If, for some reason, you’d like to have this blog post read to you instead of reading it, you can listen to Episode 76 of the Beer and Bullshit podcast, below.
Drinking alone at a bar is much maligned in fiction.
The clichéd trope usually features our hero, beaten down by the world, having lost his family/partner/coaching career/platoon, seeking refuge in the bottom of a bottle. He’s hunched over a sticky bar on a corner stool, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray next to him, and he’s staring blankly at a game playing quietly on the TV in the mid-day din of an old, dark, wood-paneled bar.
Inevitably, this is the setting into which someone from the hero’s past arrives, casting the blinding glare of the outside world on the bar as he or she arrives to wrench our main character from his Wild Turkey-soaked-funk, butt out his smoke, and send him back to his family/the murder case/the ballpark/the Saigon jungle to exact revenge.
Cue the comeback montage.
But here’s the thing about this tired trope: Not only is it a lazy shorthand for despair,. it’s factually inaccurate. Because to me that nicotine-tinged, stale-beer-scented, mise-en-scène doesn’t seem like a place to be rescued from. To me that sounds fucking lovely.
In fact, I can think of few better places to spend a few hours in solitude than a divey bar. And if you’ve ever done it, I’m sure you’ll agree: Drinking alone at a bar is actually pretty awesome. It really is something akin to self-care and it’s shockingly effective at curing your loneliness and boredom. Haven’t chatted with another human in a while? Wandering around your house or apartment aimlessly? Head to your local and strike up a conversation with a bored bartender or some other solo drinker. Learn something new about composite flooring or sustainable endoscopy or whatever dumb thing it is they do for a living. Regale them right back with stories of the dumb shit you do for a living. You’re meeting a new person. There’s beer. It’s great!
On the flip side, drinking alone at a bar is also a great cure for overstimulation. Is your house a toy-cluttered shitstorm of noise, sticky surfaces, and offspring? Sneak off to the bar around the corner when everyone is asleep. Have a pound of wings. Watch a west coast game you normally wouldn’t give a shit about. Turn off your brain and Just. Sit. There.
Oh yeah, baby.
And in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of local bars and restaurants are hurting right now. In addition to the rising costs of pretty much everything, the lingering effect of the pandemic seems to be that a lot of people seem to have forgotten the simple joy of going somewhere just for the sake of going somewhere. It’s something I’m only rediscovering now as a germaphobe with a now three year-old pandemic baby. I don’t think of it as wasting hard-earned money on drinks I might have had more cheaply at home, I think of it as doing my part to stimulate the local economy. Yes, the word hero gets thrown around a lot lately, but in this case, I’ll accept it.
So here’s hoping Hollywood might get the message and stop misrepresenting the sublime enjoyment of a fresh pint or a well-made cocktail sipped in solitude in the dusty confines of a neighbourhood bar. Instead of some asshole wrenching our hero from his alone time and pulling him back to whatever hellish nightmare he’s seekingt to avoid, even just for a few hours, lets instead see that asshole pull up a pull up a barstool and order a shot.
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