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7. The Convenience BarClinard, in his discussion of public drinking places, describes five types of establishments: the skid row tavern, the downtown bar and cocktail lounge, the drink-and-dine establishment, the night club, and the neighborhood tavern. His classification is based primarily on ecological location within the community and to a certain extent on the characteristics of patrons, although his descriptions of the bars are mainly in terms of behavioral patterns. For example, he states that in the skid row tavern, "drunkenness, prostitution, gambling and [other violations] are frequent"; that in downtown bars there is "much drinking over business agreements"; and that neighborhood taverns are used as meeting places for regular patrons. However, much of the behavior, he describes cuts across an the types he distinguishes, as does a good deal of behavior which he does not mention. It is not only in the skid row tavern that prostitution and gambling can be found, and it is not only in the neighborhood bar that regular patrons can be found. In this respect, ecological location and characteristics of the patrons may not be the most important variables for differentiating the uses of public drinking places.[103] |
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| 144 | Thus, rather than taking location within the community or the characteristics
of patrons as the criteria for differentiating one kind of bar from another,
I shall look instead at the various uses to which such settings may routinely
be put by those who patronize them. While the official mandate of the
public drinking place defines the setting as one to be used for the purchase
and consumption of alcoholic beverages, there are also other special courses
of action that may be treated as proper and fitting uses of bars. The loosely
defined expectations that characterize the general category may well imply
that such special uses are open possibilities in all bars. However, in
some establishments, for all practical purposes one special use may be
the primary use to which the setting is put (although, as was mentioned
in Chapter 5, sometimes a given establishment may be routinely used in
different ways at different times or in different ways at the same time
with the special uses spatially separated).
While these variations in use will be discussed as though they refer to different types of public drinking places, it must be clearly understood that these are ideal types, analytic constructs that focus only on a particular aspect of the phenomena --in this case the special use to which the setting is put.[104] In the following chapter I will describe the way in which the public drinking place is used as a locale for programed entertainment and how this use alters the general character of the activity within the setting. In Chapter 9, attention will be directed toward public drinking places used as settings for the purchase and exchange of goods and services; here my specific concern will be with the character of sexual transactions in such settings. Finally, in Chapter 10, public drinking places which have been taken over by various collectivities to be used more or less exclusively as domains of the group will be treated in terms of the nature of such use and the way those |
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| 145 | who have a proprietary interest in the setting defend it against the
encroachment of others.
However, before going on to these particular uses of the public drinking place, it is necessary to discuss briefly what can be called the "convenience use" of bars, for in many respects this is the manifest use of such settings.[105] The Convenience BarThe convenience use of the public drinking place has the features of a minor course of action which may be momentary or prolonged, unplanned or routine, but which is nevertheless little more than an adjunct to the daily round of activity.For some persons the convenience use may be characterized in terms of a setting that provides a place where drinks can be purchased and consumed when the need or desire arises, and the activity of patrons within this setting may be limited to this alone. Either singly or in the company of others, they enter, order, and, once the drink is consumed, typically they leave.[106] A nicely dressed, middle-aged man came in and had one drink at the bar, sitting like a solitary drinker. He left within ten minutes. While he was still there a |
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| 146 | second man, about the same age but somewhat shabbily dressed, came in and sat at the bar. He had a very quick drink, consuming it within a minute and leaving the establishment immediately in a brisk manner.There are others for whom the public drinking place provides a setting for depositing small parcels of free time. On the one hand, there are those for whom the commencement of some course of activity must await a specific time or oppor- |
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| 147 | tunity, and for them the bar may provide a setting where they may bide
their time until that course of activity begins, Thus, for example, when
theater tickets must be picked up at the box office by 8 P.m. although
the performance is not scheduled to begin until 8:30 P.m., the bar may
be used to pass the interim. Similarly, those who arrive at restaurants
before there is a table available for them or those who arrive at bowling
alleys before there is a lane free may elect to pass the uncertain but
limited period of time they must wait in the bar that is usually available
in both of the larger settings.
The D_____ is a very small bar which is a sub setting within a restaurant. When I arrived around noon, there was one woman sitting at the bar. She had two drinks and then left. However, between noon dad I P.m., one couple, two women alone and two women together were at the bar. All ordered and remained at the bar only until the hostess from the restaurant indicated to them that there was a table available. The couple and one of the single women took their drinks from the bar to their table, while the other single woman and the two women together, once they were told there was a table at the restaurant, quickly finished their drinks and then moved to the larger setting. |
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exchanged between those who were already there and those who had just entered. The new women Stood for a few minutes behind those who had been there, and then they, plus those who had been sitting at the bar, moved to the tables. Occasionally one or two more women would enter, to be greeted and to join them.While some may bide their time in the public drinking place, others may while away time which is either unscheduled or only loosely scheduled. For the former, the public drinking place provides a setting where time preceding the start of some course of activity may be passed; for the latter, the public drinking place provides a setting where time following the end of some course of activity may be passed. Thus when the work day, the show, or the game is over, there may be an open temporal vista in which no course of action is imminently required and some minor course of action can be pursued for a while, at least. The M_____ is a fairly large bar located within two blocks of a number of federal and state office buildings. When I arrived at 4:45 P.m. there were about twenty patrons present, although the number constantly increased until about 5:30, when it began gradually to taper off. |
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left, again each by herself. Around seven the three remaining women left together.
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| 150 | may be gradually dissolved. In this sense, then, the move from work
to the bar may be a move from a setting where the forms of discipline required
of the individual are both stringent and consequential to a setting where
the forms of discipline are much less stringent and relatively inconsequential.
