When he heads into U.S. Bank Stadium on Thursday night for the opening date of AC/DC’s first North American tour in nine years, superfan Chad Norman will already have a T-shirt from the concert. He’ll also have a fresh tattoo of the band’s logo on his arm that came courtesy of the band itself.
“Those guys know how to treat well their fans and make things fun,” the superfan from Austin, Minn., raved Wednesday as he hung out in the so-called AC/DC Dive Bar in Minneapolis.
Located across the river from the stadium in the St. Anthony Main district, the Dive Bar is a real bar serving alcohol. It’s also a pop-up shop, mini-museum and — yep! — tattoo parlor that AC/DC is setting up in every city on its tour.
The space opened Wednesday from 2 to 10 p.m. in the Machine Shop event center, 300 2nd St. SE. It will reopen Thursday from noon until showtime at 8 p.m.
Norman made sure to get to the Dive Bar on opening day after missing out on a chance to get the free tattoo when he went to see the band perform in 2023 at the Power Trip festival in Indio, Calif., where the Dive Bar concept was first tested.
“If it’s anything like at Power Trip, this place will be packed” on Friday, Norman warned.
Live concert footage of the Australian hard rock legends played on large and small video screens all around the two-story facility on Wednesday afternoon. Fans could pose for photos with an Angus Young-style Gibson SG guitar downstairs or with stage props like the band’s “Hell’s Bells” bell or “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)” cannons.
Upstairs housed a merchandise store that rivaled the large shop set up next to the Orpheum Theatre by Metallica last year for its weekendlong stand at U.S. Bank Stadium. Rows of T-shirts priced from $45 to $60 and sweatshirts going for $90 bumped up with $30 vinyl copies of nearly all the group’s albums.
