Bars, Lounges, Bartenders, Lies & the Cocktail Skirt

Bars, Lounges, Bartenders, Lies & the Cocktail Skirt

While sitting in a bar that bored itself to death long ago, I pondered the 15$ glass of mediocrity masquerading as Pinot Noir.

“What the hell am I doing in this bar?” I thought to myself.

I was neither lounging nor gawking. No, I was there because there had been a promise of conversation, the hope that a group of Homo sapiens could gather together and share in that delightful elixir discovered by our Stone Age ancestors so long ago.We wanted to celebrate a life-changing moment by making a spontaneous toast to the mysteries of life, to hold up a glass of that magic potion that has followed Man on his journey from Stone Age to Information Age.

But the Wine God was in a bad mood.

Notes going on inside my head: Regulars are not attractive people.  They have that sad look, as though they are the shoulder where death comes to cry.  No matter how finely made up they might be, they cannot escape the perpetual autumn that embraces them.  What was once beauty is now the echo of lost opportunities and a distant time when everything in the world was new and exciting; it is a sadness made all the more painful by the mocking swish of the young and not-yet-aware delivering drinks in their flippy cocktail skirts.   In their youthful ennui, they sigh heavily, as though time does not move quickly enough. To them, Time is like a slow-moving river – they can’t see through the disguise, into the depaths of cosmic space that will soon wash them out to sea.  In these moments, all the regulars can do is glance wistfully at the passing cocktail skirts, as if at ships long out of port.

“What’s the matter?” my friend asked. We were there to celebrate his bad news with a few drinks and I was sitting there in a lump of moroseness.It is my belief that bad news is the harbinger of the new and exciting.But something about the bar and its depressing attempts to be young and hip and cutting edge made me feel heavy and sad.

“This place is awful,” I said.

One of the weathered regulars leaned in at the Bartender, a handsome young man who nodded politely as the uninvited details spilled out onto the bar.I heard him try to laugh as he looked for an escape route.

“It does remind me of an old drag queen I once knew,” he said.“Some people do not age well.”

If bars are like people, this bar was straight from Sunset Boulevard, its curtains and couches waiting for that last bow before the funeral. It was hard to hate its weakness, but I was unable to whip up the empathy needed for another round.

I was annoyed because we were there to celebrate a friend who, in the face of bad news, needed some love. But it was hard to be positive and upbeat when the bar was a virtual funeral parlor, as many bars are (especially when viewed in the naked light of day).Like the alcoholics they sometimes cater to, bars can convey a sense of gloom and decay. .

We decided to move on. But I started thinking about bars and why we go to them. It is hard to find a place where you can pop in with a friend, have a drink and a little camaraderie. The music is always too loud, there is some gimmick to deal with, and then there are the over-priced drinks to go with the whole experience.

A bar needs decide what it is and what it wants to say – it needs to know if it is a lounge or some new cutting-edge cocktail hot spot. But when a bar begins to curl up like old leaves, it’s time for a little self-reflection – something more meaningful than added velvet curtains and a couple of couches with “RESERVED” place cards.

Tags:   bars, drag queen, funeral parlor, lounges, pinot noir

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Posted on 6/15/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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