Davis despair

The Sligo gets a face lift?! There goes the neighborhood.

by Camille Dodero

BEGINNING of the end for Davis Square?

If you're familiar with Somerville's Davis Square, chances are you've noticed the Sligo Pub on Elm Street: its cumbersome steel door, its mildewed sign, and the oft-broken (and occasionally leaky) air conditioner hanging over its entrance like a saturated box of mistletoe. And if you've sauntered around the Square within the past couple of weeks, you might've been flabbergasted to see that the Sligo's weathered exterior has been redone to look like a collaboration between (gasp!) Bob Vila and Martha Stewart.

Why the drastic change? About 9:30 on a recent Monday morning at the Sligo (while six patrons sipped mixed drinks and passed around a copy of the Herald), Tom, the pub's owner, tried to explain. "The landlord redid all the signs and they all looked the same," he says, referring to the homogeneous maroon placards identifying four of the block's businesses. "I decided to renovate the front of the building so that people could see where the bar is, and know they're not walking into the dry cleaner's or McKinnon's Choice Meats." Chuckling, Tom adds, "This isn't a meat market."

If the Sligo is anything -- a smoky dive bar, a dank vestige of Davis Square's sketchy past -- it certainly isn't that. In spirit, the place is a grizzled great-grandpa to Moe's Tavern and Trees Lounge -- the kind of place where the silver-haired, Dickies-wearing regulars are always congenial (sometimes tragically so), the men's-room door doesn't lock (so guys are constantly tossing open the door and scurrying away), and on any given weeknight (specifically, the one four Mondays ago), tobacco-frayed vocal chords might croak, "Back when I was AWOL in Germany [hack hack], I drank a whole bottle of cognac and woke up in a field."

Gritty? Yes -- but endearingly so. Which is why it's so disappointing to see the Sligo's face looking like the backside of a rural country house. Sure, the pub was a bit fusty, but as one of Davis's oldest denizens, it had a grimy authenticity that helped preserve the square's old-school character. So although the Sligo Pub's face lift might easily prompt such bourgeois dismissals as "a sign of the times" or "a welcome change," it could also signal the area's tipping point -- the precise moment when gentrification finally usurps what remains of Davis's soul and makes the neighborhood really, well, suck.

More than a year ago, when Starbucks first elbowed its way into the square, naysayers -- some Tufts alumni, others professional types -- started murmuring that Davis already sucked, that the neighborhood's indie ethic had finally been adulterated by corporate branding. But snarlish accusations that Davis was rapidly barreling down the path to CrateFinchPotteryGap hell could be countered with references to independent gems like the Somerville Theatre, the Someday Café, McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, and the Diesel Café -- maybe even Johnny D's, the Burren, or Redbones. And if those names didn't quiet skeptics, "S-L-I-G-O" (and maybe a $3 Guinness from the pub) would.

Now, not only has the Sligo gone under the knife, but there's been a string of unmoorings in Davis, all within the past year. Last November, Dolly's, a late-night restaurant (and the best place to get a greasy grilled-cheese after 1 a.m.), was forced out by its landlord. At the end of the summer, second-hand clothes seller Planet Aid moved out, citing reasons like the escalating rent and a poor landlord. And the Somerville Journal, a formerly solid purveyor of community news, seems to be getting into bed with the gentry: this past summer, it ran a fluff cover story on garden gnomes.

So a few Fridays ago, I wasn't surprised to see the changes already seeping into the Sligo. (And yes, I must admit: the fact that I, a female in my mid 20s, have been known to patronize this pub is a sign that things really have changed.) While we were there, a table of ridiculously giddy twentysomethings had somehow turned the dive bar into a tourist's gift shop: after buying Sligo Pub T-shirts, the four used a disposable camera to snap pictures of themselves posing with their new purchases. (Look, Ma! We're in a real dive bar!) Yep, I feared that the regulars would soon be nudged out of their dilapidated stomping ground -- that is, until I saw that the men's-room door was still broken. Now, when that gets fixed, there goes the neighborhood.