The Bar Bar
What makes a bar a real bar.
(Page 2 of 6)
The wimpifying of America, of course, has long been at work in the area of restaurants and cuisine (even the word “cuisine” is wimpy). I am not speaking here simply of ultra-wimp stuff like quiche or cheese soup or Chablis. The wimp ethic has invaded nearly every part of the menu. You’d think something like the basic American potato might have escaped the trend, but what about those midget potatoes with parsley on them? The good old American egg, too, has been perverted. Do you realize that a lot of people out there actually eat something called a spinach omelet? To add insult to injury they usually order it off a blackboard, which is just about the wimpiest thing you can do. For goodness’ sake, the sacred American hamburger has even been co-opted—ever heard of something called a guacamole burger?
In much the same way, the fern bar has gradually wimpified what the American public chooses to drink. At the center of this movement stands a single libation, the piña colada. We’ve become so culturally flaccid that we call a concoction that might make a passable dessert (although desserts are generically suspect) a drink. This might not be so ominous if the piña colada had not spearheaded an entire generation of libations that have bullied their way into even the most right-thinking bartender’s repertoire: Harvey Wallbangers, Golden Cadillacs, Irish coffees, wine spritzers, White and Black Russians, and of course, strawberry daquiris. These drinks in turn have propagated an equally disturbing species of bar food known as munchies. I am firmly of the belief that food has no place in a real bar, with the exception of the time-honored peanuts or popcorn. But munchies—not to mentions the name itself—are especially offensive. Fried zucchini and mushrooms. Nachos with just about everything on them except real meat and real cheese. Egg rolls. You realize they don’t serve this stuff to aid Biff’s libidinous quest after Heather. They serve it to keep Biff and Heather from feeling their drinks. The key function of the fern bar is to let people drink without knowing it.
Atkinson’s Second Rule of Drinking: Beware the fern bar. It can be a sobering experience.
This gradual wimpifying has dovetailed neatly into a second propellant behind the ferny movement, the apparent desire on the part of most of the American public not only to be someplace at all times but to be someplace else. You see this everywhere now: motels designed like Byzantine forts of medieval castles, condominiums patterned after English country homes or Spanish haciendas, shopping centers constructed like Mexican town squares. The idea, I suppose, is to give the consumer a little cheap-thrill escapism and, at the same time, to suggest at least subliminally that the product in question is somehow superior (and therefore worth more) because it is foreign.
In bar marketing this has been manifested itself through names and decor. A lot of places call themselves taverns and bistros and pubs now; these designations are generally prefixed by an appropriately foreign-sounding name. It’s Mulligan’s Tavern or Marcel’s Bistro or Big Sean’s Pub. Some places employ the more direct approach of displaying the name of a city or region: the Balboa Cafe, the London Pub, the Cafe Pacific.
The decorative motif of most fern bars is equally contrived. I sacrificed my body and actually had a drink in each of the countless fern bars along Austin’s renovated East Sixth Street to get an overview of current trends. The scheffleras and sundry items of Irish crapola are still in place, but there’s been a little improvising on the basics over the past few years. One of the stronger themes is this high-tech deco business, which involves plastering the interior walls with shower tile, leaving a bunch of pipes and wires exposed in the ceiling, and putting some forties and fifties music on the jukebox.
A related craze is what I call the soda fountain bar. These joints are like the high-tech deco spots except for a few strategic modifications that target a younger and more casual clientele. The bathroom tile is replaced by brick or old wood, and the molded high-tech tables and chairs give way to tucked-vinyl booths with Formica tables. The food is still listed on a blackboard, but there is a cute soda fountain touch: they get your name when you order and yell it out when your food is ready.
Your basic nouveau English-Irish pub theme uses shamrocks in any possible way, numerous Blarney stone references, ale in place of beer, dart boards, restored church pews for booths, and bartenders wearing striped shirts. These places rest their cash-flow projections on imported beer. There’s Heineken and Beck’s and St. Pauli Girl; dark Heineken and dark Beck’s and dark St. Pauli Girl. I asked for a Coors in one of these places and the guy looked at me like I’d asked for his wallet.
There are some other troubling things I noticed in my stagger for the truth. A lot of bars offer more than munchies—stuff like live music. Don’t get me wrong. I used to call myself a musician and even sang for my beer at a joint in Austin. That is precisely why I find most live entertainment in bars insufferable. I used to make all those poor souls who came in just for a drink listen to me. There are exceptions, of course, but in general I view live entertainment in bars with the same jaundiced eye that I cast upon video games—as a senseless and annoying distraction, yet another way to appease the wimps who seem to fear the straightforward act of drinking.
But I digress. I need to get on to this final matter of greed, for I fear the preceding sociology has been a bit too charitable to the motives of fern bar entrepreneurs. Fern bars are wondrous moneymaking machines. Because they’re after quantity—not quality—they pour their drinks with those awful computer guns, producing a pouring cost (the cost of the liquor as a percentage of the price charged to the customer) about half that of bar bars. And the munchies and other food offered are not merely a device to draw in additional clientele; those plates of fried zucchini make money in their own right. Although food is a break-even proposition in a lot of restaurants, fern bar food can turn a profit because it is simple and cheap. A prudent manager can make more from selling nachos than he can from selling a drink, so what’s the difference?
A bar bar, on the other hand, may best be viewed in financial terms as a charity or a nonprofit foundation. With a solid group of regulars and prudently controlled overhead, a bar bar owner can turn a modest profit. But because he’s in the business of serving whiskey—nothing more, nothing less—he caters to a limited market.
Now, I’m nothing if not a free market kind of guy, and on rare occasions I have even had pleasant experiences in fern bars (see, I was in Witchita Falls once). I have encountered a few—notably Cooper’s Alley in Corpus Christi, the Wine Press in Dallas, and the Remington Bar & Grill in Houston—that have managed to transcend ferniness by the sheer force of good bartenders and good regular clientele. But fern bars must be regarded warily, for they represent the antithesis of the bar bar ethic. Fern bars, more than anything else, are about being there—being there to be seen, to meet women, to think about meeting women.
Most worrisome, really, is the trickle-down effect fern bars seem to be having on all drinking establishments. One of the more disturbing experiences I had in drinking my way across the state occurred at a little joint called Bruno’s Curve in Comfort. Bruno’s had come highly recommended by one of my drinking buddies who had grown up in the Hill Country, and at first glance it appeared to be the real thing: a classic Central Texas beer bar with a pool table, an old jukebox, dominoes, and a terrific array of old bar crapola on the walls. But on my way to the men’s room I had a shock from which I have still not recovered. On a side wall, next to a domino table, beneath one of those great old beer clocks, I spotted a Pac-Man machine. I quickly finished my business in the men’s room and escaped to the sanity of my car. It would be only a matter of time before Bruno’s started serving piña coladas at happy hour.
First bar customer: Stuff sure goes right through ya, doesn’t it?
Second bar customer: Yep, sure goes through ya, all right.
—Conversation from a bar bathroom
At the risk of losing my Texas citizenship and of being excommunicated from my college fraternity, let me go ahead and state
Atkinson’s Third Rule of Drinking: Nothing civilized ever resulted from the drinking of beer.
I realize this amounts to heresy in a state that treasures its suds as deeply as it does its college football but think about it for a minute. Drinking beer makes you belch, reduces your bladder to a quivering sieve, makes a certain sort of individual want to rearrange your face. Why is it that the consumption of five beers can make a man more ornery than the consumption of five martinis can? You never hear about a husband knifing his wife’s boyfriend after a couple of Scotches. It’s always after he’s had three or four pitchers of beer.
My Library
