Everybody's Changing

We have been watching our history dry up around here. It seems like every week we see yet another place that holds a memory for us shuttered or replaced by one more bland national chain. As New York City continues its determined, depressing quest to become one giant Super Mall, we hold on to those places that resist change, that remain a part of the neighborhood, so that they won't be absorbed into the Borg-like megastore assimilation of NYC.

There's a local joint near us that we've frequented for years. A real neighborhood bar. Not a dive, just a place with character. It's a great place to go - and I want to try and keep this in the present tense - on a Saturday afternoon for a beer to watch a game on TV or a stop after work on the way home. Quiet and never so crowded that you sought another place to have your pint. You were pretty much guaranteed a seat at the bar whenever you went - and, alas, for this I have to use past tense.

Our pub got a very nice writeup in a major metropolitan periodical a few weeks back and in the same week got a Page Six-like paragraph on a NYC gossip website mentioning some celebrity who went in there drunk and made an ass out of herself. And last week, it seems, said pub was cited in that same metropolitan periodical's Best Of New York issue, thus bringing the masses, including a few celebrities. We stopped in one night for a pint and a burger only to find the place overrun with more than a few hipsters and other new faces, our hearts sinking as we struggled to find a seat somewhere, bearing witness to the unfortunate birth of a Scene. We also stopped by last night to visit our friend, one of the bartenders, who said the place has just gone nuts since the articles hit. Which, of course, is good for business but bad for regulars. We find ourselves getting territorial as we're pushed to the sidelines. Our friend assured us that the scene status wouldn't last long - they never do here - and normalcy will find its way back soon enough. But we fear that once more and more find out that oooh, oooh, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sarah Jessica Parker were there, it will only draw more in before it all starts to slowly fade away. So until then, I guess we'll grumble about the newbies and look around for an alternate hole-in-the-wall that can seat us when our usual joint can't.

The funny thing is ... there might be some in our upstate pub who view us the same way we view the newcomers down here. We visited again this weekend, had a very nice dinner in the local hotel and ended up in a conversation with a long-time resident when we stopped into the pub for a nightcap (and to find out what the pub's plan was for St. Patrick's Day next weekend). The town is in the midst of a little gentrification, but just a cleaning around the edges. The town is composed of lifers, students from the nearby university, some weekenders and Cityfolk. The fella we were talking to said that there is some resentment from the long-time residents about the new faces, worried, perhaps, that this place will no longer be the secret it once was and the Uggs and sunglasses-at-night crowd will begin to litter the sidewalks and high-end boutiques will price out the few little shops there. As the conversation went on, I think our new friend saw that there are those who want to come there to continue the tradition of the town, not change it. Resistance needs new blood to carry on, so fear not the new recruits and count us in. We shook hands when we left, told him we’d see him this weekend, maybe buy him a beer.

I guess there may be new regulars in our pub down here, who will love the place for what it is and not for what is written about it or because of the famous faces now stopping in. We talked with a new couple the other night, telling them we've been coming for years, back when the only food in the joint was the amazing and highly addictive popcorn. One of the things we remembered as we talked with them was that a year or two ago, the owner talked about selling the place because there just wasn't enough business to keep going. She decided to get the kitchen working again (no more popcorn; a moment of silence for its passing, please) to try and get more folks in. Well, I guess it worked. A crowded pub clamoring for beer and burgers is better than a shuttered door or an Applebee's in its place. And perhaps there will be those who will carry on the tradition, who will keep it a neighborhood bar once we move on and carry on the tradition upstate.

I still want my seat on a Thursday night, though.