by Amber Johnson
As I am trying to put my thoughts into words I look around at my surroundings. I am sitting in a coffee house, surrounded by individuals who are buried in their own works. The loud coffee machines drown out most of the noise, but during those brief moments of silence I hear pages turning, keyboards clicking and the faint sound of music coming from the person’s headphones next to me. Besides three girls who are chatting over lattes in the back of the coffee shop, everyone else seems pretty engrossed in their own worlds. I want to explore the different places we encounter socializing and drink. We have all experienced places were civil societies meet to discuss the weather versus the places people go to get drunk and explore social boundaries. The question is how can we tell the difference between the different places? What is to keep a drunk person from entering the coffee house I am currently sitting in (besides the fact that they do not serve alcohol) and keep a person looking to read their book with a beverage out of a bar on Friday night? We have all heard that saying “there is a time and a place for that” usually followed by “and it is not here.” Well I think that very saying can be applied to understanding the different places where one goes to drink alone versus where one goes to drink to socialize.
There are many cues that indicate that this a place where people go to be alone. There is the silence, although not as silent as a library, there is not the normal chatter you hear at a restaurant or bar. People are on their electronics or have their heads buried in a book. Many have chosen to put in headphones to drown out the rest of the world surrounding them. This is not a private establishment and there are no signs that say “please, no talking.” So why is there not more socializing between the coffee house costumers? Would people be annoyed if I started going up to them and asking them about their day right now? I saw the perfect opportunity to test this theory out when I noticed a girl from one of my classes sitting alone at a table. She was sipping on a hot beverage and reading something on her laptop. As I approached her table I also noticed she had her headphones in. It took me a few tries to get her attention, but when she finally noticed me she took out her headphones and turned her attention to me. I proceeded to ask how she was doing and if she felt ready for our upcoming test. After a few minutes of small talk I could feel our conversation beginning to dwindle. I decided to explain this memo I was working on and asked her about how she felt about me interrupting her studying. She said she had never really thought of a coffee house as being a quiet place, but now that I had presented it in that way she agreed that she mostly went to coffee houses in order to get away from distractions in her own house and focus on her homework. She was not bothered by the fact that I came up to talk to her and small talk is completely acceptable; however, as soon as I left she put her headphones right back in her ears and immediately dove back into her laptop.
This was my recent experience in a coffee house on campus in the early afternoon. However, depending on the location and the time of the day the atmosphere in a coffee house could vary. We learn in our readings how coffee and tea drinkers are a community of individuals. That it is true that many people like to enjoy their hot beverage with a book or newspaper, yet I know many people who enjoy “getting to know someone over a cup of coffee.” Just recently at work, a co-worker was asking me about the best place to meet someone he had just recently started talking to on Tinder. Another co-worker suggested dinner. I suggested a coffee house. My reasoning was because this was basically a blind date with someone he met on an app. A dinner date is more sophisticated, whereas a coffee date is more laid back. Coffee houses are also a great place to catch up with some friends, just like the three girls who I saw chatting in the back corner. However, this could still be interpreted as individuality. The girls are chatting in the corner or the couple is holding hands with their heads bent close together, but are they really being social? A stranger still would not feel comfortable approaching them. Based on my previous knowledge, the readings and my current observations I have come to the conclusion that coffee houses are a place for individual preference. Although, there are some practices of socializing in coffee houses, many find restaurants and bars to be more accommodating to the "outgoing." You wouldn’t find someone raising a toast or buying a round of coffees for strangers. Most likely you will find people enjoying their individual time and space.
On the opposite end of the socializing spectrum are bars. Saturday night I went out with some friends to Wild Bills in Blaine. Most of my bar experiences had been in college bars, so it was fun to try some place with a little bit of a different (and slightly older) crowd. The bar took up most of the space with a few tables on the outskirts and a large open floor for dancing and mingling. My friends and I went straight for the bar first where we stood to order our drinks. My one friend was closest to the bartender and she ordered the first round without asking. Once we were handed our drinks we moved out of the way towards the open floor. Wolfgang Shivelbusch mentions how the function of the bar has changed over time and over space. The bar was created to separate the workers from the customers. Its main function in Germany and France is to only serve liquor, and not be a place to sit down. However, the longer the bars, like in England and the United States, the more likely you are to find people sitting at a bar. The rule of thumb being that the longer the bar the more regulars you will see. Wild Bills had a pretty long bar, however it also had a pretty large crowd. For this reason most people were buying drinks and leaving the bar to find another place to enjoy it.
Another important thing I noticed at Wild Bills was that, like my friend, many people were buying rounds. Later in the evening, we had a group of people come up and ask to sit at our table with us. Could you imagine if this happened at a restaurant? People would be very offended and annoyed, yet in a bar setting it was normal. We begin to converse with these complete strangers and one of them even went up and bought the next round. To an extent, this was a very nice concept because we never had to fight the large crowd at the bar. However, when it was finally my turn to buy the round I spent way more money in one round then I planned to spend all night. I felt just like the guy in our readings who had to leave the bar to go home and get more money. The guys had insisted on letting them get the round again, but I knew how much money they had already spent on my friends and me so I felt obligated to return the favor. It was interesting to read these stories last week and then go to the bar and actually experience them. I never really noticed before just how often people buy rounds for one another. Now that I have been paying attention I realize my friends do it a lot. It seems like a strange concept, why doesn’t everyone just pay for their own? I think Schivelbusch hits it on the money when he talks about it being a socializing thing. When someone comes to your house, what is one of the first things you ask? “Can I get you something to drink?” It is the perfect opening line for every generation, age, gender, race ect. If you want to start a conversation with someone, what better peace offering then offering to buy them a drink. We have already learned that over the centuries drinking has been a way for people to create social bonds. In our first week of class we were all assigned to write memos about alcohol use in our families. Most of the stories had to deal with how alcohol created or strengthened relationships in families. Some were about how parents met over a glass of wine, others were memories about having their first drink with their father.
Drinking is used in many different ways. Saturday night, alcoholic drinks were used by some girls who went out to the bar for a good time and to meet new people. Today, a hot beverage is consumed by one of those very same girls to stay focused and finish her homework. Like places, certain drinks are more acceptable by society during certain times and in certain places. While drinking a cup of coffee on the morning train is completely acceptable, drinking a shot of tequila is not. There are always certain cues to look for when entering a place. People who have their heads bent low over their computers with headphones in are least likely to want to be interrupted, even if you have the nicest intentions. While people at a bar are more likely to sit right next you and engage in conversation, it is a place where people go to be sociable.
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