Boston Bars: Please Turn Off the TV
The just-opened Rosebud American Kitchen in Somerville’s Davis Square is an exceptionally well-designed space. From the retro-fitting of the iconic diner car out front with modern banquettes, to the rediscovered brick walls and old woods in the middle dining room, to the old-meets-new lounge feel of the main bar in the former dive bar space out back. My wife and I were delighted by it when we went in on Thursday night as we sat the bar taking it all in. Then, after ordering a few similarly well-designed cocktails, we turned our attention to the Washington Redskins versus New York Giants game on the TV behind the bar. We didn’t really have a choice. Mind you, neither of us had any sort of rooting interest in the game, nor, for that matter, in the meaningless Red Sox game playing next to it, and yet we were sucked into the spectacle regardless. At least I didn’t have to sit through that sacrilegious Derek Jeter nonsense.
So why did we watch? Well, to paraphrase George Mallory, because it was there.
Perhaps my ambience radar is a bit out of tune, having just returned from a drinking jag through London and Edinburgh. In the dozens of bars I visited, from high class cocktail lounges, to private clubs, to rowdier beer pubs, I found that TVs were a rarity. In fact I don’t even remember seeing one on the entire time. They are just as, if not more, sports mad in the UK as we are here in Boston, so the dearth of perfunctorily tossed-on TVs was a welcome surprise.
In Boston you’d be hard pressed to think of many bars without one. That will be especially true tonight as the Patriots travel to face the Kansas City Chiefs. A short list comes to mind: Drink, Backbar, The Hawthorne, No. 9 Park, Clio, Craigie On Main. It’s probably not a coincidence that those bars are widely regarded as some of the best in the city, and regularly lauded as some of the best in the entire country. Others with fine reputations include the likes of Saloon, City Bar, and Toro, as well as the more lived-in pubs of Mr. Dooley’s and Grendel’s Den. And then… well, that’s about it. Surely I’m missing a few, but the fact that it’s so hard for a bar critic like me to even come up with a list tells us something about our priorities here.
Is it possible to open a bar without a TV? It’s something I’ve often asked bartenders and owners over the years covering the city’s drinking scene for the Globe and elsewhere, and it’s a decision that they often resign themselves to reluctantly out of a sense of defeated obligation, they say. People want to have the game on in the background, even if they’re not actually watching. For the bars themselves, it’s easy to understand why they might comply. Single customers at the bar might be less likely to come in without something to hold their attention. Omnivorous sports fans may take their business to a nearby competitor. Further toward the bottom line, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine found that watching stimulating programs can affect the amount of food we consume while doing so. Savvy owners have likely come to this conclusion on their own. If we’re zoned out in front of a TV we literally lose our ability to monitor what we’re putting into our mouths. If we’re engaged in jovial conversation, the pauses between sips and bites are longer.
None of which is to argue against the concept of watching sports together at a bar. I’m as big a Boston sports fan as the next (although I do rather prefer to watch the Patriots alone at home where I can grumble and grouse and pace around the room without looking like a psychopath), but there’s a time and a place for watching sports at a bar, and that’s at a place called a sports bar. The problem here is that every bar in Boston is a sports bar now.
Some fine bars, like Eastern Standard, Brick and Mortar, and Citizen Public House, straddle the line by having a TV available, but only turning it on when there’s an actual game of interest playing. But for the majority of the city’s watering holes, the persistent flicker of an indifferent screen is the norm. Even worse is when it’s flipped to a reality show, or an ESPN talking head shout-fest, or a 24 hour news channel. We’re not even being offered the chance to watch something visually stimulating, we’re just watching for the sake of watching. A steady diet of TV news programming, as you’ll often see in bars earlier in the evening, can also make us more anxious and depressed. Isn’t that what we’re out socializing at a bar to avoid in the first place? And, of course, there are plenty of studies that show the ill effects of watching too much TV on one’s health.
Something else strange happened on my recent trip. I found myself talking to the friends I was with more than I might normally. It probably didn’t hurt that I had a horrible phone signal and couldn’t stare at Twitter the entire time, but the lack of a common point of distraction nestled us closer together around the bar tables. I certainly don’t want to see all of the bars divest themselves of the dull blue, one-eyed shackle – watching the Red Sox win the World Series with a group of friends and strangers last year was a great memory – but I’d really appreciate at least having the option to look away every now and again. So many new bars are focused on vintage cocktails, and retro designs now, but overlook the most retro thing of all: conversation. It sounds crazy, but you might give it a try next time you go out. Here’s a topic you might start with: So, did you see the game last night?
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