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DORCHESTER, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A Dorchester man created a website in the early days of the COVID pandemic, not realizing it would become a tool to help Boston residents find local dive bars.
The website, bostondives.com, directs viewers to the closest dive bars based on their location. Viewers can also see all of the listed bars if they choose not to do it by location and are able to mark off each one they have been to.
Nick Roy came up with the idea for the website while sitting at a dive bar with his wife when shutdowns started taking place around the country. Roy and his wife were making a map of bars that were open and dive bars they were interested in going to.
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"We [were] just sharing it with people at the bar and just some friends and I looked like a year later cause I honestly forgot about it for a while," Roy told WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe. "It had 5,000 views in a year and I was like this is super weird, I don't know how this is happening."
The website continued to gain popularity and was updated to include more bars. The website has more than 100 dive bars listed in the Boston area.
Roy said dive bars hold a special place in his heart and have more personality than other bars he has been to.
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"We go to a lot of those like [corporate] bars and they're very nice but they all feel the same to me... dive bars you get the guy who has his mom's old recipe for Spaghetti sauce or something super weird," Roy said.
He has not made any profit off of the website and told Tunnicliffe he has no interest in making money off of it in the future.
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