Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 61
- 1
PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
(text post)
1026 thread views
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As promised, effortpost on bars.
I wanted to put a bit of effort into a post about how my understanding of bars changed over time, but I realized halfway through writing it that I couldn’t go into it without discussing how my relationship with alcohol changed over the course of my life. They feed into each other; whereas the bar and alcohol can be separated from each other the way I understand and relate to both are interlinked.
As a young person I didn’t understand alcohol. It’s a poison. Industrially useful, produced from many things, but I could not grasp why people would willingly drink it. As a teenager my experiences basically ended at alcopops, shandies, and an occasional finagled beer with a meal. I had a fairly independent childhood and went to a boarding school where the reality of the world was beaten into me from a very early age, and while I regretted it at the time I didn’t come to realize the advantages this gave me until later.
The first of those occasions where I came to realize this was one of my formative experiences with alcohol, and it wasn’t even me getting smashed.
By the standards of people entering university for the first time and coming to grips with the first brush of real independence, I was a functioning and experienced drinker. Capable of drinking, capable of having a conversation without drinking, and aware of the social expectations of drinking, in what circumstances drinking was polite, and how to turn down a drink and take a drink without it being any kind of statement on who I was.
You have no idea the kind of impact it made on me seeing people I knew and sort of liked make absolute buffoons of themselves. I saw the most beautiful girl in our social group, one with a ‘remote boyfriend back home’, someone every red blooded male had a secret crush on, intentionally lead people on before complaining of an alcohol-induced headache; I saw a friend who had been besotted with her for months drunkenly try to break down her locked door to gain access. We had to manhandle him out of the building and all but dunk him with a bucket before he sobered up to realize what he looked like.
So – the bar. I wasn’t a party animal. Bars were where you went to ‘party’, by which they meant it was a place to get cheap drinks and become inebriated enough to instill a lack of self-control. Many people I knew had worked it out to a science. They had mapped out routes in the city to take advantage of key happy hour deals, and usually wouldn’t call it a night until they had gone through three bars minimum. The purpose of the bar was obvious – to get hammered, and to engage with the other sex.
As someone who was fairly cynical about both and had observed the situation mentioned above, I didn’t visit many bars. My rationale was simple; no matter how cheap the happy hour, it didn’t beat buying booze at the convenience store or supermarket, and I wouldn’t want to engage with a woman that required alcohol to tolerate/required alcohol to tolerate me. At least the people around me grew to understand the first eventually, but “pre-game” became more common with time; the seasoned young drinkers knew that getting pleasantly buzzed and putting down a few drinks before heading to the first bar generally worked out better economically.
Becoming a working adult changed this, although the fundamental understanding of bars as a place people went to pick up girls never really went away. After all, depending on the area (and the bar) you get to observe humanity at all its social attempts in chemically-assisted, or impaired, pair bonding. Right down to arguments, drama, hair-pulling, fights in the bar, fights outside the bar, fights at the takeout close to the bar, etc.
As a working adult who had to sell things to other people, I had to close deals, negotiate for projects, negotiate during the projects, keep people sweet and get good terms. And when that happened, inevitably the best deals happened after a heavy lunch and a few hours at the bar. I’m a seasoned hustler by now, but what the media tells you is only half of it. Nothing makes a deal better than building a relationship, and it’s incredibly easy to build an easier working relationship by giving someone a drink and showing some genuine interest in who they are and what they’re doing. I referred to this as a maintenance cost.
My relatives complained, of course, that I was spending a lot of money taking people to nice bars, as it often wasn’t covered as a business expense, but I maintained that it was a necessary part of the job. Bars became offices, places of work. A transactional relationship, an investment where I’d trade attention and money and alcohol for ease-of-work. The bar became a marketing object.
Of course, the type of bar that students go to in order to get the cheapest-cocktail-for-cost is an entirely different thing to the type of bar you take a prospective client to. You seek out bars with good wine or whisky lists, with bartenders that have accolades, bars that have memorable designs or décor or live music. The businessperson might not remember you or even the deal, but they’ll remember a visually striking bar, a bartender showily setting an expensive cocktail on fire, a rare cognac.
