Tag Archives: Rock Bar Dickinson North Dakota

The Rock Bar And Downtown Dickinson Summer Concerts

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The first Downtown Dickinson Summer Concert will be Thursday, June 9th, 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.  1st Street will be closed from the Rock Bar all the way to Bernie’s Esquire Club.  The concert area will be larger this year so that people have more room, the food vendors have more room, and so that both Bernie’s Esquire Club and the Rock Bar can have outside beer gardens.

You can go to the Facebook page “First on First, Dickinson Summer Nights” to see who the performers are each week, all the way through to September.  The event is free to everyone, no charge for entry.  Part of the money to pay for the performers is raised by the alcohol sales at Bernie’s Esquire Club and the Rock Bar, that is why there is the policy of no personal alcohol being brought to the event.  Everybody that is going to drink alcohol needs to buy it from Bernie’s Esquire Club or the Rock Bar so that the performers can be paid.

This year the event will be different.  The event area is larger, so that people will not be so tightly packed together in front of the stage.  There will be more bathrooms located throughout the event area.  I am from out-of-state, and I don’t mind saying what everybody has noticed, most of the out-of-state workers have returned to the states where they came from.  If the local people in Dickinson found the events to be too crowded last year, they won’t be too crowded this year.

I also want to tell everybody that Kathy Fisher has returned to again own the Rock Bar!  I am sure that there are many friends, customers, and former employees that will be very happy to see Kathy.

Improving Life in Dickinson, North Dakota

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In my previous post, I listed some positive things about Dickinson, North Dakota.  I could have mentioned Alive at 5, which is a street party in downtown Dickinson that is held every Thursday during the summer months from 5 p.m. to about 8:30 p.m.  1st Avenue is closed to traffic from 1st Street to Villard to make room for a band, food vendors, and a beer garden.

I went to about half of the Alive at 5 events, and I enjoyed every one of them.  From what I saw, everybody who came had a good time.  For the first half of the summer, all of the musical performers were very good, but towards the end of the summer, Dickinson hosted two well known performers, Gwen Sebastian, and a few weeks later Kat Perkins.  I met these women, they were very positive and friendly to everyone, they were very nice people, they created a lot of excitement in Dickinson.

The people who came to Alive at 5 were infants to people in their late 80s, moms and dads, kids, teenagers, bikers, hippies, everybody.  As I have stated previously, there is a shortage of women in Dickinson, but at the Alive at 5 event, there were probably as many women as men, and many of the women were attractive.

The Odd Fellows Lodge of Dickinson organized the event, which was a great deal of work.  The entertainers had to be selected, scheduled, booked, and paid, and in order to pay the performers, a lot of money had to be raised in a variety of ways.  Advertising was sold, VIP tickets were sold, donations of labor and equipment were made to set up the event.

I have met some older people in Dickinson, some of them were bikers, hippies, farmers, oil field workers, who told me about the music festivals that used to be held just east of Dickinson in the 1970s, I think they were at the Green River in Gladstone.  These older people that had lived in Dickinson their whole lives, some of the only happy memories I ever heard them talk about was being young and going to the Green River concerts, that or sometimes they would talk about the Queen City Club.

On west Villard, where Aarons Furniture is now, it used to be the Queen City Club.  The Queen City Club was a large bar with a dance floor, and every weekend they would have a band. This was back in the late 1970s and 1980s from what I can gather.  One older guy that I talk to, told me about how everybody used to get dressed up to go out on Friday and Saturday night to the Queen City Club, the men and the women.

But this older guy reminds me, you can’t do that now, nobody can go out and have a good time now, they’re so worried about getting a DUI and losing their jobs.

I enjoyed going to the Alive at 5 event.  I do recall that the police did stay away from most of the Alive at 5 events and did not try to catch people as they left.  I am very glad that the Odd Fellows Lodge members, the volunteers, and the Rock Bar did all the work to have the event.  This made life this year in Dickinson much better.