S S & W Boardwalk

Cheap drinks. The beer and AC are colder than my ex’s heart. Dale Earnhardt stuff on the wood panel walls. Drink bottled beer… trust me. Mostly neighborhood folks but on show nights at the Beachland you get your occasional hipster with a haircut dumber than mine. They don’t stay long…

+ reasonably priced
— sub-​standard fried food
— smoking is allowed?!

Service is poor, beer selection is limited to macrobrews, and they allow smoking inside of the bar. If you are an asthmatic, cancer survivor, or just someone who doesn’t want to reek of stale cigarettes avoid this place.

We strolled in here before a show at the Beachland to find half the bar smoking and the other half gobbling down incredibly cheap bar food. The eaters included a pair of Cleveland cops (sure sign that the food is legit) who didn’t seem to care about Ohio’s smoking laws. I may not care for smoke, but I’m not complaining. Pabst is served here blissfully free of irony. Everything felt just right at the Boardwalk, which is the genuine dive that other reviewers have noted. The world needs places like this.

if i lived on the east side, this would be my bar. it is, as the other reviewer said, a total dive just steps from the beachland.
they only have domestics, along with a full bar (shots of black velvet, anyone?) and all the fried food you could ever want when you’re drunk. i know this, because we ate here. and it wasn’t bad! for what it was.
the clientele on friday night were the kind of bedraggled old dudes i expect hang at this place on a somewhat constant basis, and one of them definitely tried to take my friend and i home, though unsuccessfully. everyone was chatty and we definitely had plenty of conversations with the bartender and other drinkers about pretty much anything (lady gaga, jaegermeister, the paint in the bathroom, etc.) and a singalong to the spinners’ «i’ll be around.»
the jukebox is the most eclectic one i’ve seen in a long time, as we were able to play en vogue, social d, marvin gaye, and a smorgasboard of other hits and misses.
everything is also cheap. a tab for 3 people — drinks, a round of shots, and food, was 29 dollars — granted, that means you’re drinking high life and doing shots of god knows what whiskey, but hey! i’ll treat my body like a circus for one night to experience this place.

This place is a dive. Not one of your precious faux dives, mind you, where there’s kitschy crap on the walls and all the drinks are eight dollars. This is an actual, honest-​to-​goodness dive bar, where the cigarette smoke is thick in the air (what ban?) and the pool table is older than your grandfather. If you ask for a pomegranate martini, you will get a blank look from the bartender and possibly beaten up by one of the clientele. That said, this is a great place to get a couple drinks in the area, especially, say, loading up before a show at the Beachland.