Ask a bartender a question
datasecretslox.com
datasecretslox.com
All of my training is focused around persuading a machine to do what I want. I get pedantic. I think this is rooted in the computer not doing what I want all day, and me, little by little finding the correct path.
Lawyers and combat veterans are the absolute best to interact with. Lawyers will give you 6000 reasons why that blue car is actually red. Sometimes they get lucky, and strike upon a workable solution. Combat veterans believe what they believe for a reason, someone might die. They've really _really_ thought it through.
Lawyers and combat veterans don't get mad. They really want to either win or communicate the point, respectively- unless you're a complete asshole, don't do that. Being an asshole will get you kicked out, or your ass kicked. Drunken dive bar patrons genuinely want to help improve your understanding of the world. They're bored. They're literally killing time. Grad students and post docs are kinda shitty. I enjoy hearing people be passionate about things, but they have a zealotry that can be hard to take. there's a deep commitment there that gives zero space for beliefs that disagree with their own, especially when drunk. But you can learn a lot of high level perspective.
Sports fans and enthusiasts are beyond my bar skills. They require an encyclopedic knowledge of whatever they're into. it's hard (for me) to keep a conversation rolling. Machinists are pretty cool, they've become assembly programmers worried about crashing heads. I get of easy, I just rerun my program. They trashed a 5k piece of steel, and possibly damaged a very expensive machine.
There are lots of folks in dive bars. Most of them are willing to shoot the breeze. It can be a very mind expanding experience.
On the other hand, at a dive bar, you're probably interacting with the alcoholic version of X. That also applies to you. You'll find people that are more open and willing to talk and argue about whatever in a consequence free (unless you're an asshole) environment. But you also need to think hard about your level of consumption. It's probably not great.
Dive bars are a funny thing. they're a social space I haven't found replicated anywhere else.
Sounds a lot like many pubs.
Fun story, when I was an intern there was a pub just outside the industrial estate where the office was situated. This pub was frequented so regularly by the company that one of the developers actually had access to the till. On hot days we'd walk right past the queue, pull our own pints, pay for them, and be out in the beer garden long before everyone else!
The catch is that something called a "pub" in most of the US implies it's a bit fancier.
Somewhere you're going for dinner, but not to chat with random folks. That's not necessarily the case in the midwest, but still, something labeled as an "Irish Pub" or "British Pub" here is going to be 1) slightly more upscale and 2) focused more on food.
So what you'd call a pub is a "dive bar" or "neighborhood bar" over here.
Food is typically a potluck or something grilled outside, as having a kitchen would make it a restaurant and result in different inspections/rules/etc. There's probably a potluck anytime there's a big game on TV. You're _highly_ likely to run into your neighbours. There will probably be at least one bar dog or bar cat.
dive bars are perfect for this. great conversation with folks from all kinds of backgrounds. coffee shops don't really cut it. there aren't that many spots to just, chat.
Also, dive bars over serve, almost as a rule, in spite of the post. Getting drunk and hitting on women or men to excess, I dunno. hard to explain. If you're polite, you can get absurdly drunk. Don't inflict your drunken-ness on others.
--edit--
I realize after a moment #1 is confusing, especially for non Americans.
it's always ok to introduce yourself. if you get a grunt in response, it's a lack of interest. in the south, you might get a warm welcome, because that's just hospitable.
There's a bit of reading involved. If people try to engage you in conversation, asking you questions is a good example, you're welcome to participate. A dive is generally older men drinking away their pensions. But it's diverse, lots of ages, genders and income levels. You just sorta have to read the audience. Feel free to stick around for perhaps 5 minutes and listen, but if you're ignored, you're probably not welcome. An American would be loud and pushy and "be an asshole"
Many years ago, my friends and I had a night in our favorite dive. That bar draws college kids, Brazilian immigrants, alcoholic townies, yuppies, punks - everyone. It was packed: there was nowhere to sit and hardly anywhere to stand. When we started pushing through to the open space in back, a literal giant of a man who had a booth to himself invited us to sit with him because he liked my tattoos. As the night wore on we discovered 1. the giant man had a peg leg; 2. he was a proud neonazi (and didn't realize we were Jews and Cubans); 3. he could chug a pitcher of Gansett in a few seconds. He even sold one of us some adderall.
I saw the same man a few weeks later at that bar, cheerfully asking a group of Indian grad students shooting pool where they were from, with some level of suggestion they should be sure to return when they finished their degrees.
We weren't going to be friends, and I'm sure he's found his way back to jail by now (and that he deserved it), but it was a night I'll not forget soon. None of that happens at Applebees.
Ahhh, now I miss New England. They don't distribute Gannies in TX.
I'll heartily second that! I'd rather plop down next to a guy who can't stop talking about his favorite video game. At least they're sure to be talking about something they actually do and there is none of that ridiculous "we" talk.
And they aren't fooled for a moment that it's all just a game they're obsessed with.
This hasn't happened to me anywhere else. And I try to be polite and tip well in the US.
The fact is that in the US people tend to congregate around the same time (happy hour or at night)in bars/clubs and the bartenders get overwhelmed and don’t care much about service. It is all about volume and who looks like is going to tip well.
At quiet times they tend to be chill and friendly though.
It is a pure supply and demand thing (of their services)
So there is a game of favourites - that local is near-on a thousand bucks a year. Plus tips. So if I get the chance to start his drink the moment I see him out the window, I'll take it. You might wait an extra 30 seconds. The change he drops in the jar will probably add up to a car payment over a year.
