Different from a French café or bar/tabac or an English pub, bars, even for the everyday visitor, are more of a retreat from the public sphere than an extension of it. Generally the whole family does not go to the local bar.

Bars in America are often refuges, especially for smokers and drinkers, who are almost entirely pathologized. Similarly for homosexuals, gay bars are a hideaway a place to mingle with other homosexuals without the intrusion of the law, although, until recently, Stonewall gay bars were often raided. Bars are the place of sexual possibility and hookup; sometimes any single woman in a bar is seen as available (the novel/film Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), for example, played out the “punishment” of such a single woman).

In the 1970s, heterosexual single bars rivaled certain gay bars as spaces specifically designated for the playing out of mating rituals for the adult human.

Novelist Charles Bukowski sought out inspiration in such bars and found the inspired everyday poetry of the denizens of these darkened spaces. Bars also have been crucial places for the development of new forms of popular music, such as jazz (bebop) and new genres. Bars often host new talent before the performers either disappear or move into more traditional, official spaces with higher cover charges (patrons in bars are not charged unless there is live music or a live DJ).

In the 1990s, 1950s/1960s cocktails such as the martini and the Manhattan, as well as the new “Cosmopolitan” came back in style and demanded appropriate settings. These bars, either opened or redesigned with retro or contemporary styles, brought sophistication back. Live DJs replaced the jukebox, which allowed the user to set the tone. However, this “new” rendition does not entirely eclipse the bar’s primary function as a space to drink, to mingle, to find someone new.

In some bars, the pool table is a crucial ingredient (as might be video and pinball machines, but slightly less dramatically). Leading pool players challenge one another and develop audiences as players drink and play in a game that involves skill and seemingly indicates sexual prowess. In other bars, pool is a playful pastime that fills up the hours among “regulars” who know one another and call the bartender by name.

The bartender plays a crucial role in the bar as a purveyor of alcohol, but also as a master of ceremonies who knows the ins and outs of the establishment. Friendly or curmudgeonly, the bartender sets the tone of the bar and introduces the new customer or initiate to its culture. The bartender serves the drinks to the customers (it’s never a selfservice situation) so that both power (and the rapidity of a buy back) places the bartender, structurally in an esteemed position. This is particularly true in the early twenty-first century when the bar once more is a refuge from a restrained larger culture.