“My Local” has a meaning to people like me that can’t really
be figured out through Google. It’s short for “my local pub,” but it’s not just
the pub up the street where you take your coworkers once a quarter for the
office happy hour. A Local is a special place; indeed, it is a home. If you
know Cheers, it’s like that.
Your local truly is the place you go where everybody knows
your name. And they’re always glad you came! My Local – and I always have one
no matter where I live – is an alcohol-serving establishment at which I am a
regular and where I can always walk in alone and find friends (at a minimum,
the bartender).
A certain kind of person establishes deep friendships at the
Local. Not everyone fits into the Local scene, and sometimes people who don’t really
get what a Local is have difficulty wrapping their heads around the concept.
Back when I worked a regular 8-5, I went out to my car one morning to find that the battery
was dead. I took the bus to work and explained to my boss that I’d have to go
take care of my car as soon as I tracked down a friend with a car and jumper
cables. He was sympathetic; he’d have done it himself if he’d had the cables.
When I informed my boss that I was heading out to take care
of my car, he said, “OK. One of your rugby friends came through?”
“No,” I replied. “One of my friends from the bar.”
He was baffled. To him, the bar was a place where you went
with friends, not a place you met them. During our brief exchange I was unable
to make him understand that this is a person that I met at the bar, hung out
with at the bar, and am still close to.
I need a local in my life. I discovered this when I found peace at my first local, the crappy campus pub in the basement of the Chemistry building at my alma mater.
