Bar, Beer, and Buddy

Inside

Just last Saturday, not by plan but by circumstance, I had two Black Butte Porters whilst sitting inside a bar. Actually, a hotel bar, so it only semi-counts as a bar. A hotel bar isn’t really the same as a dark, dank (I don’t think bars I’ve been to have really been dank, but it creates a mental image, perhaps?) pub, set alongside other, equally rugged-looking, saloons. With soccer on one screen and the NFL on another.  Get-your-own-bag-of-popcorn-bowls. Peanut shells all over the floor. Close quarters, wood everywhere, maybe a mirror facing the bar stools so one can see how bleary one’s eyes are. Lotta noise. A lively din of noise, actually. Hustle bustle.

But key words – inside a bar.

My buddy Vince and I, after a long hike, typically stop by his house or one of our local establishments for a couple of beers and some snackage, perhaps a bowl of nuts.  That's often Highland Hollow, actually a very cool, relaxed restaurant more than a bar, but it could be other hiker-friendly spots.

I loved it. I missed it.  We hadn't had a beer thusly for months and months.

But I digress.

We’d planned to walk the Greenbelt, but the unremitting rain made the decision for us – beer inside. To be honest (and whenever someone starts a sentence that way, we must be extra careful to check for honesty), but, seriously, to be honest, after my two-vax needling I felt liberated. I needed to sit in a bar – even a hotel bar – and have a drink with my buddy Vince.

It was a visceral need.

Not for the beer.

Not even for the conversation.

Not for the (hotel) bar.

But for the gestalt-ish essence of the whole experience. Of actually plopping down in a chair, waiting interminably for the waitress to saunter by (and then having to head up to the bartender later for the next one because by then we’d been forgotten); listening to a three-person group singing (old, my era) covers (taking tips, naturalement); watching 8 or 9 women festively put tables together for a group gab and gulp; chatting it up with Vince; and even watching people check in, walk by, rolling their luggage, and waiting to be picked up. For this hotel bar was an extension of the hotel lobby. Not dark and dank and close. Light and lively and open.

But for the being-ness, the one-ness, of sitting in the midst of all that interaction going on.

But for the little round table with Black Butte Porters sitting on them and taking it all in.

Now, this wasn't all that intimate a gathering.

Yes, we sat apart from everyone else (technically, we weren’t even in the bar, but in the lobby, just separated from the bar (and the hotel restaurant by the ways) by a walkway, but I like to think of it as sitting in a bar) . Yes, we wore masks when we walked through the building. Yes and yes and yes. But, it was my first time out for a beer in over a year. Unplanned serendipity. I relished it, and relish it still.

These last months, I’ve generally focused on nature, the healthy aspects of being outside – watching kids play, people taking walks, clouds and birds and the beauty of this earth.  I'll continue to do that, every day.

But I’ve missed being able to drink a beer with a buddy in a bar.  I've missed eating dinner with my wife in a restaurant. I've missed grabbing a cup of java in a leedle, old, personable coffee shop, chatters and readers all around, with just a book. 

But I'm vaxxed, and feeling (relatively) liberated.

Soon, I hope, it’ll be our church I’m able to attend in person. I've missed that very much as well.