Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Actually, this is a great idea NOT in action, but it should be!

Think of any generic bar you’ve ever been in, and think about the thought that went into designing it. If you’re a bar owner, you’re going to focus on the bar. You’re going to focus on the places where people are going to sit down and eat and drink. You’re going to focus on the dance floor, or the Big Buck Hunter Game, or the mechanical bull, or whatever. These are the things that make your bar what it is.

But in any physical space, there are forgotten areas. The corners. The spaces along the wall between tables. The surface underneath the bar. My question is, why aren’t these spaces filled with coat hooks?

This might not apply to my loyal readers in San Diego and Fort Lauderdale who can leave the house any day of the year in culottes and flip flops, but up here in the Cradle of Liberty, it gets COLD. In the winter half of the year, there’s no getting around going out to the club wearing your heaviest coat. There’s a fair number of places you come across that have a coat check, but in my experience, that’s less than half. So you get there, ready to hoist some brews or dance with some fly tinies, but before you can get down to business, you have to figure out a place to stash your coat. Which leads to an entire evening of anxiety, as you wonder whether Tommy from Saugus is going to pull what he thinks is his coat—it’s not his, it’s yours!—out of a huge amorphous blob of wool and nylon in the corner, and even if he does find his coat, he’s either spilled the rest of his gin and tonic on yours, if he hasn’t already knocked it onto the ground into a not-quite-yet-dried-up puddle of Bud Light because let’s be honest, you’re not out dancing at a place that’s particularly diligent about mopping up spills as the course of the evening progresses.

Do it next time you’re out. Go to the bar, look around, and count all the different places where there should be a place for one to hang one’s coat. There’s enough for everybody!