The Hi Hat Lounge and Garage (1701 N. Arlington Pl.) is one of the most unique bars on Brady, half upper-scale cocktail lounge, half grunge bar. They serve a variety of drinks in the lounge, stock standards and staples with flare. The Garage is for the everyman, with specials like Mystery Beer or Shot for a dollar (awesome if you want to drink cheap, but I don’t think there’s much mystery in the shots, just the taste of regret and poor decisions).
But I knew this about Hi Hat, which may or may not make this next part a little shady. I knew, for all intents and purposes, that this bar would be good, and though I didn’t want to find faults with it, it occurred to me that this would be the perfect opportunity for an experiment. I’ve been in a lot of bars, both in Milwaukee and elsewhere, and I’ve been wondering recently where the conversation has gone? Why the discourse between bartender and patron has all but evaporated in most places? I may enjoy the archaic form of the bar, but I don’t think we’ve strayed so far away from the basic need for conversation, no matter how many dance clubs open.
So I 
went to Hi Hat alone, in search of putting this question to the test. I did it because, for me, there is no more interesting dynamic than that of bartender/patron. They have the opportunity to catch a person with their guard down, slightly liquored and mostly in need of a human connection. And anyone going to a bar alone is usually looking for a few words bandied about in concise order. On top of which, its part of the job. Really great bars usually have really great bartenders, and really great bartenders are those who talk to their patrons.
So I saddled myself to the bar top of Hi Hat Lounge, with the express purpose of striking up any and all conversations I could, and I went at a time when there wouldn’t be many patrons and absolutely no diners.
The bartender c
ame over and asked what I was drinking, opening the best opportunity for conversation. I popped a query of what the specials were, which he told me in succinct order. He looked busy, so I ordered a beer and hoped to catch him next time through. He never came back, so I forced his hand by slamming the rest of my beer. He came over and asked if I wanted another, so I said yes and then tried to weasel my way in again, asking if I could snap a couple pictures of the bar. He said yes, and before I could even thank him, he walked away. I spent the next beer watching him mix drinks for other people, and what makes the whole thing so disheartening is that he was an incredible bartender.
I left for the Garage, taking solace in the fact that even if the bartender there didn’t talk to me, at least the drinks would be cheap. It went slightly better than the previous time, if only because I had to ask about the Mystery Beer and what made it such a mystery. But after that she left me t
o my thoughts, focusing on nothing in particular behind the bar.
The biggest question I’m left with is: Why? Why the distance in a place that is designed for conversation? In the information age, we have been led to a certain disconnect with full conversations, a certain distance because of the brevity of the text and the post and the status. But I’m no old man harping about the damn kids, and I realize that the language we use now didn’t evolve for our express use and will continuously change.
But I think we’ve made ourselves distant, shut ourselves off from the world because of political correctness and personal space. And that leads me to the most important question: If a bar isn’t the place to go and speak with strangers, what place is left?
