It's been a few days more than a decade that I asked the question on this very blog, "Why bars?" Over the past ten years and four days, I may finally have the answer. Finding the answer didn't mean that bars had to change; finding the answer meant I had to change.
It's not what you think. It's not an escape. The two scenarios employed in the previous blog post were basically "a rollicking but expensive and crowded night at the bar" or "an intimate gathering with your best pals in someone's basement," and neither of those things happen much anymore. I can't remember the last weekend night that I spent at a local bar getting drunk with friends (Austin doesn't count). The gatherings happen here and there (like a couple Fridays ago), but they aren't babysitter-worthy, for the most part, so that automatically eliminates half your friends (and the other half usually don't want to hang out of fear that there are going to be babies there). What I'm saying is that it's not like I'm going out to the bar to get away from the humdrum of life or something. I'm not "escaping." There's nothing to escape from, and there is nowhere to escape to.
It's also not the alcoholism that answers the question. Do I wish I could go to a bar right this second and sit on a bar stool and have eight beers? Absolutely. That's the alcoholism speaking. But that doesn't answer the question about bars. I wish I could sit anywhere right now and drink eight beers. Substance abuse comes into play when I'm sitting at home drinking eight beers, or, like, having ten beers and getting lost on SEPTA or something.
No, I think the answer, to put it in as few words as possible, is this: a bar is a safe space.
I really wish the conservative troglodytes hadn't co-opted this phrase for their inane culture war, because it really does feel like the right way to put it, at least at this point in my life. A bar feels safe to me. I feel at home more at a bar than anywhere else in the entire universe save for my actual home. I feel like I am my true self when I am on a bar stool. When I want to get to know someone better, or I want to utilize the hour we have for the best conversation possible, or I want to grow closer to the people I am already close with, then to the bar we go.
I was talking about this the other day with classmates. We were joking that I was combing through my syllabi looking for excuses to bring classmates to bars on campus behind the excuse of "it's a school project!" (If you're curious, two examples are: an assignment where me and a partner have to interview someone who has or had a chronic illness—why not do this at the bar?!—and a group assignment where we have to "do research" by sitting in a public place and just observing your surroundings for an hour—why not observe your environment at a bar?!)
But there's a reason why I'd push such scenarios, right? It's because these are scenarios in which I'd have to interact with the people around me, and there is literally no other scenario outside my own front door in which I am more comfortable around people than I am in a local bar. I don't have too many friends in my grad school program, but you can tell who my friends are because they are the same people who have been to the bar with me, and have gotten to know me in the warmest and most favorable lens possible. (You can also tell who they are because I'm slowly but surely forcing all of them at gunpoint to write for Puke on Your Birthday, but that's a different story.)
I think even that is describing a middle-of-the-road scenario, in which I'm hanging out at bars with people I am getting to know and becoming closer with and like a lot in the year-plus that I've now known them. That's not even considering the scenarios on the extreme ends of the spectrum—going to a bar with my best friends that I've known my entire life, and going to a bar when I know literally no one else there. In all three cases, a bar is my safe space, without question.
You already know about the former. Perhaps too much so. But I'd feel safe anywhere with those jabronis. I'd feel safe in a bar or a basement or the woods or a haunted house. That's not really what I'm talking about in this blog post.
The latter is something to mull over, though. I like going to bars by myself. I don't do it often, and it's never been a scenario in which I'm going by myself at night and getting drunk by myself until closing or something (except maybe one night in Vegas when Pam was working, but those were extenuating circumstances, and also ended poorly). I'm talking more about the occasional lunch when I pop into a bar and sit on a barstool and eat my lunch with a couple beers and just spend some time with myself. It's a good feeling.
A couple weeks ago, I did this after a dentist appointment (one of many this past summer, unfortunately). I hadn't eaten yet, and I had a bit of time before I hopped back on SEPTA to suffer the long ride back to the Northeast, so I went to McGillin's. McGillin's Olde Ale House is the best bar in the city for numerous reasons, but the best part about it is the general environment it cultivates during the daytime hours. It is smack dab in the middle of a bustling metropolis, but it manages to feel like a local neighborhood bar when the sun is up. I don't know how it does it, but it does.
