For my off-campus event, I decided to write about my first trip as a 21 year old to the wildness that is sixth street. As it was my first time, my friend and I decided we would barhop to lots of different places so that I could get a feel for which ones I liked enough to return.
During spring break, I felt all alone on campus until my friend called me up to see what I was doing. We talked for a little while, at which point she told me that she was going downtown for the night and asked if I wanted to accompany her. I said hell yes and made my merry way to meet her.
We started things off at a place called Maggie Mae's. This place is really cool and huge and they have cheap drinks, to boot. It was a little chilly out that night, but it was still nice on the upstairs patio, which is perfect for people watching, by the way.
After Maggie Mae's, we headed to another bar called The Chuggin' Monkey. Here, let me point out the preponderance of strangely named bars involving the use of animals in the bar name. Case in point, the aforementioned Chuggin' Monkey, as well as another called The Dizzy Rooster. Not sure, but there are probably more along the lines of Hair of the Dog and the Cat's Meow. Anyway, the Chuggin' Monkey didn't turn out to be my cup of tea. It was a much smaller bar than Maggie Mae's and its drinks were a bit on the expensive side, as well. These weren't the deciding factors, though. The type of people that this bar attracted is one of the reasons I will never go back, unless they are hosting a band that I really want to see, like REALLY want to see. Another reason is the quality of bartenders that the CM employs. I don't want overly interested and too nice bartenders, but a little more attention and and attitude adjustment couldn't hurt.
As our Paideia group is all about understanding human behavior, I feel the social environment of a bar is great place to explore and attempt to understand this. Not only is the 'mating ritual' of modern-day society in full blow in a bar, but one can also see the social cliques clustered in groups around the bar. The alpha males always stand together and tend to orient themselves in the bar wherever the most attractive females choose to go. The attractive females tend to orient themselves around whoever looks like they will buy them a drink. On top of these social groups, there are also several other outliers of males and females all jockeying for the attention of the opposite sex. It is interesting how the bar has developed into a place for not only interaction between the sexes, but also a place where one can find a potential mate (if only for the night). It is also interesting how there seems to be unspoken rules of interaction between the opposite sexes, by which I mean that if an 'unattractive' male approaches an 'attractive' female, he will at best get the cold shoulder, at worst he will be made a laughing stock in front of her group of friends. Why do we continue to engage in behavior that not only damages the health of our livers, but also perpetuates gender stereotypes and acts as a source of humiliation to those individuals who so happen to not be born 'beautiful' by society's standards?
Engaging in my first night of typical college student debauchery on Austin's sixth street provided me with my first hands-on experience with a scene that is depicted time and time again on television and in movies. The people watching experience was eye-opening as simultaneously confirmed and resisted the popular culture depictions of what a bar is like. There is not nearly as much social interaction as I would have imagined (at least not at the bars I went to). This, however, is not a phenomenon I feel is only occurring in the bar culture. I see us all becoming less and less social in person, yet more social through digital means like Facebook. We have talked about this phenomenon numerous times in Paideia, yet I feel it merits mention again in connection with my experience on sixth street. The cell phone usage in bars is so rampant that it was not uncommon for there to be periods of time when everyone around me was looking at a screen and not the people around them. I find this progression of technology a little creepy and was one of the deciding factors that I used when gathering the strength to delete my Facebook account.
I feel that we are losing the ability to converse face to face, especially those who are several years younger than myself and have not known a time when cell phones and wifi were not in widespread use. This slow move towards more digital means of communication and interaction is something that will, in my opinion, hurt the future of our country. We need to move swiftly to rein in the influence that technology has over young children in order that they will not become dependent on it in order to perform the most basic of tasks (as many adults, including myself, do today).
'Til we meet again,
Brady
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