The Bar as Public Space
People who know me won’t be surprised by this declaration: I like spending time in bars. In Europe, the definition of a “bar” is more vague than in other places. A bar isn’t just an establishment that will serve you alcohol. It can be a café, bistro, restaurant or even a club.
I am more interested in the physical element in a place called “The Bar.” That elevated counter with barstools or high chairs that forms a strip — either linear, square or curved — between the guests and the serving staff/bartenders. This is the story of how The Bar is essentially public space.
It’s easier to get me to the dentist than to get me to sit down at a table during most visits to wine bars, restaurants and the like. I have gravitated to the bar for decades. I’ve known this fact about myself, obviously, but I’ve never analysed it until recently.
I can’t tell you when I first started making the mental decision to sit at the bar as opposed to a table. I started noticing the pattern over the past decade, due to my intense travelling life. I can easily spend more than half a year in cities other than my own Copenhagen due to my work and this invariably involves staying at hotels.
So there I am, having just landed in a distant city. I check into the hotel and have some time before bed so I find myself heading down to the bar/restaurant for some food and wine. I gravitate to the bar and settle in.
In many cultures it is considered a bit odd to walk into a restaurant and ask for a “table for one”. There is some bizarre stigma attached to eating alone. Less so in large cities like Paris and Barcelona but pretty much firmly in place elsewhere, be it a subtly raised eyebrow or a confused pitying look.
But the bar? The bar always welcomes you. It doesn’t judge you at all. It shrugs and says, “What’s up? What’ll you have?”
I may sit down at the bar by myself, but I am automatically occupying a space with permeable walls. I’m alone but, by default, I have a human or two with whom I can communicate — the bar staff. Whether to merely order from or to engage in a conversation. A simple human transaction or a longer one but human all the same. Unlike a table server, they’re almost always there in my line of vision, preparing drinks for the establishment at large. It’s a more direct, intimate relationship. As soon as you finish your drink, they notice. “Ready for another?”
If you sit down next to me, or a couple of chairs down the road, our mutual permeability offers the potential for interaction. Talking to a stranger is legitimised far more at a bar than out in public where we might think “Oh, no… that dude is talking to me… ” At a bar, there is an unwritten social contract that says you are fair game and approachable.
In contrast, when you are seated at a table — whether it’s alone or as a couple or in a group — your approachability levels plummet. Only the server is allowed unrestricted access, which renders a table as a temporary, gated community.
Interaction with a neighbouring table is often limited to “Excuse me, what is that you’re eating?” and perhaps, “Is it good?”
At a bar you can turn to the stranger next to you and ask, “Hey, do you know where the bathroom is?”, if the server is occupied. You don’t turn to the next table and ask that — you wait for the server to come by or you get up and approach another staff member.
You are more acutely aware of the division between your gated community and the next. Sure, you respect personal space at the bar, but the lines are more blurred and dynamic. There is room for adjustment, flexibility and cross-pollination. If there are no seats left at the bar and someone has a friend arrive, you are free to ask the person next to you, “Hey, would you mind moving your chair a bit to make room?” You can find another chair and squeeze it in.
You are afforded a certain level of creativity and the opportunity to be an integral part of planning the space to fit your needs. You’re a user/designer, given freedom by the owner of the establishment to curate.
I have been frequenting one wine bar in Copenhagen for eight years or so. For many years there were two vintage benches running alongside the facade, facing the street on the narrow sidewalk. Four or five round café tables could be slid back and forth to provide an ever-changing arrangement.
I spent countless hours watching the dynamics of The Bench and its similarity to The Bar. Having no fixed seating places provided a challenge to the Nordic mentality of many of the guests but cultural restrictions soon gave way to basic human interaction. People would eye the bench and determine that they might be able to squeeze in. “Hi, could you slide a bit? I think there’s room.” People slid, pivoted and re-adjusted in order to accommodate the request of strangers, in the same way as at The Bar.
The Bench, like The Bar, was an arena of constant human interaction. Danes generally take most of July off for summer holidays and Copenhagen is oddly empty. Traffic is reduced to a trickle. I’m not often in town during July but once in awhile I am and I like it. A few years back I planted myself on The Bench in mid-afternoon. Most of the clientele were foreign and some were Danes from other parts of the country — most of my usual fellow customers and friends were out of town. The visitors stopped for coffee or wine and some snacks. In the ten hours I sat there in the perdect summer weather, I counted that I spoke to 27 strangers. There was a weird vibe that day, people wanted to interact. When do any of us engage in spontaneous conversation strangers in one day? I revelled in the magic made possible by this privately-owned public space.
A couple of years ago, the bench was removed and typical café chairs were put in its place around the round tables. Apparently because there was more money to be made by adding a bit of extra capacity. There is still a certain level of flexible curation and interaction between strangers but not as much as when The Bench played its integral, sociological role. We local guests who frequent the place still lament the demise of The Bench.
