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One thing Jay Stamates learned while doing dives: You don’t necessarily have to paint over bathroom graffiti, or even want to. Or watch every dust bunny. The 51-year-old Hartford High School graduate and U.S. Navy veteran co-owns seven bars, including The Standard Tavern, Sabbatic and Stella’s: A Cocktail Dive in Milwaukee.

The former nightclub worker has become a “glorified accountant” who gets home at 10pm every night. One appeal about dive bars as a business: They can be done well with an investment of $30,000, compared to $500,000 for a nightclub. 

What makes a bar a dive bar?

You know what you’re not going to get from a dive bar: you’re not going to listen to loud, punchy music, you’re not going to have a very kinetic experience. There’s not a lot of dancing.

This can often mean a lower quality venue, but that could be a thing of the past. You’re going to have comfort, you’re going to have a place where you can sit and relax, and you’re going to have privacy with the people around you and with the bartender.

What I preach to all my staff is that their most important quality is that they must be able to constantly interact with people. The truth is, no one comes here to drink, no one comes to my dive bars to have fun. They come to socialize.

Why are people attracted to dive bars?

I think people know this if they want to go out and meet people, or if they want to have some sort of secondary family (they come to a dive bar). If I have to ban someone from one of my bars for a time, or forever, I understand that I’m just not losing a customer, I’m taking away their secondary family.

Can diving be dangerous?

When I came back from the nightclubs, every (weekend) evening, we would argue. I can tell you that in the 15 years I’ve been in the small bar business, I could probably count on two hands the number of times we’ve had to take it to the next level. 

In a dive bar, it’s interactive theater; each of the customers here assumes some responsibility. So when someone comes in and decides they won’t follow the rules, the bartender often doesn’t really need to say or do anything. Guests are the first to step up and say, “That’s not what we do here. »