The latter setting provides those previously caught up in the former with
an opportunity to relax in a variety of ways.
Similarly, there are a number of public drinking places located in the immediate vicinity of the football stadium. On Sunday afternoons, after the game, many persons apparently coming from the event (carrying programs, pennants, lap robes, and the like) casually enter the bars situated along the street. Some stay only ten or fifteen minutes and others remain as long as two or three hours, but regardless of their length of stay, and analogous to the patrons coming to the bar from work, the public drinking place may provide them with a setting where the display of excitement and involvement required of them at the game may be gradually dissipated. There are other convenience uses to which the public drinking place may be put. Specific facilities of the setting that are, on the surface, available for those who are present in the setting as paying customers, may be used by others who are not. Some may enter the public drinking place to use it as though it were only a telephone booth, while others may use it as though it were no more than a cigarette vending machine, a taxi station, or a public restroom. This is particularly true during those times when the public. drinking place is open and other public settings are not, but it is not restricted to these times alone. In general, the patrons who use the public drinking place as a convenience, as an adjunct to the daily round, are drawn primarily to the area in which the bar is located, and only to the bar once they are already in the vicinity. I had been talking to one of the male patrons who, |
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| 151 |
during the course of the conversation, said: "I usually go to the H_____, but I took my car to the shop around the comer and I'm just killing time until I can pick it up."Although any bar may be used at one time or another by some as a convenience bar, many establishments are located in areas where the influx of large numbers of people is a routine feature, and some of these specialize in the convenience use of the setting. Thus, where patronage is dependent on the way in which the settings around the bar are used, the clock and calendar of the bar is typically geared to the clock and calendar of the surroundings. Many bars located in San Francisco's financial and manufacturing districts do not open before 11:00 or 11:30 A.M., although by law public drinking places may open at 6 A.M.; and if they do not serve lunches, they may not open until 4:00 or 4:30 P.M., thus being geared to the lunch and after-work time of the employees who dom- |
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| 152 | inate the population of the area during the day. Similarly, it is not
uncommon for these establishments to close as early as 10 P.m. and the
majority of them are closed by midnight or a little after, although, again,
by law they may stay open until 2A.m. According to the bartender of one
establishment in then financial district, which closes at midnight,
There's no one around here after midnight and those who are you wouldn't want in here anyway. By now everyone has left the financial district, and there's nothing around here to bring anyone here. Those who are around are just troublemakers.... No, it's better to close now.And a similar statement was made by the bartender in one of the bars in the vicinity of the civic center: We get a good lunch crowd and a good cocktail crowd, but after seven everyone goes home and the place is dead. We stay open 'til midnight or a little before, but the other bartender usually just watches TV.In the same way, although by law public drinking places in California may be open seven days each week, convenience bars located in areas where other settings operate on a five-day week are frequently open only Monday through Friday, the only days during which people are in the area. However, not all who frequent these other settings and afterward go on to a public drinking place necessarily go to the most convenient, which is to say the most accessible, establishment. The following examples both come from home territory bars located approximately three or four miles from the downtown area: Rod, a regular and frequent patron of the bar, was talking about a play he had just seen at one of the downtown theaters. When I asked him later why he had come here rather than going on to one of the bars |
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around the theater he just shrugged and said simply, "I usually come here."Similarly, one's purposes may take one from the theater to the nightspot or from work to the marketplace, insofar as such bars, as well as the home territory bar, are organized around a particular course of activity. It is these variations in the use of the public drinking place to which I will now turn. |
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[103] See Marshall B. Clinard, Sociology of Deviant Behavior (New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1957). pp. 290-294, and his expanded paper in D. J. Piuman and C. P. Snyder (eds.), Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1962), pp. 270-292. The same problem exists with respect to David Gottlieb's distinction between the neighborhood tavern and the cocktail lounge "The Neighborhood Tavern and The Cocktail Lounge" American Journal of Sociology, 62 [19571, pp. 559-562. [104] See Max Weber, The Methodology of the social sciences (Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch, trans. and eds.) (New York: The Fyee Press, 1949), pp. 89-101. [105] In England in the seventeenth century, the convenience use was in effect the only lawful use of the public drinking place. Innkeepers were forbidden by law to serve anyone unless he were a lodger at the inn, a traveller, or "a labouring man there only in his dinner hour." F. W, Hackwood, Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909), p. 111. [106] Simon Dinitz found that most of the ex-alcoholics in his study stated that they did most of their "serious drinking" (that is, drinking to become intoxicated) not in public drinking places but rather at dances, parties, the homes of friends, and their own home. As they moved from their "social" to their "excessive" phase of alcoholism, the frequency with which they would patronize public drinking places increased, as did the frequency which they would patronize "the closest place they could find." ("The Relation of the Tavern to the Drinking Phases of Alcoholics," [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1951], pp. 225, 226, and Appendix B, Table 23.) [107] The determined stride, as in this and the preceding example, is characteristic of the exits of solitary patrons who have, during the course of their stay, remained out of interaction. The effect that it provides is typically one of a person with a real destination, and hence a person who could not linger in the setting even if there were a reason to do so. On one occasion, I noticed one of the female patrons who bad sat at the bar alone and unengaged leave in the same manner, When I left shortly afterward for another bar down the street, she was there, again alone. At the second bar I sat next to her and engaged her in conversation, and when she left about an hour later, her movement was much less "determined" it appeared when she left the first establishment. |
