Some ideas are always bad, no matter how many new twists you apply or how much technology you throw at them. Eugenics. Theocracy. Trusting Google with personal data. Swiping right on a picture of a guy with a tiger.
Regular readers will know I have put "book-themed bars" on that list. Either you're creating a café — which is a well-understood process requiring almost no originality at all — or you're doing it wrong. San Francisco, obsessed with innovation no matter how much it hurts, is filled with bar entrepreneurs who would rather be different than settle for being merely good.
The Library Bar in the Hotel Rex is the exception that proves the rule. Let us consider the Jorge Luis Borges Checklist of Book-Themed Bars, a series of measurements dating back to 1930s Argentina, and used by bar columnists everywhere:
• The Library is dark, but every table has adequate lighting to actually read by.
• The actual "bar" in the Library is small, so that most of the room is taken up by comfortable seating, which people can use to read.
• It looks like a well-decorated parlor, the kind of place where people historically did read.
• It has an actual library in it — albeit just a "take one, leave one" series of bookshelves, but I was there with a librarian, and she said that counts.
Put these elements together, plug them into the Borges Checklist, and you come out with an accursed knife which was once used to avenge the killing of a farmhand's fiancée, even though her death was a suicide. Because Borges was like that.
All of this is another way of saying that the Library succeeds because it has elements that appeal to people who actually like to read, and largely resembles a café or sitting parlor.
I was there on a Saturday night (with the aforementioned librarian) to catch the cabaret show, as the performance space adjoining the Library's bar is the home of one of San Francisco's premier cabaret outfits. It's especially fitting, as the Hotel Rex is close to the Theater District and has that quaint air of a bygone civilization — bonus points for many book lovers, though not all.
Standing at the bar, it was clear that the bartenders were adamant about taking their time with drink orders. Even with a small crowd pushing, they were making jokes and working to establish a rapport with the customers.
"You 21?" the bartender asked me. (Funny, but not actually a good joke.)
"Last time I checked," I told him.
A woman at the bar, waiting for her drink, joined in. "Card him anyway."
"Hey," I told her, putting a finger to my lips. "Just because I'm obviously 21 doesn't mean my ID isn't fake."
The bartender, who did not card me, said he'd get to me next, but took so long with the person ahead of me that the barback eventually swooped in to move things along.
Every drink I tried at the Library had the same signature flavor: strong but smooth, with a gentle secondary taste over that of the alcohol. It didn't matter if I was having a West Side (Hangar One Buddha's Hand, lemon, mint, soda), a Ginger Mint Margarita (tequila, Cointreau, lime, ginger, mint), or a Pistola (bourbon, Kahlua, orange bitters), because the basic drink dynamic was always the same. It's a little puzzling, as I don't know that I've ever been to a bar where so many of the mixed drinks tasted so alike, even in spite of the different bases. On the other hand, it's a very good taste; somebody back there is doing something very right.
The food is decent and satisfying, and the best part of being there for a show is that you can order from your table. The Library is not a great venue, but it is a good venue for a bar, and perfect for those performances that reek of civilization: literary readings, cabaret, live jazz.
All of which makes for a quite satisfying experience, if one that goes light on the originality. The Library has created a café where you can get a drink, borrow a book, eat a meal, sit and read, engage easily in conversation, or — if you're there at the right time — catch a show. And all in a relaxing atmosphere.
Bars like this make me wonder if progress is really worth it. This week, the answer is no. The industry we're trying to disrupt was doing it better before we came along. If only we knew when to stop.
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