Inside this establishment you could never book seats at the bar — until recently. Again, more money could be made if people ate dinner at the bar was seemingly the rationale. I will argue that a marginally wider profit margin is of far lesser value than allowing customers to populate and curate this impromptu public space.
Sure, if you sit down next to a couple who have reserved a space at the bar and who are eating dinner, they are still fair game for interaction. They may not be in a gated community but it still has a condo kind of vibe. Neighbours talking over a low fence, but a fence nonetheless. Which is the vibe you get at, for example, a coffee shop: a more transient space with more permeable barriers between tables and a higher level of legitimation for talking to a stranger but with low fences surrounding the clients.
The majority of people I go out with have no issues with my suggestion (insistence) that we sit at the bar. On occasion, the idea is met with scepticism from people who are not used to the concept. Their comments vary but usually reflect their feeling that “we’re not really having dinner” or that “we’re not really properly settled into a place”.
The Bar seems to be, for this minority, a less attractive, transient space. Neither here nor there. A sideshow to the main event. It’s as though they think The Bar has a lower status in the wider space of an establishment than sitting at a table.
The opposite is true, in my opinion. It may feel — for some — more “fancy” to be seated at a table. You’re investing money in a night out. You are in a bubble with your own private staff member who takes care of your needs and whims but you’re still a part of the peripheral experience and the scene. You’re “out on the town”, yo.
When you’re seated at the bar you in fact enjoy a higher status. Wild animals always appear more free than the ones in zoos. You’re usually seated at a higher elevation and are afforded a wide view of the surrounding establishment. Surveying the “savannah” is more acceptable when you’re outside of it — and above it. You can certainly look around at other tables when you’re at one, but you don’t make it obvious. Furtive glances are de rigueur. Eye contact with other tables is awkward.
I have a habit of doodling the bars I like. I have more detailed sketches in another notebook that include eyelines measured in degrees, estimates of how much higher the barstools are compared to the chairs and how much of the establishment you can survey from your perch. Yes, I dork out on stuff like this.
The best bars are the ones that offer you a view of the rest of the place but an opt-repeated design — especially in hotel bars — is a row along the public space strip where you have your back to everyone else. Perhaps this sub-conscious design choice pre-supposes the (false) assumption that The Bar is a transient place or perhaps it’s just space management: “We designed a bar, let’s just slap some chairs up.”
Even better are the bars formed in a square or half-circle — or even just with a corner — so you can see the other bar guests and freely exchange eye contact and the unspoken sense of community. They are great for flirting, too, says the happily single author. Humans evolved to look at each other. On the streets, inside buildings, everywhere. Enabling that is what makes a city great. The same applies to bars and restaurants.
With all of this said, if I can sit outside at sidewalk tables or on a terrace — I would rather do that. The potential for spontaneous interaction with other guests is rhere, as mentioned, but there is also the urban theater moving back and forth in front of me. Travelling with me? Be prepared to plant your fine self at outdoor tables. But hey, this is about The Bar design.
Okay… perhaps a disclaimer is in order here. I’m not bashing table seating in restaurants. It’s a very well established concept in human society and serves many great purposes. A quiet romantic dinner, a business meeting or a big table of friends celebrating a life event. Or even that awkward “I’m breaking up with you” conversation. You know: a ritual performed in a semi-private space with words spoken in low tones but buffered by the surrounding semi-public sphere to prohibit emotional outbursts if things go awry. Mostly an American thing, it seems, if Hollywood films are any reference. But yeah, if table seating was a bad idea, it wouldn’t have become a standard for humans. I enjoy it on occasion.
One thing is the physical design of a bar, about which I have many opinions, you might have noticed. An element that I don’t like is something that is far more prevalent in North America than here in Europe. The presence of a huge TV screen above the bar — or even several screens. It is a completely different source of fascination for me to observe how people stare blindly up at these screens, even if they are sitting an talking with a friend or colleague.
Sure, it can spur conversation between strangers if it’s news or sports, but generally these screens are anti-bar. I have, however, a great little toy. It’s a remote control with one single function. It can turn off any TV in the world. I bring it with me when I travel to North America and employ it when I can see that nobody is actually interested in what’s on. Never in the middle of some sport’s playoff game where the clientele are clearly there to watch the game.
I love what happens. TV goes black. People at the bar look around, confused. Then they simply start to talk to the people they are with. Try it, it’s wonderful.
The Bar provides incalculable social benefits that far outweigh any calculations of potentially higher profits. Like a physical outdoor public space in a city, the flexibility and opportunity for curation by the users makes it attractive. It forms a dynamic that is attractive and THAT factor encourages people to return, to tell their friends about it, to make it one of their favourite places to go.
The Bar belongs to all of us.
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