|
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability
to build and mend human relationships will be more
important for the fate and safety of this nation than
our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating
the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful
mode of operation than destroying the one we don't
want. Marianne Williamson
"It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic."
P.J. O'Rourke
"Therefore, may we assume the opposite?"
M. John Fayhee, upon reading that quote
Mountain people are flat-out bar pros. In most parts
of the country, not the world, if you find yourself
in a bar three, four, nine times a week, you'd be
a social pariah, the card-carrying town drunk, a citizen
who serves as a justified poster child for the kind
of person you tell your kids to yell for help if they
so much as walk by. And justifiably so. In most parts
of the country, people go to bars for all the wrong
reasons, and only for the wrong reasons: to slump
over a bottle of Bud, bitching at the world. And,
worse, they come out for all the wrong reasons.
In mountain country, people go to bars to celebrate life, after a day of skiing or working fence or kayaking. Mountain people go to watering holes and pubs and saloons and clubs to make connections, to pick up the latest gossip, to tell tall tales that, unlike the tales told in most lowland locales, are often updated; in the mountains, new stories are told at our bars. Bars are where we huddle when we look out the window and wonder, probably subconsciously, just what we're doing out here on the edge of civilization, up in the cold hidden valleys, far from our people, far from the ways we know.
There is vibrancy to our bars and our bar life that you'd be hardpressed to equal in the bars of lesser lands. And that vibrancy thematically and culturally lends itself to what we hope will become an annual Mountain Gazette Bar Issue.
I understand there a lot of people who are going to recoil at the thought of dedicating an entire issue of Mountain Gazette to mountain bars.
Of course, it's my guess that few of those people are Gazette regulars, but, just in case one or two strayed their way over from Backpacker or Outside, let me caveat this whole thing: You're either a bar person or you're not, and mountain country has a high percentage of people who are bonafide, card-carrying bar people, and a high percentage of our readers are bar people.
So, hell, we're doing our first-ever Bar Issue. What
we did the last couple issues was ask for two kinds
of submissions from our readers: 100-word snippets
about their favorite bars, almost none of which came
in at anywhere near 100 words, and we asked for longer
features on anything bar related. As usual, we were
inundated to the degree that only half of the material
I wanted to get in got in, and, even then, you'll
notice that a couple of our usual departments - Obits
and Reviews - are not included in this issue. (We
hope to run some of the bar stories we didn't have
room for in future issues.) I really hope those of
you who might be chagrined on whatever level that
we're doing a Bar Issue won't hold it against us.
Because, you know, this is a serious social issue
we're addressing here. And, besides, we have (beer)
screened these (shots) stories to (beer) make (thirsty)
(beer) certain (pool) no (women shooting pool wearing
tight jeans) corrupting material (beer) has made it
in (margaritas). This bugger's rated mostly R. Ish
(beer).
|
 |
|
|
