In New York the Bowery is the great place for these dives. There are any number of them, and the Bowery actress who is brazen enough to smoke her cigarettes in the street, especially when she is "on a lark," may be distinguished by the boldness of her face and the almost masculine atmosphere that surrounds her. She seems to care for nobody and nothing except her small dog and the loafer who spends her money, and looks upon herself as the equal of the best woman in the profession.
CONCERT SALOON BAND.
The boy theatres which flourish in all large cities, and which are dirty, dingy miniature places with gallery and pit, and six by nine stages upon which the goriest of blood-curdling dramas are enacted, have a variety phase to them, specialty performers preceding the dramatic representations, and half-nude women mingling and drinking with beardless youths in the boxes.
FEMALE BAND.
FEMALE ORCHESTRA.
The concert saloon, as some of the low places that have a fat German with pink-spotted shirt and stove-pipe hat playing the piano, while a chap that has the outward appearance of a speculative philosopher is blowing a cyclone through a cracked cornet, is called, has its attractions for many; and if there are ladies to eke out the entertainment by squeezing discord out of an accordeon with flute obligato of an ear-piercing and peace-destroying kind—or, in fact, if there are any female musicians on the grounds, the proprietor of the establishment may count on liberal patronage. The female orchestras to be found in the Bowery, New York, where a squad of pretty girls all dressed in white, with a female leader wielding the baton with as much nerve as if she were old Arditi himself, are irresistible attractions to those whose tastes lead them to lager beer, and who like to partake of the beverage particularly in pleasant surroundings. A person does not get very much beer, but he hears a great deal of wild music, and unless he is over-sensitive he will forgive the music and forget the beer—if he can. It is but a few years since that the keeper of a beer garden first introduced these institutions into American life. His venture proved so successful that imitators sprang up all along the Bowery. The tenements of the East Side were explored, and every female who could torture the neighbors with an accordeon, scrape the catgut or bang the piano was enlisted in the grand scheme of catering to the musical tastes of Gotham's beer drinkers.