Bars have their own purposes. Perhaps some of you are unfortunate enough to have only one kind of bar in your life: the one where you meet up briefly on a Friday. Even so, most will at least have a chill one and a more festive version of same. Those of us who are connoisseurs of the tavern—and note I say of the "tavern;" a plain ol' drunk will settle in at his local and be there every night and day and night and—will have near-infinite kinds of watering holes. But there's the We've Been Two or Three Places But Want to Hit One More, the I'm Blowing Off Work this Afternoon, the Friends in Town Who Demand Much External Stimuli, as opposed to the Friends in Town Who Have No Money, the I Wish to Be Alone That I May Brood Over the Faithlessness of All Humanity, the ... well, you get the picture.
The Huntridge Tavern is my Just a Quick One While It's Still Daylight bar. It's a dark, narrow, wood-paneled room that doesn't even have a jukebox. The décor is a random assortment of beer mirrors and other promos—plastic American flags from Budweiser and inflatable Corona maracas—with a TV mumbling whatever game is on. Most of the space behind the bar is taken up by rows of to-go bottles, tiny paper tags hanging around their necks on bits of string; on the other side is a hodgepodge of stools and burgundy vinyl booths awkwardly altered to accommodate video-poker machines.
The clientele looks low-key unto catatonia at first glance—men a few years away from AARP membership, sitting alone—but not for long. A guy with Minnesota Viking tattoos on his calves barrels up, asking "You boys football fans?" And soon there's five of 'em, talking odds, alternately cussing each other out and buying the next round. Or, in the ever-popular seat at the end of the bar, there's a sunburnt man talking about his "cushy" new bakery job, where it is, how he got it, to make a long story short, she left eight years ago, things had to turn around, so he was on Boulder Highway heading back to Dago on the rest of a tank of gas, to make a long story short .... Think the camaraderie is only temporary? Perhaps. But the "Happy Birthday to ..." sign changes names every day, and while the bartender may not know what's in a greyhound, she knows the regulars and their drinks as soon as they step up.
Perhaps it's because the Huntridge is the center of its own tiny universe, opening directly off of the Huntridge Drugstore and its lunch counter. The drugstore has been barely renovated in the past half-century; a random collection of fluorescent-lit deadstock, it still carries any necessities that dawn upon you after you've had two (just two, really, thanks). There's little activity, aside from a dozen video crack machines dropped in at the front, just beyond where the cashier chatters with girlfriends clustered around the rack of Red Hots and Lemonheads; 30 feet away, beneath a vintage "restaurant" sign, a few customers dawdle and gossip over chow mein and cheeseburgers.
The Huntridge Tavern is also my I Don't Feel Like Going Home Just Yet But Indeed I Must bar. As we all know, it can be because there's someone in your house or because there's no one in your house, but sometimes you want a little time in that zone between Here and There, to be engaged for a drink or two (really, just two, I swear), but nothing that'll have you trying to choose between a cab and a cheeseburger at 7 a.m. Well, actually, by then the lunch counter is open, so ....
Lissa Townsend Rodgers learned to make a martini at age 6. E-mail her at [email protected].