“Sometimes you want to go / Where everybody knows your name / And they're always glad you came / You want to be where you can see / Our troubles are all the same / You want to be where everybody knows your name.”
The theme song from Cheers has never quite landed the way it does now—weeks into COVID-19-induced quarantines, when imposed isolation has deepened into deprivation. Following its sudden arrival several months ago, the virus has since brought the entire world to a collective halt. Within the craft beer industry, known for its heavy reliance on the word “community,” face-to-face interaction has been all but decimated in the days of social distancing.
Humans are innately social: we crave familiar connections as well as routine. Absence of physical contact can lead to “skin hunger,” a crippling effect experienced by prisoners in solitary confinement and other groups segregated in isolation. But the lack of physical proximity to friends and peers isn’t the only way quarantine is taking its toll. Routines, however loose, give each of us a sense of control over our lives, surroundings, and experiences. It’s one of the first things parents impart on children: without a clear expectation of a daily structure, my three-year-old son would never agree to preschool, gymnastics, music class, swim lessons, or any other non-preferred activity away from home.
COVID-19 hasn’t just robbed us of this regularity—it has redefined the concept of community entirely. Pubs and bars have historically been egalitarian social gathering spaces, or “third places” other than home or work where people spend most of their time. A 2017 report in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management titled “Assessing the impact of pubs on community cohesion and wellbeing in the English countryside: a longitudinal study,” describes the social value of these spaces:
“...[P]ubs are essential in fostering and developing social relationships among residents, strengthening the level of community cohesion in villages and parishes and positively contributing to communal wellbeing and provision of social capital.”
This social capital is far from limited to the English countryside, and our global separation from familiar faces, places, and spaces has led the beer industry to attempt to recreate ritual in creative, and sometimes desperate, ways. As virtual happy hours increase, will these convenient (or dystopian, depending on your perspective) replicas of community serve as a temporary splint on our collective isolation, or will they become the new normal long-term? Are these digital gatherings a means to an end, or are they an inevitable evolution in the future of the beer community? Our reliance on routine and its transformation into our current state, while universal, presents itself to each individual differently as we navigate this shift in solitude.
Open since 1952, Joe’s Inn in the Fan neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia is known as a haven for locals from all walks of life. Inside the split space—the “kitchen” side on the left; the “bar” side on the right—you’re as likely to bump into hardcore barflies downing cheap draft beer as you are families sharing a Greek pizza. The unassuming institution is known for heaping plates of baked spaghetti and a hell of a happy hour, and even with the restaurant renaissance Richmond has undergone, which has spawned a plethora of posh eateries and twee drinkeries with names like Saison, Heritage, and Supper, Joe’s has remained virtually unchanged throughout the generations.
Servers, bartenders, cooks, and dishwashers—all employees—tend to stay at Joe’s for years, if not decades, and with them remains a steadfast clientele of regulars rather than a rotating cast of one-and-done foodies. It isn’t so much in the heart of the Fan. In many ways, Joe’s is the heart of the Fan.
“We're all basically like a family,” explains Sarah Geroux, Joe’s employee for 14 years. “And really, the customers are our families too.”
Historically, Joe’s Inn only closes for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, with a handful of exceptions over the years. But until COVID-19 began its relentless march across the globe, the doors of 205 North Shields Avenue have never closed for an extended period of time. “That was our appeal. It was like, well, snow day, any day, you know you can always go to Joe’s. Easter, Mother’s Day, we’re always there,” says Geroux.
She recalls her last shift—the morning of Sunday, March 15—as the day before Joe’s Inn shuttered indefinitely and reluctantly laid off almost the entire staff. Brunch has always had a huge turnout at Joe’s, thanks in part to the homemade biscuits, huge portions, and specials on Bloody Marys and mimosas. It’s a shift Geroux has worked since before my tenure at Joe’s 12 years ago. It’s also one of the shifts where she expects to see a huge influx of regulars.
As part of COVID-19 preparations, the staff had already switched to paper menus and single-serving condiments, and had posted on social media about additional cleaning procedures like wiping each seat and barstool between customers. It did not go as planned. She describes a flood of people streaming in as usual, desperate to cling to any sense of normalcy.
“It seemed like nothing was going on at all,” she says. “That’s what's so scary about that day … These people think that they are safe here. And it’s sad that they aren’t safe here.”