I was the first one there. I recognize the bartender, though she does not recognize me. I order the buffalo chicken strips so I can cut them up and chew them on the side of my mouth that isn't numb. I explain to the bartender why I'm slightly slurring my words, and we commiserate on the horrors of dentistry. An eclectic mix of music plays over the speakers—spanning the Human League to Metallica—as I eat my food and drink my Rolling Rock and the place starts to fill up. There appear to be regulars, as the bartender knows them by name. They discuss going to a concert tonight (Imagine Dragons are playing across the river—I do a quick side glance and decide that these people totally look like Imagine Dragons people). The bartender is really nice to everyone except the busboy, whom she is extraordinarily mean to, for some reason. There is history here. There is history that I am not a part of, not really. I've spent some crazy days and crazy nights in this building, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the history that is unfolding right now, the people who visit regularly, the bartender who is established behind the bar, the building itself standing upright after 150-plus years. I'm just an interloper. I sit and drink my beer and soak it all in, content to be a part of it for just an hour.
I speak lovingly about this scenario because I felt incredibly at ease during that single hour I sat at the bar. I felt one with the world. Others at the bar, I'm sure, felt the same way, or else why would we be there? I think I'm going to call it "adjacent solitude." It's not that I'm alone, because I wasn't. But we were alone, everyone there. Alone together. Being alone feels nice, sometimes. I guess I lied when I said it wasn't an escape? But the word "escape" doesn't feel right, because I left the bar and became anxious to get back home as quickly as the SEPTA gods would allow and see my girls, and I do find that comfort in being together, "together" in the truest sense of the word, at my actual home. My time in McGillin's on that one single afternoon felt like an escape in a more general sense. The world is fucked up, but not in here. "Hiding" might be another word you could throw around, but that word comes attached to feelings of cowardice, and I won't be the one to say that's true. It wasn't that I was hiding. It was more an activity of self-care, to spend an hour in a secluded place where I knew I would be at peace. And I was.
I acknowledge that this isn't a novel idea, that bars are a place to go where one can feel safe and secure, both internally and externally. I mean, this was the whole idea of the 1980s sitcom Cheers, right? Misfits who feel like slightly uncomfortable in their roles in the world at large feel compelled to come to a tavern in which everyone "knows their names," because that feels good, to be loved for who you are, without question. I'm not pretending that I'm discovering something new here. I'm simply trying to shed light on my own personal path of self-discovery. I'm attempting to answer a question that I had long ago.
Sometimes it takes me two or three days to write a blog post, because I have a half hour here and a half hour there and I fill in the gaps with typing. This was one of those blog posts. After typing a lot of it out, I found myself in a position where I was trying to explain some of it to Pam, how I felt that a bar was a safe space for me, safer than probably anywhere besides my own home. It did... not go well. I was asked, incredulously, "Joe, don't you see a problem with the fact that you feel like your true self at a bar?"
Okay, fair enough. I understand how this might seem, especially to those whom I'm closest with, those who have seen me at my lowest, alcoholism-wise, who have seen me irrevocably damage or destroy relationships because of my alcohol intake. There are also those who would be taken aback at the very idea of grabbing a beer with one's lunch, and I get that too. I'm not trying to minimize these very real concerns.
But the title of this blog post isn't "Why Drink So Much?", it's "Why Bars?" I've attempted to answer a very specific question as honestly as possible. I know that bars have the potential to facilitate the exacerbation of alcohol intake, but I'm saying that, to me, with bars, that's besides the point. If I'm overdrinking, that's not a bar's fault, that's my fault. I can say "if" all day, but when the fuck was the last time I got drunk in a bar?
Let's please concentrate on the big headline here. All I'm saying is that bars provide for me, personally, a sense of ease and comfort. When I am at a bar, I feel safe. And who knows, ten years from now, I might write another follow-up blog post on the matter, and maybe my answer will have changed again. But for now, get me to McGillin's, save me a seat at the bar, and pour a cold one.
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