Taverns get on the stick and give women opportunities behind bars

Nation's Restaurant News, May 13, 2002 by Gary Regan

When I was a teenager, one of the pubs my parents ran was split into just two rooms -- the vaults and the "best room." I remember well the evening when a bartender from the vaults made his way to the best-room bar to inform us: "There's a woman in there." What a calamity; women didn't drink in the vaults -- ever.

No one challenged the woman's right to drink in the room where working men hung out, playing darts and dominoes and swearing to their hearts' content. But one by one almost every customer in the best room went to see what kind of creature it was who had the nerve to enter this male sanctum. The evening lived on for years in the memories of the locals.

You might be tempted to think that I am approaching 100 given the scenario above, but no, I'm just half that age. The incident took place circa 1967, just 35 years ago. And if you look back at the bar culture in the United States, women have suffered much prejudice in the barrooms of America.

When I arrived in New York in the mid-70s, for instance, it was hard to find a female bartender in Manhattan. That phenomenon was explained to me by more than a few bar owners and bartenders: Women can't haul garbage cans full of ice up from the basement to the bar, they can't lift three cases of beer to stock the shelves and what if there's trouble? How can a woman stop a fight from breaking out between two or more men? Believe it or not: Less than 30 years ago, those were deemed logical arguments, and even though the fight for "Women's Lib" already was in progress, most waitresses accepted the fact that they'd never get a job behind the stick, simply because of their gender.

I'd venture to guess that in these more enlightened days, there are at least as many women behind the stick in New York as there are men. And like their male counterparts, some are great bartenders, some are mediocre and some are just going through the motions in order to make enough money to pay for tuition or the rent. Most important, though, the majority of restaurateurs now realize that a woman can do the job every bit as well as a man, and one hopes that women won't lose out on job opportunities simply because of their sex.

If we delve a little further, however, we find that less than 100 years ago, women weren't seen in bars at all, except for those of ill repute who plied their trade in some of the seedier establishments around town. I always believed it was the advent of Prohibition, and the subsequent popularity of speakeasies, that opened the way for women to stand tall at the bar, ordering whatever they darned well pleased. But this doesn't seem to have been the case at all. In fact, according to "Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890 -- 1930," by Lewis A. Erenberg, women started frequenting "cabarets" around 1910, and they were welcomed there because they were the first respectable bars in which public dancing was encouraged.

At some cabarets women could drink only when seated at a table. But at Manhattan's Cafe des Beaux Arts, a special bar for women was an added attraction. Men could drink at this bar, but only if they were accompanied by a woman. Women could enter freely on their own, and their host on the other side of the mahogany, described by Erenberg as "Francois, the stately bartender," made sure that the place was run with a certain amount of decorum.

Erenberg suggests that, because women were needed as dance partners in these new-style lounges, they were allowed at last to enter public establishments where drinks were served. And during the next 10 years that led up to Prohibition, women were seen ordering cocktails, highballs and champagne in big-city cabaret clubs. That was the beginning of the beginning for women in bars, and it's pretty distressing to realize that it took another 75 years or so before women were allowed not only in bars but also behind them. It makes you wonder why they were called "the good old days."