pic nicked from here
Every fall I have the same experience and make the same vow: I’m not going into a bar again. Not until the weather improves. Not unless I’m getting paid. It’s more work than fun.
When the weather is nice and the patios are open, I can enjoy the places. I can sit and smoke while I watch my friends get sloppy. That’s a good time for all involved. But once those patios close and I have to stand outside, shivering just to smoke, allowed to have less fun in a bar than at home, I’m done.
No one goes out to do less. I’m no exception.
Bars should be places where vice is recognized and appreciated. A place for grown-ups to do grown-up things. In a bar, you bring your vices to the table and, if you’re lucky, discover some new ones.
I don’t have as many vices as I used to. Because they’re rare and old, like good friends, I value the few I’ve kept. I take them wherever I go. I’m not going to abandon them just because they’re no longer the cool kids. They might not be popular but they’ve done pretty good by me. Kept me company when no one else would.
If I can’t smoke at a bar, it’s the bar that must go. Failing that, it’s me. My vices aren’t going anywhere. They’re the mortar that holds me together. Without them, I go to pieces. Keeping that from happening is why bars exist.
When I was a young man we weren’t so much concerned with second-hand smoke as we were with first-hand fists. If second-hand smoke was the biggest thing you had to worry about at a bar, then you weren’t in much of a bar. In a decent tavern, you should be more concerned with the uptight junkie, fresh out of jail and his stripper girlfriend who wants to dance with you while he glares and grumbles. Ideally, people should be concerned about you.
But that was then and this is now.
Now smoke is the worst thing going and bars are just bores. They’re quarantine cells for drunks. Clean, respectable and medical, they’ve become hospitals for office workers. A fucking Disneyland where there should be a wasteland. Dickheads schmoozing when they should be boozing.
And I can better engage my vices at home.
Beside my electric fireplace with my robot dog while drinking a cup of instant coffee, ambient drunken chatter provided by twitter, my laptop equipped with lapdance stripper. No jar to tip in, no line up to get in and a comfy chair to sit in. If I’m going to be in a replication, it’ll be one that I can still smoke in.
