Olssons Skor

Olssons Skor is a bar right in the middle of Vasastan (about a 5 minutes walk from Rådmansgatan t-​station) and (story has it) was an old shoe store way back when.
I went to Olssons Skor with a company After Work party, and was not too impressed. There is a faint smell of an old snooker hall and it lacked some character. We were there around 9pm on a Thursday.
Strange as the street this place on has some fantastic bars and restaurants, so not sure if this is a bit dated, was having a bad night or I just have picky tastes.
Decent selection of drinks and cocktails, good seating area, a DJ and a giant fish tank in the window.

Usually gravitating towards the more relaxed, but sill with character, type of bars one hopes to find on Södermalm, I walked past Olssons Skor, found the sign and name really intriguing, read about this «dive bar’s» drink making skills, and decided to swing by later that night when it was open.
Although two security guards, (what’s up with that? why does every bar have these authority figures making me feel like I have to prove myself worthy of getting drunk in their establishment?) it was an off night with few patrons.
Nevertheless, the music was blasting at a level that said: «Here, we don’t talk – just dance.» Fair enough, but the music was «I like to move it, move it,» you know, that great tune from 93, later re-​appropriated in Madagascar with the dancing hippo, so I don’t know… anywho, no one seemed to find it the slightest ironic, and I proceeded with caution. And don’t call me too pretentious to call out that song, really.
If you’re looking for a bit darker lit, small to medium sized place to get drunk and dance like there’s no tomorrow, I suppose this would be a good choice, if they bring in DJ’s, that is.
Is it a dive? Nope
Is it cheap? Nah
Is it too loud for your friend that wants to discuss how global trade affects different parts of south east Asia? Yup

Well I would say this place is the best case ever of being «just a bar» but after reading the review previous to mine after I had already been last weekend, I feel like I was involved in a part of history or something by visiting this bar/​porn/​shoe shop.
Anyways, you arrive and there is a bar to your right, you go up the stairs and there is a small, crappy dance floor and again the bar remains to your right. A giant skyline of NYC or whatever concrete jungle hanging on the wall should remind Stockholmer’s not of what they are missing but what their city has that places like that will never have. It didn’t feel at all like the type of place you would meet random people because the bar seemed to be at war with the dance floor but maybe. We followed a bunch of random people from Cliff Barnes to here so I can at least believe that wild people go here to dance.

I teeter between 4 and 5 on this place.
This place is an oasis in Vasastan where the bars are few and a little too stiff for my taste.
In the 70s, Olssons Skor used to be a porn shop called Olssons Video, and up until recently, the bar retained the name Olssons Video. Only recently did it change it’s name to Olssons Skor because it also used to be a shoe store.
So this porn shop gone shoe store gone dive bar still retains it’s old neighborhood porn shop charm. The inside is 70s-​tastic with a huge lit Manhattan skyline mural, a dance floor, an aquarium, and a disco ball. The folks that come here come for the express purpose of getting sloshed, dancing, sucking face with a random, and taking them home, and frankly, Stockholm needs more of these places.
Unfortunately with the name change, they removed the stripper pole that graced the dance area. With evolution comes change I suppose.
So that’s Olssons Skor. Don’t say I didn’t warn you