I can easily imagine bars are a similar situation but more so. The regulars are probably spending a little more than $20 a week.
I'm this guy. The interaction with a coffee shop changes once they start treating you as a regular. The arrangement is somehow more mutually beneficial than the simple exchange of money for goods. Sadly, I find fewer and fewer shops have this attitude. In my current city, I notice the hot shops have a wild rotation of baristas such that by the time they remember my order (it's a black americano, not rocket science) they've moved on.
Small, family owned-and-operated shops are by far a better experience than any chain, even of their coffee isn't quite as good as a Blue Bottle or a Philz.
I think it's interesting how the meaning of "dive bar" has changed in the couple of decades I've been legally allowed in them. When I was in college, a dive bar was a place that you were taking your chances visiting and half the point was the frisson of "danger" to go along with shitty beer. Now it seems to often mean a good place you call a "dive bar" because you don't want it getting popular.
I miss our local in our town. It got popular, moved across the street to a larger building and started to be a full restaurant and then, fairly unsurprisingly, died because they weren't ready to be a different thing. Some of it was probably managing a larger staff, but I think a lot of it is dealing with the "General Public". A good dive bar is/ can be like an extended family and regulars sense the pace of the place and adjust accordingly, whether it's too let the bartender(s) grab a breath when it's busy or to be patient with the new bartender while they learn the ropes or usher a fellow regular out on a day they've lost the plot. To abuse an overused cliche of our times, there are no Karens in dive bars. Not for more than a minute or two anyway, because the entire place will let them know exactly what the world thinks of them in a way McDonalds' patrons will not.
I also see the point where he says that he wants his regulars to come in, but also doesn't want them to come in for their own good. Pretty hard to serve these people so your bar makes money, knowing that it doesn't do them well.
Will definitely think about tipping the next time I'm at a bar.
I met a ton of incredible people, and had a lot of fun, but also burned out. Never having bartended before, there were some surprises:
- No food in most of the bars in town, other than bags of chips. This made it hard to slow people down.
- No inventory control. Bottles weren't weighed or measured in any way. Any employee could, in theory, steal alcohol with absolutely no way for the bar to know (there were no cameras in the building, either). As a consequence, bartenders would pour quite heavy at times, especially for the regular day-drinking crowd (with tacit approval from the owner).
There is a huge dynamic where the money is so good (my take-home was normally in the range of 40-50/hour during the slow season for my Friday night shift), and most bartenders that I met didn't have any other options to earn that kind of money, so would keep bartending despite the burnout. The golden handcuffs are real.
If you’re abstaining from alcohol because you’re addicted to it, it can be very hard to find that kind of social connection elsewhere. I think this is a problem in our society (at least in the United Kingdom): a lack of places to be sober and socialise warmly with strangers
> However, I do judge you by your drink order. We all do. I give all respect to the patriots that drink their liquor with no mixer. Whiskey on the rocks- not all heroes wear capes. I don't trust rum drinkers, they don't like booze. A good buzz should be earned, not delivered in a sugar slurry.
If Socrates worked in a dive bar, I’m sure he’d agree.
Havana Club, Appleton, Mount Gay are all fine. The best intro for sipping neat for most folks is probably Ron Diplomatico, it's on the sweeter side.
There is much, much greater breadth and depth to rums than whiskeys and scotches.
To me a Dark'n'Stormy is a great drink, in part due to imagining the pirates of the old time sailing on the high seas with nothing else but their wits and rum.
I imagine if someone seriously believes whiskey on the rocks is a drink for grizzled hard-men and that rum is for fancy lads[0] who can't handle alcohol then they're not particularly well versed with spirits, and are just repeating something they heard and thought sounded cool. Whiskey on the rocks is usually very easy going - and if you had something like sweeter like Eagle Rare, or delicate like Redbreast that's possibly one of lightest spirit-without-mixer drinks you can get. Then again, they might have just been joking.
[0] = I've used male-centric terms here because I cannot think of more suitable gender neutral ones, but I hope the intent is well understood :)
In the end, the eastern state sold me more liquor at lower prices until I realized that I was drinking too much and quit. Everyone I knew back west drank; few do out east.
I used to live there and the only place to buy 6 packs was at a restaurant that also served food. They've since loosened up the beer laws, allowing grocery stores and convenience stores to sell beer as long as they have fresh food available and tables for dining.
That would be difficult, since those three phrases are not anagrams of each other.
Where is the 'n' in 'data secrets lox'?
But the activity of that one also wanes and waxes, and the community is mostly active on our Discord channel now. But, I and the other 'regulars' have changed too, we don't have the mental energy, time, arsedness and powers of concentration anymore to read and write multi paragraph essays in threads spanning the ages.
Thankfully there's a lot less drama and crazies as well. We've seen some shit.
There was a blog written by Scott Alexander called 'Slate Star Codex', which was read by a lot of big tech entrepreneurs. Last year the New York Times wrote a piece on it, and told him they would reveal his name.
Scott took issue with being doxxed (too much to unpack in this, but caused a bit of a stir including here in hackernews) and took down the blog in protest. The blog had regular open threads for discussion, with some quite active regulars in there. datasecretslox was created for some of those to keep that space for discussion.
Lately Scott moved to substack and writes at AstralCodexTen.
I never understood this.
You serve someone until they're too drunk to deal with and kick them to the street where they'll likely get arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
Why not give them some water and let them wait it out? OP said himself 95% of people understand and only 5% get a little rowdy after they've been cut off. The 95% should at least be given a hour and some water, not kicked out.