How The Shadow Box in Seaside aims to upgrade its game with cabaret.

They're not labeled, but you still know when you walk in.

It's not as simple as dim lights and stiff drinks or bourbon-tan bartenders and 1950s-era Champale signs.

It's an alchemy of unrepentant kitsch, sooty walls and funky juke box selections.

It's a timeless quality, a feeling the place grew and aged right there, like an ancient forest with all the accompanying fungi and flora.

It's a dive bar.

At one of the flagship dive spots in Monterey County, The Shadow Box (1904 Fremont in Seaside, 394-3242), the collective feeling completely qualifies.

It's there in the Box's dingy NFL football team towels on the walls, the classic juke box, matching pool table, antique ashtrays, curling photos of favorite customers wallpapering the hallway and raunchy condom dispensers making restroom trips a must-do-do. 

It's there in the yellowed sign next to the bar (and the dusty cab company business cards) that reads:

"This place requires no physical fitness. Everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle, running down the boss, dodging responsibility and pushing their luck."

It's there in the house-created "ghetto" shot, a combination of (gulp) brandy and butter schnapps that the bartender (who invented it) was drinking with a girl celebrating her 21st birthday—at noon—when I stopped by to conduct some field work.

It's there in the general reputation. I asked my colleagues to tell me the first thing that came to mind when they heard "Shadow Box." 

The responses included “shady,” “early grave” and “gravelly voices.” 

But don't look now: The Shadow Box has applied for a cabaret license.

Yes: burlesque. 

New managing partner Alex Ilich is teaming with timeless (and longtime) owner Ray Ramirez to add character overall but subtract surly characters from the bar.

Theirs was the first cabaret license a Seaside city planner had seen requested in his 24 years on the job.

“The Shadow Box is the area’s last true dive, apart from Segovia’s,” says Ilich, who grew up in Seaside before moving to San Francisco part-time to pursue legal, graphic arts and punk-rock opportunities. “It’s a nice piece of Americana.”

Ilich reports he's compiling a compelling supplement to his petition for cabaret and meeting with a senior planner next week.

A hearing with the city, if schedules hold (no small assumption) would happen in July.

"It is legal, just a matter of getting the permit," Ilich says.

He waxes nostalgic about the roaring '60s and'70s in Seaside and North Monterey, when a half-dozen bars were packed with members of the 7th Infantry, among others, and more dynamic cabaret-style entertainment drew flocks at now-defunct spots like Eddie's on North Fremont.

"I agree with Sal Carbone, he put it well: Everybody's got karaoke and trivia," Ilich adds. "It's good just to be something different."