If you’re a tourist visiting Athens for the first time, the bar map of the downtown area can easily leave you speechless and ever so slightly overwhelmed. As you wonder round the streets, you stumble across drinking hole after drinking hole, busy joints full of colors, noise and people lifting glasses, inviting you in, promising you a night of joyful intoxication.
The transformation of downtown Athens and the blooming of the bar industry have certainly gone hand in hand, with the capital more or less relying on the drinking establishments for a much needed shot of urban vigor. Of course, the mushrooming bar scene doesn’t necessarily sit well with everyone, but what cannot be denied is the quality of service now being offered to both tourists and locals alike.
Within more or less a decade, Athens has dumped its free pouring, drink-first-think-later bar aesthetic and moved on to something far more refined. Establishments like Baba Au Rum, The Clumsies, The Gin Joint, 42 Bar, CV Distiller and even newer entries like The Trap, Upupa Epops and Noel have managed to reshape the very notion of the drinking experience for anyone moving around the city. A blizzard of awards has laid a thick layer of triumphant accolades on the doorsteps of this glut of Athenian bars, helping the capital become a beacon of bar based tourism.
Constant innovation seems to be the name of the game, as is an incessant need to learn, taste and appreciate an ever-expanding menagerie of high quality brands, that has helped visitors to this bar-filled wonderland up their own game as consumers and drink selectors.
Nevertheless, a vital question remains unanswered. A question that pushes past the verve and showmanship of a boisterous (and rather self-involved) set of talented professionals and heads straight to the poetic heart of the drinking mythos.
The question, for all its bullish insistence, is a simple one: in an attempt to constantly refine its position on the global bar map, as it huffs and puffs and voices its look-at-me bravado, could the much talked about Athenian bar scene, be in danger of losing its soul? I would humbly say that it so definitely is.
While its leaps of progress should not be underestimated, nor the truly inspiring efforts of a select number of individuals who stand behind their bars waiting to create and serve, the Athens bar scene seems to have forgotten something quite important as it screechingly accelerates forward: the customer. The solitary customer. Not the crowds of people egging each other on about what cocktail should come next, not the bartender hunters looking to taste the latest concoction from the hands of a shaker-shaking-maestro. The solitary customer. The person looking for a safe port, a brief respite from whatever roundhouse kicking life has in store for him or her. The person who comes in, takes up a stool or a corner and needs a drink or two to settle down, settle the nerves, ease the mind. There seems to be no more room for them.
And let’s not get it twisted. The solitary customer, the lone person sipping his drink is what the mythology, the stories, the romance of the bar was built upon. That particular relationship, between the bar persons and that one, single, customer has made many a drinking hole the main pillar on which books, films and songs were based on.
There is no doubting of course, that the how Greece approaches the idea of drinking has a role to play in this. More an extension of social bonding and less an issue of introspection, drinking in Greece often feels warmer, more friendly and group based as an experience compared to other countries. The notion of the lone drinker was never prevalent in Greek drinking culture, so to an extent the bar scene’s difficulty in appreciating is role is understandable. Nevertheless, for a scene so hell-bent on mixing its modern stylings with the history and the nostalgia of the bartending arts, recognizing the integral role the idea of the lone customer plays is essential.
However, increasingly, as it garners more and more attention from across the globe and with the accolades showing no sign of letting up, the Athenian bar scene is becoming far less attentive to the needs of the lone customer and far more focused on preening and showing off its skill set. From the bartending crowd that loudly careens around town, making their presence felt as more privileged customers when the visit another establishment other than the one they work at, to the industry itself that seems determined to create wave after wave of celebritylicious drink creators, fixing the spotlight squarely on their shoulders, there is simply no room for the quiet, lonely customer.
Loud and patting itself on the back at every occasion, the Athenian bar scene, isn’t just ignoring the solitary customer, it appears to want the very idea of his or her presence wiped off the bar map. Behind every whistle-heavy, speech laden drinks competition and across the bar board, the main player and star of this show is the bartender and him or her alone. The solitary customer, if and when he or she is acknowledged is there to listen and learn. What drink you COULD have instead of the one you’re drinking, what drink you SHOULD be having and how to actually drink it. It would be squarely infuriating if it wasn’t depressingly mutating the bar experience itself.
What it effectively boils down to, is the growing suspicion that for many people working behind the bar in the Greek capital, being just that is not enough. Being the person who makes solid, much needed alcoholic elixirs, being the person who listens and connects with a customer is not enough, or rather is far less than he or she deserves. There has to be more. There has to be more to be gained, more to be salvaged from working behind a bar.
Sadly, in losing their appreciation for the core elements of the bar/drinking experience, for looking above and beyond it, they manage not enhance it, but rather to choke the life out of it. For when you sacrifice the romance and the poetic nature of such an age old habit and idea, for a few more seconds in the spotlight, all you’ll eventually be left with will be a crumbling husk of something that was.
The Athenian bar scene, would do well to ignore the din of clapping public to remind itself of that.