On a warm night in September, I was sitting on the porch of the Royal American, a local institution dive bar in Charleston, South Carolina, eating a burger and drinking a beer. I had flown in from Oakland a few hours before, and didn’t have any meetings til the morning. A train slowly rolled by a few yards beyond the wrought-iron railing. A young woman approached and asked, “What brought you here all alone?”
I smiled, leaned back in my chair, and explained I was a playwright working on a new play. I must have been talking with my hands, because she noticed my wedding ring and said, “Oh, you’re married.” This put her further at ease, so she sat down and sighed and bowed her head when she said, “I’m in marketing.” I laughed at the humility of her resignation. Soon her friend, Horsie, stopped by to join. His Daddy was a railroad man, and he knew all about trains. The train rolling by had stopped. Horsie explained it was carrying BMWs, and he knew how to unhitch it. “There’s a hundred million dollars of fine German automobiles on that train car alone,” he said with a grin, “just setting there for the taking.” He’d grown up poor in a rich part of Charleston because his grandad won a house in a poker bet in the 1920s. It kept a chip on his shoulder, and an ability to weave through society at any level.
I don’t (and can’t) drink a lot, but I relish a local spot where the people are curious and vulnerable, where it’s understood that we are all in this together, at least for a few hours. It was a return visit. The previous time, I sidled up to the bar, ordered, and nodded at the bearish man a couple stools over. We fell into conversation as he drank fernet, and occasionally pulled on a tobacco vape. The stories he told, growing up “not white trash, not redneck, just Southern country” were funny and illuminating. He talked about a growing critical distance toward his Southern heritage, his relationship to guns, how his Dad grew up “racist, but tolerant” and how that allowed him to change. After half an hour, I asked if I could record the conversation for a new play I’m working on, and he said sure.
When on the road doing research, this happens a lot. I spend time during the day profiling specific people I’ve lined up for conversations and hang out sessions. In the evening I often type in “Dive Bar Good Food Sports”into maps on my phone and that steers me to the locals spot. And yet in working up some of the material for a new show, there is sometimes resistance to characters based on people I meet at bars. Perhaps there’s a fear bars are a place of bravado and bullshitting. Sure, certain places are full of that. I don’t like talking to people who are drunk. That’s not all bars are though.
A good tavern is a community center for large parts of the Upper Midwest, and the only non-chain restaurant in town. In Wisconsin, I once stopped in a town that had a little over 600 people and seven taverns. In St. Petersburg, Florida a bartender started telling me his life story about twenty minutes before closing time, and we sat in the bar with the music off as he told me about coming out in middle-school in conservative Central Pennsylvania while watching Sally Jessy Rafael in the ‘90s with his Mom after school.
I went to a bar on a Friday afternoon in Las Vegas’ historically black neighborhood on the West Side, looking to get away from the relentlessly drunk downtown vibe. The bar was hosting a birthday party that night, and I met several family members. When the birthday Dad gave a speech between bites of fried fish and electric slide dancing, it was the first time I heard someone say, “I’m an empath” and it not sound ridiculous. In fact, it was moving. We were in his extended living room.
The key to making friends at a good bar is to enjoy yourself first. Like all social encounters, desperation is doom. A good, local bar is a clubhouse that you’ve been given a pass to. If you play it cool, show curiosity and respect, you’ll end the night refusing free drinks.
Part of what makes bars good places to strike up long, interesting conversations in is that it’s a place that welcomes pauses and silences. I like low-key sports bars. The TV is the fire burning in the corner, a place to return one’s attention to, a shared experience if it’s compelling, a bright, glowing pop of color if it’s not.
Silences and pauses are a natural, and necessary, part of conversation. In the argument over what’s better, synchronous or asynchronous communication, what’s lost is that synchronous shouldn’t be immediate and relentless. People are scared of the awkwardness of silence in conversation, but to me, there’s nothing more off-putting than someone who feels compelled to constantly fill the silence. That’s what hanging out is—the pleasure in letting each moment unfold, not rushing to the next one.
In presenting material in a work-in-progress showing of my new piece FEAR RAGE HEAL CHANGE next Wednesday at The Marsh Theater, I’ve been appreciating the pros and cons of scenes that take place in bars. On the one hand, there is the thrill of the spontaneity of the interaction. On the other hand, I don’t want audiences to feel I just wandered around and talked to random ranters. The majority of my material comes from reaching out to specific people because I believe they have stories and perspectives that will be stage-worthy and fit into the evolving themes of the piece. That said, sometimes when I’ve told people who I am and what I do, they lay on me a barstool monologue that leaves me tittering with laughter and delight, or jaw-dropped in silent respect.
There’s lots of parasocial mediums at our fingertips. We listen to other people have conversations but don’t participate ourselves (podcasts), or talk past each other endlessly (comment sections). The bar is a throwback. Sure, there are people thumbing through their phones, but if you sit and enjoy a few moments in silence next to them, you’ll likely have something to say to each other. There is an ongoing assault on our attention, and a growing awareness that we need to push back to regain our humanity. More value is placed on being seen and taking the time to see other people deeply. Bars may be imperfect mediums for this, but in most cases, they are still some of the most democratic places in the country.