Bar Associations

Our Third Place, for Drinks or Social Movements

The American bar has distinguished itself for two very different things. First and foremost, it served as the cradle that rocked most of the country’s radical and progressive political movements–the American revolution; many of the riots and rebellions that took place before and after independence; socialist, labor and anarchist political movements and the pre-Stonewall political organization of the gay rights movement.

Even when there wasn’t a legal American bar, it was still re-shaping the country socially. Women exerted independence in speakeasies during Prohibition and are said to have re-shaped the mores …