This past New Year's Eve fell on a Sunday, and like any Sunday at our nondescript corner tavern the first round was free. The bartender, a thin woman in her forties dressed up like an Urban Outfitters sales girl, gave us our whiskeys with a shrug. I had called the unlisted number earlier in the evening, asking if anything special was going on that night—a hefty cover, a private party, a dress code—and was served a blunt reply. “Nothing special,” she said. Thank God.

The fluorescent-lit pool table was tucked under its vinyl tarp, balls replaced by plastic trays layered with cheese and crackers and sliced summer sausage all stabbed with little plastic swords like battlefield corpses. A dozen men with various degrees of potbellies and moustaches were watching the Bears flush away their competitive spirits in a meaningless game against the Packers, but for the most part the linoleum floor was empty and the air surprisingly clear. We were beginning to think New Year’s would pass completely unnoticed.

As soon as the game ended, however, bills were slipped in the jukebox and a buoyant young woman began disseminating plastic hats and noisemakers from a cardboard box. We took our props like union extras and watched in glee as the girl tried placing a tiara on one of the regulars playing video slots at the back of the bar, just past the pool table’s white dissecting light. The woman swatted the girl away like an old lioness and told her in not so many words to leave her alone.

Smoke hovered over the cocktail shrimp drenched in catsup sauce, twenty year-old hour d’oeuvres to match the wood-paneled walls and Fleetwood Mac coming out of the speakers. By midnight the room had filled out a bit more, friends and strangers hugging half-heartedly with the congratulatory recognition that they’d fulfilled their corny sacrifice to the calendar god again for a year. We were drunk, but no more drunk than usual. Still, it wasn’t just another night at the bar; we all had Monday off.

And I know on other streets the clubs were filled with actors in TV commercials: girls in glitter-blouses and boys in untucked shirts, Red Bull flowing faster than tonic. They’re angry, shouting at each other because the music is so loud. They mimic fun because they can’t remember how to have it anymore. The heat is unbearable.

But it’s cool in the hipster havens, where bad art hangs on the walls, action figures for nostalgia. Suburbanites slum together, white kids recreating the lunchroom cliques and categories they once upon a time fled. Their hearts beat slow, bored by the house of mirrors they’ve constructed for one another, but they’re flush with cash. They pawned the great egalitarian gift of the city a long time ago.

Labels: bars, chicago, new year's