A few days prior, Geroux had run into one of her longtime regulars, an older man who lives alone. He was about to have surgery, but expressed enthusiasm at seeing her on Sunday for his regular brunch. Unsettled, she later emailed him to caution him against coming. She offered to bring him takeout instead and leave it on his porch to minimize his risk of exposure. He replied flippantly and showed up on Sunday as planned.
“He sat right down, touched my hand three or four times, and seemed to be completely nonchalant,” Geroux recalls. “He said, ‘You know, if I die, I die. I’m old enough and nothing’s going to stop me from my daily routine.’”
He’s far from the only regular resisting isolation. Geroux rattles off name after name, story after story of the customers and coworkers she didn’t realize had become ubiquitous elements of her existence—like Steve*.
“He had the same seat every day, [and] he’s been coming literally the entire time I’ve worked there ... He is a man of routine. He’s a loner who enjoys going to different bars on specific nights and getting the same thing, sitting in the same seat, bringing a different book each time, and having the same banal back-and-forth about the weather. We’ve even developed this whole system with him paying because he knows exactly how much it costs to the cent. I’ll bring him his change before he even gives me the cash. So we’ve got this whole system in place, it's been going on unwaveringly basically for 14 years. That night he came in and I had seen on Instagram that Bamboo [a nearby restaurant and bar] had closed … I’d also seen that the Byrd Theater, which I happen to know Steve goes to movies almost every single night, had also closed for the foreseeable future. So I kind of broke the news to him about Bamboo and he looked completely flabbergasted. He was like, ‘What am I going to do?’”
Her voice quivers. “I just worry. I hope he’s getting takeout, or something. But I don’t even know if he knows about that. I worry about that a lot. Every regular I think of, I think, ‘What are they doing?’ I worry about the lonely folks out there, who use our bar and other restaurants and bars to find organic camaraderie. A lot of them don’t have anywhere else to go.”
*Names have been changed for privacy.
Joshua Bernstein, a beer journalist, author, and father living in Brooklyn, New York, says when he became a parent seven years ago, he had to shape his formerly loose schedule of visiting bars and covering them for different publications into a more established routine. “One of my routines I started is we have a local beer bar and bottle shop called Covenhoven, which is located in our neighborhood of Brooklyn, Crown Heights,” he says. As the parent in charge of his daughter Violet’s school drop-off and pick-up, he found himself gravitating towards the bar nearly every day.
“Being a writer who doesn’t talk to people or just talks to people on the phone all the time, I started going there in the afternoon to kind of have a nice little break. When you’re a parent that works, especially if you’re not driving to pick up your kid, there’s no break between work and parent life, and that becomes very hard on the brain … Covenhoven created a place where you can kind of have a moment. It wasn’t just about the beer. It was more just about having a place to see a friendly face. I think that’s kind of what’s missing right now, is the fact that there’s just not these friendly faces.”
Covenhoven is still open for to-go purchases, but to Bernstein, it was never about losing a place to drink—it was about simply losing a place. “New York is a very specific urban case study of what bars mean. Our apartments are small, and bars in the city are our living rooms. What happens when your living room is taken away from you? How do you replicate that?”
He has yet to participate in anything like a virtual bottle share or happy hour. “I’m trying to figure out what this all means,” he says. “We want to see these places live on the other side of tomorrow, whenever tomorrow is. These are the places you want to be, eventually. And if you aren’t supporting them now, they’re not going to be there tomorrow.” For now, he’s settled on getting a mason jar filled from what’s now dubbed To-Go-Venhoven, heading back home to his back yard, and admiring his garden of roses, irises, and of course, Violet.
The relationship between bartender and patron is complicated: sacred, but sometimes blurry; distant, yet intimate. It extends beyond just a familiarity with one’s tastes and is often an unspoken check-and-balance of comfort and safety. Over the years, Jennifer Stavros has nurtured that bond with the staff at Father’s Office in Culver City, California, relying on them for much more than just alcohol. “I can bring anyone there and they’ll be watching me the whole time,” she says. “They know my habits. It’s a safe spot for me, and I don’t have that now.”
After COVID-19 forced Father’s Office to pivot to delivery and pickup only, Stavros found herself floundering without a lifeline. “Right now, the world being the way it is, we can't go to these places, but having one of those tethers is just like…” She trails off. “I hope they survive.”
