Caricature Group by John Hamilton Mortimer; 1768

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I would like to second Alan’s comment concerning taverns and bars. Another word for a tavern or bar is “public house,” which Englishmen shortened to “pub,” probably in the eighteenth century. The un-foreshortened form tells us something important: A tavern or bar is a meeting-place of the local people, mainly the adult men, but it is not a public facility in the same way that a city park is or the public roads are. It is a private affair, run partly for profit, and partly for the pleasure of it, by its “publican”; it admits is customers by discretion and reserves the right not to serve them. It serves them by offering refreshment, but also and perhaps more importantly, by being the forum of informal but serious conversation. The pub brings men together informally in a face-to-face way that fosters friendship, heightens the sense of community, and makes way for frankness by excluding women.  Women might be present in a pub, but it is usually as waitresses. The job of the waitress is to know the customer and to add the charm of femininity to the environment decoratively and without obtruding it.

The presence of the girls functions ideally to rein in any verbal excess of male frankness, so that the discussion does not descend into vulgarity or profanity.  Men who violate the prohibition will face being ostracized for doing so.  I believe that it is important for married men to have the opportunity to socialize, under the necessary chivalric limitations, with women who are not their wives or their coworkers, to exercise courtesy towards them, and to appreciate and protect their femininity.  The pub is the place where this most naturally occurs.

In the classic pub-environment, men buy each other rounds of beer.  They enter this way into ritual reciprocity, an element in the constitution of communities that is today underappreciated.  The clientele and the tavern-keeper also enter into complicated reciprocal relations. Their exchanges are not abstract, but again they are face-to-face.  Tavern-keeper and customer need one another. The folklore surrounding the bartender, while no doubt a caricature, is rooted in human reality.  (Does anyone remember the old recurring Jackie Gleason sketch based on Gleason’s character of Joe the Bartender?)

In contrast to a classic pub, the modern “sports bar” is simply and crassly a purveyor of entertainment. Chock-full of television screens, it cannot possibly be the venue of conversation.  The interest in the “sports bar” is not the other customers, but rather the televised event; or, in the case of one crassly named franchise, the parade of meretricious “servers” who are encouraged to trespass the limitations of the healthy customer-waitress relation.

I well remember the so-called bars in Westwood Village in the vicinity of UCLA where I did my higher education.  They were loud, already in the 1980s full of large television monitors suspended from the ceiling, and patronized (if that be the term) by a completely transient clientele (if that be the word). I have had the good fortune for some decades to have been a resident, at first only in summers but since 2001 permanently, of a small city in Upstate New York on Lake Ontario that has several civilized neighborhood bars that adhere more or less to the pattern of the classic pub, and one in particular, centrally located in the city, which is a regular gathering place of a nice mix of workingmen, businessmen, local artists and musicians, and a few eggheads like me. It is important that the clientele be regular. Some patrons of the bar under discussion have been visiting the place for almost forty years.

Were it not for the pub in question, where I have made many new friends who are not connected with my academic working environment, I would be much less integrated into local life and much the poorer for it. The classic pub “de-ghetto-izes” the otherwise “ghetto-ized.”

— Comments —

Pete writes:

Dr. Bertonneau wrote:

“In contrast to a classic pub, the modern ‘sports bar’ is simply and crassly a purveyor of entertainment. Chock-full of television screens, it cannot possibly be the venue of conversation.  The interest in the “sports bar” is not the other customers, but rather the televised event; or, in the case of one crassly named franchise, the parade of meretricious “servers” who are encouraged to trespass the limitations of the healthy customer-waitress relation.”

A few days ago, you or one of your readers touched upon the frenetic pace and constant noise of modern life – which conspire to rob us of the quiet moments so necessary for a well-developed inner life, not to mention a simple good conversation and the give-and-take of familiar comradeship. What did Socrates say – “An unexamined life is not worth living”?

In today’s fast-moving and over-stimulated world, how are people to gain some respite from the commotion and simply contemplate life? The traditional local watering hole – the pub, if you will – provided these things – but the modern sports bar or its equivalent certainly does not.

Among the most-unpleasant things about modern life, at least to this increasingly-curmudgeonly reader, are its noise and commotion. One yearns for some quiet or, failing that, an intimate conversation. Both, alas, are increasingly rare in today’s world. Perhaps that is why genuine conversation is so rare in public and political life; perhaps from disuse, many of us have lost the capacity to engage in it.

 Laura writes:

Conversation and quiet are threats to consumerism.

Social engineers and corporate restaurant chains are not particularly concerned that working people do not have quiet places to gather and talk. The dumber you are, the better.

Paul writes:

In America, there are two types of pubs as opposed to bar rooms, which have a high percentage of alcoholics.  There is the low-key pub to which a male would take a female date or to which friends would meet on a Friday after work.  The lubrication opens the discussion and moderates debates of weighty topics.  Music or singing (as in beer gardens) is important in both situations, as it is to all pubs, in the view of some.  Music changes the atmosphere randomly, and therefore helps the patrons to change the subject and their moods.  One can even help to set the tone by using the juke box (although in the most popular pubs, the patron is unlikely to hear his choices before leaving).

The second is the sports pub, to which a male can take a date or not.  Usually sports pubs have a mixture of daters, married folk, single males with at least one male friend, and combinations thereof.  It is not a lower form of pub.  It is just different.  Though most patrons are paying attention to the home team, the patrons are talking a lot about other things.  It is similar to attending a baseball game.  The worse the home team is performing, the more the discussion turns to other things.  Even when the home team is performing well, the split in the discussion is about fifty-fifty.

True there is a big interruption when the home team makes a great play, but often a commercial returns the discussion to other topics.  Because most patrons are lubricated, a loss is taken well.  The discussion returns to catching up or to weighty subjects.

Patrons finding themselves in a sports bar and interested in conversation need only retain a booth or a table and lean forward.  If one still cannot hear, one must be in discotheque.

A male pub is alien to some American cities.

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