It was a few years into the work that I had another hugely formative experience with alcohol. There was an aged Italian businessman I had on the hook as someone halfway between client and teacher, someone who had spent decades in the industry. I was determined to pick his brain and learn all I could. It helped that I got along with him just fine and wasn’t intimidated like the rest of my colleagues by his frequent death threats, outbursts of emotion and loud complaints – this is just generally how old Italian men are. He invited me to lunch one weekend and told me to bring wine or food. I brought some good scotch.
You have not truly lived until an Italian who actually likes you invites you to lunch. I was expecting a relatively brisk lunch, and I almost lined up dinner plans. I also arrived before noon. What I didn’t expect was an experience that kind of set the bar for how I want Saturdays to go for the rest of my life. I was welcomed by his four-decade-younger Asian wife, very attractively brown and very outgoing, who was clearly there for his money and quite brazen about it. He had invited a bunch of Italian expats and friends as well, they also brought food, and wine. What followed was a leisurely six hours of which I remember very little of the exact details. I remember wine, grappa. Being stuffed to the gills on homemade gnocco fritto, cured Italian meats and cheeses, a pasta course three hours after everyone was already full. I remember lying on his balcony staring at the sunset, entirely satisfied and very drunk, knowing that if the world ended at that moment I would call it a good end. I’ve been chasing this experience, and this feeling, ever since.
Getting further in my career changed my relationship with bars and alcohol again. It became another form of transactional relationship; aftercare for colleagues or people working under me. Project team bonding. The form of alcohol changed, from cocktails and expensive boozes to draft beers paired with large-volume crowd pleasing food. Monthly team socializing activities, team dinners where the main course was just a super-size volume of alcohol fueled bitching about work that I footed the bill for. Being a sane and reasonable human being, I knew that this would be significantly better for team morale and team building than corporate-sponsored icebreakers or trust exercises. The purpose changed; ice cold macro lager was the nectar of choice, its crisp bitterness taking the sting off work and pairing well with strongly flavored or greasy foods.
There’s something that happens to a person engaged in extremely difficult or strenuous work that just makes beer taste different. I’m not sure what it is or exactly what causes it; all I can say is that it definitely happens. I went from turning my nose up at beer to swigging it as a food pairing regularly, and in decent volumes to boot. Good food, socializing in a large group, beer towers and kegs are both practical and accessible. And so alcohol consumption moved towards large group restaurants open late or with low costs.
I again stopped seeing the point of bars, as I was, career-wise, past the era where I needed to close deals personally or meet potential clients. But something else happened, and I think it really led me to my current understanding. At the time, it struck me as quite sad that I took over thirty years of life before I genuinely understood and experienced something I could confidently call a real bar.
The experience was an izakaya. I was consciously dodging home. Going home meant doing chores, sorting out stuff you’re supposed to sort out that you’ve been putting off because of work. Dealing with people you don’t want to deal with, taking social calls you don’t want to. Handling life, is the term. I was supposed to pick up some stuff for the house, I can’t remember exactly what.
And instead I stopped at a nearby izakaya with no other customers and I got a beer. I wanted a skewer of something to go with it. The proprietor asked me how I was doing. Offered to upsell me on a whisky highball or some sake, mentioned they had some very good fish for sashimi air delivered that day. Gave me the drink. A mini dish of pickled burdock root. Crisp beer. I got the sashimi. They took the rest of the fish bones and carcass, made a stock with it without being asked, and served it to me gratis.
The stress I felt leaving my body over the next hour was a physical sensation. I felt lighter. I felt like I could go home, and clean the fucking bathroom, sort out the recycling I forgot to manage, do a bunch of tax paperwork and call the relatives I was supposed to call without losing my fucking mind.
