A Communal Space

Kam and I are starting yet another book project, this time compiling stories and pictures about bars in Lompoc.  It's an interesting job for someone like me, because I am practically a non-drinker and only rarely have occasion to enter a bar. Maybe that gives me a certain objectivity and curiosity about such places, though.

I imagine different bars have different personalities and purposes...hard core drinking, meeting people, watching sports on TV....but their overall and essential role is the provision of communal space. In other words, they offer a "third" space, a space outside the home and outside of work, where people can hang around. Here's how a community development specialist named Michael Hickey expressed the idea in an article he wrote for the National Housing Institute:

The goal of a bar patron is to enjoy the primary benefit of any decent third space: a place to linger. I’m still looking for someone to generate a ‘lingering index’ so that we can measure the impact of just plain old hanging out – but that’s really at the heart of place-making, and we shouldn’t forget it.

Place-making. There's a concept. I think I'll be approaching the subject through that lens. But of course we'll maintain our usual interest in gathering anecdotes and stories....'cause although I am sure lots of patrons are sitting at bars for silent forgetting, I am equally certain we're going to hear some tales.

Ironically, the city of Lompoc was established as a temperance colony, and fanatical efforts to keep the town dry and respectable are well documented. In one infamous incident, a group of zealous citizens crowded in protest around a saloon whose owners refused to give up their "ruinous" business. An 1883 article in the San Francisco Chronicle described the scene:

Suddenly several heavy joists were heard crushing through the sides of the building, hurled endways; then a rope was run around it, and men, women and boys pulled with a will, cheering as they did so. The building soon toppled over, and eager hands tore it to cinders. Cheers, hat, throwing, and hand shaking followed.

I thought about that legacy as Kam and I entered The Wicked Shamrock, an unassuming establishment located in a small strip mall at the outskirts of town. Housed in what was once an auto dealership, it's much larger inside than it initially appears. The showroom area is now taken up with pool tables, vending machines, and big screen TVs.

At the front, there's a traditional counter and bar stools, a colorful array of bottles and beer tap handles, tin pails filled with peanuts in salty shells, and a bartender named Dominic, who is exactly the sort of person we were hoping to meet. He's been tending bar for 25 years and he really has it down.

We ask what he thinks is the most important quality of a good bartender. "Being attentive," he says without hesitating.

He has the knack for scanning the room, perfectly focused on one client while aware of a need elsewhere, and he maneuvers it all gracefully. It doesn't hurt that he was a 5th grade classroom teacher for a few years.

It's an empty time of day, but one or two guys walk in. Dominic nods. He knows them, knows what they want, and pours it. The clientele here are blue collar workers, off-duty firefighters, teachers, military, maybe a few folks not doing so well. It's a neighborhood kind of bar, he tells us, still a place where you can stop by and hear what's going on or who passed away, play a game of pool or watch a game of football, sit with your own thoughts or join the general banter.

"The place is communal," says Dominic, summing it up, "and the communal thing is what makes a good bar."

Also, beer. As Dominic says, beer's the new wine, and they have an amazing array here, and it's lost on me, but I know some folks who'd appreciate this.