She’s since embraced the digital drinking model to maintain contact with her community. “That’s the best I can do,” she sighs. “[But] it’s not the same … I am genuinely curious about how this is going to be in the longevity of things, because it doesn’t replace the one-to-one physical presence of going to a place.” She expresses worry about the staff, their families, and her own future safety: having to potentially develop that camaraderie with another group of people invested in her well-being. “I wish it was different. I hope it all goes back to normal at some point.”
As a journalist for Detroit, Michigan’s NPR station WDET-FM, Ryan Patrick Hooper is no stranger to unexpected connections and conversations. “A bar is very conducive for turning strangers into friends,” says Hooper. “I was really anticipating with COVID-19 that the bar would be a place where people would commune. Obviously, this disease has shown us that it will not.”
Hooper estimates he’s dropped into Detroit’s Bronx Bar three to four times a week since he was 17. (He’s currently 31.) “I always describe it as the unofficial town square,” he laughs. “Detroit is a very segregated city; there are not a lot of bars where you see a mixed crowd, to be honest. And it's one of those places where you do see all walks of life. That's one of the things I value about it.”
Without these types of democratic environments, Hooper questions where these types of organic interactions will occur. “When beer is your gateway into talking to someone that you wouldn't talk to normally if you were at a library or a grocery store—those perspectives are lost right now … and they are the most valuable.”
Since his primary motivator for visiting Bronx Bar was always socialization rather than inebriation, Hooper hasn’t yet dabbled in any digital hangouts. “But ask me in week four,” he grins.
Beny Ashburn and Teo Hunter knew that to unite a community, they’d have to create space for that community. They launched Crowns and Hops (formerly Dope & Dank) in 2015 to find, unite, and support Black people in craft beer. Using social media, the duo launched the hashtag #Blackpeoplelovebeer, hosted events around the world, promoted other Black-owned beer businesses, and began the process of opening a brewery in Inglewood, California. So when COVID-19 hit the West Coast, it delayed construction of the space, but did little to slow their community connections.
“We're simply relying on the tools that we essentially created our brand on,” explains Hunter. “We have a bit of an understanding of what it means to not now have the ability to connect on a physical level. But again, we were fortunate enough to already have the tools in place to cultivate and activate the community because that was the only place we could.”
That’s not to say COVID-19 hasn’t presented its challenges to the burgeoning brewers. “We were in the process of brewing our beers, of locking down elements of starting our brick and mortar, and this is truly forcing us, and everybody, to take a step back and look at how we manage our business, and what the things we need to protect our business, and to make sure that our community continues to not only get the spirit of what we're doing, but also the beer. Because after all, the point of a bottle share, if you think about it, is to share beers that normally people wouldn't have access to, to connect with your buddies and your friends and make new ones, and just to remind everyone like, look, we're in this shit together, no matter how you chop it up. We are in this together!” laughs Hunter.
To provide continuity to the community they’ve built over the years, Crowns and Hops has started hosting a digital bottle share on Instagram Live on Saturdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. PST. “We plan on doing it every Saturday until the social distancing [rule] gets lifted,” explains Ashburn. “Our focus is to really introduce and bring in different tastemakers, influencers, brewers, business owners in the craft beer space that range in diversity and culture, to really come together and talk about the craft beer industry.”
Although Ashburn calls the first digital bottle share a success, she’s adamant about their commitment to being as present as possible, even during social distancing. “We personally always show up,” she promises. “Even if everybody has to stay at home … this has really created a moment for all of us to come together and have real conversations and really connect.”
Despite not having a firm end date for COVID-19, Hunter and Ashburn aren’t fazed by the disruption. In fact, they’re driven by it. “We're gonna keep doing what we're doing,” Ashburn says. Hunter agrees. “We’re going to continue to innovate. Beyond the next bottle share, you're gonna probably see something newer and cooler and doper and innovative, because truly that's where we have to be in order for us to continue to grow and get better.”
At this point of the pandemic, as so many struggle to fight through fear, paranoia, and anxiety to simply make it through the day, just hearing about someone’s confidence about future growth seems perilously optimistic. But if I have to bet on anyone thriving, and not just surviving, I’m betting on craft beer.
Words, Beth DemmonIllustrations, Hillary Schuster