Of course, that place is no longer in business, because the world can’t leave a good thing well enough alone. But walking out of there, I got it. I understood why izakayas are almost a lifestyle, why Japanese salarymen go to these places religiously. It’s the intangibles. I’ve had the same experience at western bars, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. A good bartender who knows how to engage – and when not to – is part of it.
A bar is not a place to pick up members of the opposite sex with lowered inhibitions. It is not a place to get blackout drunk. It is not a place to conduct business negotiations. It can do all of those things, but that is not its purpose.
The purpose of a bar is to provide a space where people can put their shit down for a while.
I realize that all of this sounds quaint in the hyperconnected era of now. The youth I see today seem to rarely get past where I was at the beginning; they have little experience with true independence and attempts at screwing up when given personal responsibility, and they don’t engage with others often enough in the real world to the point where they begin to understand alcohol or its purpose.
That having been said, I think a lot of them could do with a place. A physical place, with a counter, some comfortable stools, a bartender that knows when to shut the fuck up or ask a couple questions. A place where they can put down their baggage, their cares and their worries, and just be for a moment. Where existence outside, with all its noise, urgency, and stress of living can be put aside, and you can focus on nothing but the bitterness of an ale, the acid pucker of a chilled cider, the richness of a stout, the burn of high-proof bourbon or the finish of a well-made scotch.
I think we need real bars. I think they serve an important function missing in the current landscape. How well they live up to or fail to meet that criteria is how I judge them as a good or bad bar.
Bar Leone is currently considered the number one bar in the world, ranked on some list of the world’s fifty best. I want to go there, one day, and see if it actually functions as a bar. But I’m not sure, judging by the Instagram photos and the reputation for long queues.
Now I drink pretty nearly exclusively single malt scotch. In small amounts, as a thinking drink. This thinking is often done alone, or with a couple of close friends at maximum. As before, there’s an economic calculus there – the good stuff is rarely available at bars outside of specialized whisky bars, and specialized whisky bars often charge significantly upwards. But I’ve still paid the premium to go to a couple I like a few times more than is strictly necessary, if only just to appreciate a space that allows passersby to avoid carrying that weight for a bit.
There's a sacred American hymn extolling this very philosophy.
More options
Context Copy link
I Like this definition, and it reminds me a lot of the saddest of bar patrons that you tend to see at any place that is cheap or has deals. The sad drunk that is carrying way too much shit in life. They'll deflate and sink into the bar as the weight leaves their body, but they just can't muster the strength to get up from the bar, pick their shit back up and leave.
I'd also add a category of bar: The Sports Bar. A kind of raucous ambiance where men loudly cheer or curse as their team succeeds or fails. It exudes an unapologetic male energy that feels missing in most areas of life. The men aren't looking for partners or hookups, most of them are paired up and just taking a break from the lady to hang out with the lads. It can also be a very enjoyable place after exercising or participating in some rec-league level sport. Copious amounts of light beer, and greasy meaty foods to imitate the sensation of refueling. But also to wind down from the exertion of the sport.
More options
Context Copy link
Great write up.
I went to a bar once when I was 22/23? Because my buddy wanted to buy me a drink and tell me he was getting married. I called him nuts. Drank a shitty Jack.
Then my next time was when I was 32/33 when a sex for money lady was upset that her 30 year elder hookup was hooking up with another woman and wanted me to spy on them in exchange for a free session. Had a few beers, the food was incredible, gave the fellow a few looks (he was indeed there with another lady), went home and got my free session.
After that, I’ve gone several times to mostly bar / grill types.
Your post made me realize that I should try a better bar, since I like dressing a little better and I enjoy a good whisky or cocktail.
I still have my trepidations about it.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know if it's just me but most of my time in bars have been with male friends, drinking and shooting the shit.
If you wanted to meet girls you generally went to a club, not a bar.
The reason you go to a bar instead of just being at home is because it's a convenient meeting point after work, you don't have to clean up, they have interesting beers/drinks, they serve you and they provide a nice atmosphere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link