Bars - February 6, 2012

It was a beautiful warm spring day, highs way up in the 40°s, and I didn' walk outside at all. And now it's too late; temperatures are going to drop today, by 15°, dropping down to 5° tonight. Back to something approximating winter.

Last night was one of two monthly sings I'm heavily involved in, both based in bars. It's funny how people in varying cultures build these spaces for social interaction, and specifically to contain consumption of intoxicants. It makes sense: if you're going to drimk/smoke opium/otherwise get high, it's best to keep it away from small children and heavy machinery. And it's also good to keep it in some sort of controlled environment where there's a gatekeeper. Not that it always works that way: barkeeps are also in the business of selling booze. But especially in social pubs, there's pressure to keep behavior relatively normal.

Hrothgar's mead-hall again comes to mind. But as you enter more moderate climes, you also get beer gardens, and terraces and piazzas where to drink wine.

I wonder how much correlation there is between bars and organized sex. Certainly in the Wild West of legend, there was a lot of overlap between bars and brothels. And Roman and Greek symposia and bacchanales shared wine and availability of women (and young men) for sex. Japanese pleasure houses whose clientele was depicted in ukiyo-e prints mixed entertainment, drink, and beautiful women.

So why bars? How did the American institution of the neighborhood bar emerge? There's an element borrowed from English pubs, of course, and the German Biergarten. There's an element in large cities of saloons erected by individual breweries to promote their own brews (also a common feature of British Isles pubs, and maybe Continental beerhalls?). There's the hotel bar, and the bar/brothel in the opening West. The speakeasy period presumably figures in, as does the continuing influence of social clubs, including ubiquitous American groups like the Elks, American Legion, VFW, etc. In Anglo-America, these spaces are indoors, with outdoor drinking being more of a German thing. What about other ethnic groups? Russians tend to have an indoor drinking culture, but in public spaces? What I've heard of it is mostly in private homes.

Another interesting line of research...