“Where did all the good bars go?” David Coggins asks in a recent Esquire hot take.
Based on my drinking experiences in the month since that op-ed appeared, I’d say — Chelsea. Lower East Side. SoHo. Greenpoint. Theater District. The point being, even discounting bars I’ve already enjoyed for a long time, I’ve been to several excellent new drinking establishments just in the last month.
So what is Mr. Coggins’ problem?
Before we get into a takedown of the clickbait headline (InsideHook would never), a little background on David Coggins: He’s a New York-based writer who’s written a few books, loves fly fishing, travels the world and has a Substack that I actually subscribe to called The Contender. He flaunts an old-school wardrobe that appeals to many modern men, including several editors who have worked or currently work at this publication.
Nothing wrong there and he’s seemingly an ideal journalist for Esquire, which sometimes possesses a very, let’s say “consistent” viewpoint on what it is to be a man and masculinity. So I say this with no ill will, but there’s a lot to dislike about his “bars are bad today” argument.
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You know you’re in for a specific type of article when one of the first lines pines for days when “men wore suits.” We’re already getting a whiff of that dreaded “when men were men” argument, but we’ll let that lie (I’ve worked for enough men’s lifestyle sites to know this line of good ol’ days nostalgia will never go away).
It’s what he says about the bars themselves. Here, he makes the crux of his argument:
“I don’t ask for much: a dark room without much going on. I can take it from there. Today, bars are themed; they’re kitschy; they’re tourist magnets. Others installed TVs for the World Series or World Cup and never turned them off. Now they’re on cable news, for goodness’ sake. The whole point of being in a bar is to escape the news!”
Remember when bars had no TVs? When bars lacked themes? When bars lacked tourists? (In New York, no less!) Ah, those magical, not-real days of drinking past. I say this as a 52-year-old man who’s lived in NYC since 1995 and traveled the world extensively: I have no idea what dank, dim watering hole he’s pining for here.
His commentary is stuck in the past
“These days, you sit next to people taking pictures of martinis getting warm.“
Maybe he doesn’t know how to use his phone’s camera quickly enough? I don’t know. I admittedly don’t love the onslaught of people taking photos of their drinks (or their food or their hotel room or their walk down the street, etc.), but this is not a complaint that should be centered on the drinks world. We have really good cameras on our handheld portable devices, I’m guessing we’re going to use them and some bars are going to play up Instagram-friendly drinks.
Just because my favorite international bar of the past year bans phones doesn’t mean I can’t accept their use in other situations or their influence. There are plenty of well-made, boring-visual classic cocktails on the menus today; if you don’t want to take a picture, don’t take one!
“People haul out their computer as if a bar were a coworking office the rest of the patrons had yet to learn about. Any place where people are on their computer ceases to be an attractive setting. Nobody goes to a bar to hear somebody discussing ROI over Zoom.”
I have never, ever seen this in any actual bar setting. Nor have I ever overhead someone discussing ROI over Zoom (Teams, maybe).
“But as a man staring down 50, I’m not going to take advice from a generation raised on Red Bull and vodka.”
Oh, wow, I was totally raised on Red Bull and vodka! And Zima! And ice beers, watered-down Jack and Cokes, espresso martinis (first wave), Cosmopolitans and…the opening of Milk & Honey. The reemergence of whiskey. Tales of the Cocktail. A plethora of fantastic cocktail books released in the last 20 years. Point is, when I started drinking in the 1990s, I was being served by a generation raised on clear spirits, novelty decanters, “light” whiskey and frozen margaritas. Was that really better? And can’t we grow and learn to enjoy great cocktails? I certainly did.
What bars is this man going to?
I literally don’t understand where Mr. Coggins — who is somehow younger than me — actually drinks.
“A bar should have regulars and a feeling of easygoing, unstated fellowship.”
True, the neighborhood bar is disappearing, thanks to increased rents, a decline in drinking interest among younger adults, etc. But move to Brooklyn, my man! If anything, I prefer Manhattan bars so I can be a little more anonymous — drinking in a bar with regulars often means I’m subject to some boring stories and often pretty terrible political opinions. Besides, some of us go out to bars to have fun.
The author also suggests the appeal of private members clubs, which…fine. I’ve been to a few as a guest, and I can’t say I’ve had a superior cocktail or drinking experience. And it certainly wasn’t cheap, nor was the conversation (which wasn’t always quiet) necessarily more engaging, probably because drinking in private clubs surrounded by rich, entitled people doesn’t seem very mind-expanding.
Finally, besides offering (admittedly) a pretty good argument for a bar in Zurich, he suggests we “need a place that’s elegant and assured and has the confidence to leave us with the pleasure of our own company.” I believe there are maybe a few hundred bars in New York alone that fit this description (here are a few). And what happened to having a quiet, civilized conversation with the regulars if we’re also supposed to be enjoying the pleasure of our own company?
Look, if you like Mr. Coggins and his sometimes charming, sometimes curmudgeonly point of view, go ahead and subscribe to The Contender. But also subscribe to The Spill, our free weekly drinks newsletter that often spotlights the amazing bar scene both here in New York and around the globe, which we just did extensively in our annual Spill Awards. Read that and you might get a different view of the bar scene in 2025 — it has its flaws (where are the affordable cocktails? Are we overdoing the culinary angle a bit?), but as a veteran drinker of three decades, I can say the scene is infinitely more interesting than it was 30, 20 or even 10 years ago, for drinking novices, cocktail experts and the growing trend of non-alcoholic imbibers.
We’re in a Golden Age of bars, where there’s still a place for everyone to drink. Even David Coggins.
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