Editor's Note: Obamacare trudges on and Harry Reid has detonated the nuclear option. What better time for a drink? Pull up a bar stool and listen as the late Christopher Hitchens explains -- as he did in our May 2001 issue, using his favorite New York City establishment -- just the kind of place required to properly enjoy one.
What does one seek in a place of refreshment? Or what qualities, once found, make one think of a bar as in some way one's own? I would list in no special order the following features. The place should be open early and late and in between. In line with this, it should be a setting of moods: a slow start in the mid-morning, a bit of a bulge around lunchtime, a languorous afternoon and then a gradual quickening of pace after 6 p.m., culminating in a commitment to some sort of late-night or after-dinner or post-theater crowd. (It's not absolutely necessary to experience all of these things in the same 24-hour cycle, but you should be able to say that you have experienced them all and can in some way count on them.)
Those who staff the place should by all means recognize a faithful patron, and pull the trick of pouring the favorite bracer as soon as he shuffles in, but they should also recognize those times when he wants to read, or write, or brood, or recuperate. There should be music--not a television--and the customer should be able to have some say in its nature, also its wattage.
The clientele should be various, but not atomized. One wants the certainty of a few familiar faces, but not too many of them or not except at predictable phases of the day. In other words, my true bar should have an element of cafe-society to it; a place for newspapers and espresso as well as cocktails and basic food, and a place where you could bring your mother, if you had a mother, for a light lunch as well as your mistress or male lover, if you had a mistress or male lover, for a late-ish nightcap.
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