A new book about bars

This book that has been getting some publicity lately. An idle moment of nothing much to do led me to download it onto my Kindle. Not a bad book, really. We get to go through the authors' Grateful Dead phase, her college in Bennington Vermont phase, her Ireland phase, as well as her various meanders through the bars of greater New York. An occasional habitue of bars myself, I can see that see has discovered those bars where people talk about the arts.

I have rarely gone to a bar where people talk about anything intellectual or artistic, save perhaps when I went to Zach's in Denver. However the author, no matter how many flannel shirts she may wear, is clearly from a higher caste than most of us. To get to hang it in a bar in Bennington, you first have to pay the tuition at Bennington. Drinking Jameson's in Manhattan requires resources beyond the jobs she describes.

The worst part of the book is that, if it's a hit, it will ruin a number of bars. Bars that are undiscovered and have reasonable prices and available stools will suddenly be places that are hard to get into, full of tourists that have read the book. I guess that's the price of success. Try getting into MacSorley's on a Saturday night nowadays.



Editor's note: A previous blog that dealt into a theoretical class on the art of barzology.