Everyone loves a nice, fancy lounge with 15 beers on tap and your favorite spirit or a clean and well-lit sports bar with pretty waitresses and an up-to-code kitchen.

But sometimes it’s nice to sit in the dark on decades-old furniture with a Budweiser in a bottle and do some brooding.

Behold, a few of Colorado Springs’ finest dive bars:

Belle’s Lounge

Sometimes we go to the King Soopers over on Uintah, and we’ll drive by Belle’s and say: We ought to go there someday. Every so often, we’d pull into the little strip of stores and tug on the doors, but they always seemed to be closed. We wondered if maybe Belle’s was out of business. But one glorious day, we pulled up, and the door opened.

Belle’s is a lot larger than it looks from outside. There was even an upstairs, but it looked like it was off-limits to customers. Wonder what’s up there.

Diamond Deb’s

Not sure how we ended up here. I think we were just driving around looking for food and/or drink. Like scavengers.

But what a pleasant surprise. Another strip-mally front that looked a little scary at first. All good dive bars look scary. It’s part of their charm.

Red Rock Lounge

Another west-side gem. And this one has a little bit of fun history. Any bar that has space matter crashing through the ceiling is OK in my book.

View A few Colorado Springs dive bars in a larger map