Paul & Harvey’s — old-school Sunnyvale dive bar

In our current world of craft-cocktail bars, a visit to a good dive bar can be a necessary palate cleanser, a little oasis between seas of housemade bitters and barrel-aged bourbon. And a good, cheap dive can be a lot of fun, too.

So I found myself watching a recent Monday Night Football game at Paul & Harvey’s, an old-school bar if there ever was one, on historic Murphy Avenue in Sunnyvale. Paul & Harvey’s, with its brilliant neon sign, may be what makes the avenue historic anyway. Eric Carlson, who wrote a column called “Notes from the Underbelly” for the Metro weekly some years back, pegged the bar’s opening to 1937, and that sounds about right.

While Sunnyvale may be home to a host of Silicon Valley tech companies, you’re more likely to find regular Joes and Janes stopping into this place for a cold one. But they do have free Wi-Fi and hooks for coats and purses under the bar; I mean, it’s not like we’re in Fresno or something.

Paul & Harvey’s is long and narrow, like a shotgun house, with an astonishingly long wooden bar. At some point in the past couple of decades, someone covered the ceiling and bar overhang with what looks like stucco, and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

All the classic dive features are present: two old-fashioned cash registers, a trio of pool tables, a snazzy “music video” jukebox, a Golden Tee video golf machine and two pinball machines that date back at least to the Ford administration. The top half of the wall opposite the bar is lined with the kind of mirrored beer signs you could win at a carnival, and the bottom half is filled with those tin advertising signs that are really popular in retro stores these days.

But three things really make Paul & Harvey’s a classic dive: It’s cash only, there’s a cigarette machine and a painting hanging on the wall of a nude woman in repose (the gold plaque attached to the frame declares her to be “Ms. Gloria”).

I had a great time watching customers — and you know they’re regulars — trash-talk about the football game from opposite ends of the bar. A couple of times people brought in bags of outside food — the only inside food is a rack of chips, and I won’t guess on the freshness — and enough people were taking cigarette breaks on the bench right outside the door to give the air inside that aroma of secondhand smoke.

The two bartenders who served me — both women, and neither named Paul or Harvey — were friendly and poured a good Dewars scotch and soda. I had a couple, plus a pint of Sierra Nevada and got out of there for less than $20, before tip.

There are four beer taps — Bud, Bud Light, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams — and a lot of bottled beer, including some craft-beer faves such as Red Trolley, Lagunitas IPA and Fat Tire (plus Pabst Blue Ribbon in the big can). The back of the bar is lined with liquor bottles, and there are also refrigerated taps for Jägermeister, Tuaca and Fireball. Yeah, it’s like that.

But there’s also a rack with a bunch of brandy snifters and a couple of champagne flutes. You can’t imagine those are used much, but at a place like this, you can bet those glasses could tell a hell of a story.

People may go to a dive bar for the drinking, but nobody really goes for the drinks. But I did notice a stack of cocktail recipe books collecting dust on top of the Red Bull refrigerator, so feel free to knock yourself out.

The best dives are about simple pleasures, having fun and telling stories. A bar like Paul & Harvey’s doesn’t have to be pricey or outfitted with uncomfortable, modern furniture to have character.