COVID-19 Accentuates the Social Importance of the Neighborhood Bar

A small L-shaped counter with six seats, a long cabinet crowded with bottles of alcohol, and two TVs playing old movies and music videos...the little hidden bar is simple enough that one could mistake it for a nightspot in rural Africa. But this little bar was in the back of a nondescript office building in a nondescript neighborhood in a nondescript part of Japan. For 18 years, the owner of the bar ran the place by himself, relying on the old regular customers who have grown to know him personally as they came in week after week, month after month, for chilling and quiet chats.

There is plenty to bring customers back to the little bar. The owner speaks of his journeys in discovering new alcohol. The lack of a drinks menu, with customers relying on recommendations from the owner, also allows the owner to casually introduce his new discoveries to old regulars. Smooth Central American tequilas and strong, limited edition Scotch whiskey are paired with equally sumptuous snacks of smoked cheese, ham, eggs, and olives, enough to surprise new customers about the sheer quality of what they purchased in a bar that no one outside the neighborhood would know about.

Perhaps it speaks to the demand for alcohol-based socializing in Japan, and perhaps it speaks to the wealth of a populace willing to see imbibing alcohol as a matter of need, but the country is full of such small bars in regular neighborhoods. Rare drinks are not exclusive to exquisitely decorated ones in major city centers frequented by the rich and beautiful. Just your regular salaryman with a few spare changes can walk down to his neighborhood watering holes and get the same quality of drinks, amidst "friends" he made over alcohol throughout all these years.

No doubt, COVID has not been kind to these neighborhood spots for alcohol-fueled socializing. Rules about not being able to serve alcohol, for months, killed off the need for the bars to stay open. Drinking went underground as bar owners often decided to take the subsidies for keeping their establishments closed. Some stayed open, only to cautiously turn away non-regulars that they suspect of snitching to the local authorities. Those who sought out the atmosphere of trying new alcohol in new bars suddenly found themselves with nowhere to go.

Gone with the bars is a culture of bar-based socializing. Various experts speak of youths growing up in the pandemic without opportunities to develop their social skills by mingling with their schoolmates in real life. But at least the youths have social media and tech-savviness with video calls and online communication. Your average middle-aged Japanese salaryman, without the expertise and desire to create online personas, may only have the physical bars for satisfying his needs for socializing. In the already lonely world of middle-aged Japanese men, the death of the neighborhood bar forces them to seek more illicit companionship. 

As COVID-related restrictions wind down, the bar scene will open back up, but many will be decimated. Operating a small bar, even in a hidden corner of a nondescript building in a nondescript neighborhood, can be expensive. Few seats, slow turnaround, and thin margins on expensive drinks mean that owners struggle to pay rent and electricity bills even if just a few more regular customers decide to show up just a bit less frequently. Many bars, even if they have been operating in the same place for decades, will decide to close for good despite the disappointment of their regular customers.

Perhaps a new generation of bar owners and regular drinkers will repopulate the decimated bar scene of the nondescript neighborhood. Larger bars do hire plenty of young hands, who start out as mere students doing part-time jobs to make ends meet but end up loving the bar scene so much that they decide to stick around and open their own little bars. Many young people do not drink, but for the few that do, their knowledge and passion for alcohol are sure to pull in their friends in a way that new regular clientele forms to sustain the business.

When that day comes, the neighborhood will once again remember that the primary function of a bar is not to sell alcohol. It is a place that defines a neighborhood culture. Residents from different walks of life, different age groups, and even different ethnicities come together and celebrate the fortune of living in the proximity of such great drinks and company. When they walk into bars, customers know that they are doing more than just getting inebriated. They are armed with new knowledge of alcohol, small talks with others in the bar, and above all, that their neighborhood, despite the nondescriptness, is a worthy one to continue living in.