Hole, a dive bar if ever there were such a thing, the building’s brick exterior home to two windows, a seldom-used door and what looks like a boarded up ex-secondary entrance. The signature feature here is the neon sign above the front door along Sylvania Avenue inscribed with the name of the bar, its chief product (“LIQUOR”) and a bit of sage advice (“Park in Rear”).

Owned by longtime bar mainstay Gene Christian until his passing in 2020, the space has existed as a bar in some capacity for decades, tracing beyond Christian’s inheritance of the space in the early 1980s. The space is bigger than it looks, covering a main room up front divided into bar and seating area as well as a secondary space in back housing a pair of pool tables. The surfaces have seem some updates, but the divey roots shine through here, especially along the worn bar and pool room-adjacent bench seating.

The Basics

Classification:
Neighborhood Bar

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