Thirsty for more?

We're not posting new material here, but you can go to DeanandMindy.com for the latest on our adventures and projects. Dean's posting regularly at moviechurches.com and is just starting at tvchurches.com.

And if you're into long-form material, check out our books at Amazon.

One last question

Why do I order Angry Orchard?*
Really, a better question would be, “Why has someone who doesn’t really like to drink been writing a blog about visiting bars?”

Understand, I’m not saying I don’t like to drink at all. Countless warm days I’ve filled up a glass at the tap and said, “Hmmm, that water’s good stuff.” But alcoholic drinks… I’ve never been a fan. I’ve told the story here about growing up in Sonoma County, wine country. People would come to visit my parents and we’d all go on the winery tours. My brother and I hated those tours. Dale and I agreed that when we grew up we would not drink. Dale has stuck with that commitment. I, on the other hand, made a commitment to drink in a different bar every week for three years.

Toward the end of 2014, Mindy and I began an adventure of visiting a different church every week, and we began making plans to visit a church in every state in 2016. Mindy and I grew up going to church every week (her dad is a retired pastor), and we know that pastors hate it when people joke that they work only one day a week. Even though we figured we'd be visiting churches more than just on Sundays on our big adventure, we needed something else to do during our week in each state.

So what else could we do? We thought of going to the movies in every state (and, as it turned out, we did that). Someone suggested we go to antique stores in every state, an idea that appealed to us in no way whatsoever. We thought about going bowling in every state and never threw a ball down an alley the entire trip.

We knew we wanted to talk to people, preferably people who might not be the same folks we met in churches every week. Diners were suggested. If you imagine those diners in movies where farmers gather early in the morning for coffee and town gossip, yeah, that would be fun. (Mindy’s dad was an advocate for this plan when he heard about the bar idea.) But we didn’t really want to interrupt strangers’ meals. 

When we thought of going to a bar along with a church in every state, it just sounded right. When we told people the idea, they would sometimes laugh. Sometimes laugh a lot, and that seemed right. As we thought about it, we realized that bars were places we could find in every state. Big cities and small towns, urban, rural, suburban -- almost all of them have places to drink and places to worship.

And churches and bars are the two places where it's acceptable come in as strangers and talk to people. Sure, some churches and bars aren’t friendly, but in bars and churches, in every part of the country, people were willing -- even eager -- to talk to us. They made us feel welcome. 

We had wonderful conversations with strangers in both churches and bars, but as a rule, we discovered conversations tended to go longer and a little deeper in bars than in churches. Bars are designed for conversations, and churches aren’t.

Back to the beverages, though. A woman at a Southern Baptist Church in Florida asked me, “You don’t order alcohol, do you?” 

I told her that of course, we ordered alcohol. We always asked two questions at our bars; “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what makes for a good church?” When you even mention church in a bar with a glass of water in your hand, people are suspicious, wondering if you're there to convert them. (At the bar in Florida, someone did ask what we were drinking, and not because they wanted to order us another round.)

We didn’t go into bars to proselytize. We went to bars to listen to people. We honestly wanted to know the answers to our two questions. We were pretty sure people were more likely to talk to us if we all had drinks in our hands -- because that’s how bars work.

So what drinks would we have in our hands? We’ve mentioned many times here that Mindy and I hate beer. We tried a variety of beers on the trip and we were never won over. Wine, on the other hand, is something Mindy enjoys. She worked in the wine industry for a few years and cultivated an appreciation for the charms and subtleties of reds and whites. I like wine better than beer, but I still just endured it.

Some bartenders made cocktails we loved. Some bartenders made wonders with fruit and herbs and even chocolate, but still, I often thought I'd enjoy a virgin version of the cocktail just as well. I often ordered rum and coke, but I'd often think, “I’d enjoy a Coke just as much, if not more”.

But I knew I liked apple cider, so when I really didn’t want to think long and hard about what to order, Angry Orchard was an easy and generally available go to. And I would usually finish my drink (which never happened with beer and didn't usually happen with anything else).

The thing is, it was never about the drinks. It was always about people.

*This is the last post for this blog. All the old posts will be available here for the short term, but in the long term, old posts will be available at DeanandMindy.com. Of course, we’d also love for you to buy the book about our quest to visit a bar and church in every state. Cheers and Amen is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

We walk into our last bar

Hooverville, Seattle, Washington (Sodo district)

“Why are you taking a picture of me?” the man demanded. “It’s weird.”

I explained I wasn’t taking a picture of him specifically. I was taking a picture of the bar for a blog we do about visiting a different bar every week. This seemed to satisfy him.

But he was right. It is weird. For three years we’ve been doing this peculiar thing -- going into places as strangers where friends gather. Taking pictures of the signs outside, stuff on the walls, bottles behind the bar, and sometimes even the restrooms -- and of course the food and drinks (sure, millions of people post pictures of their food and drinks on Instagram, but that doesn’t make it less stupid. Especially when the photo is of something as banal as a can of Mike’s Hard Lemonade next to an empty glass).

This was the last weekly bar visit, so we'd decided to go to two bars to wrap the project up. We decided to start with Hooverville because it’s a few blocks from the hotel where I work, and it seemed like a good idea to go myself to the place I'd mentioned to guests when they ask what's open after 11:00 pm.

It is a good bar, open and airy, but pleasantly divey. Each of the two main rooms has its own bar. The room on First Avenue has walls covered with plenty of funky memorabilia: Coast Guard lifesavers, odd advertisements and signs, cut-outs of Wally and the Beaver, and, of course, the everpresent “12.” The decorations are from many decades, but not much from the twenties and thirties in honor of the shantytowns of the Great Depression. There are no TVs in the room, but The Velvet Underground was playing when we sat down at the end of the bar.

We ordered drinks -- blackberry pear cider for Mindy, apple for me. Most of the other seats were occupied, and there was a dog at the other end. 

And there were dollar bills. Many, many dollars were tacked up around the shelves behind the bar (and even on the ceiling), and almost all of them have the letter H in the circle on the front -- like the bar's logo. "People like giving us dollars," the bartender told Mindy when she asked about them.

Meanwhile, I'd gone into the other room to check it out. The NFL and the NBA were on the TV screens, and there were dart boards and pool tables as well. The man who asked me about taking pictures approached me. After I told him about our project, I asked him our two questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what makes for a good church?”

He said, “I go to both. It’s different for everybody. You can’t force church on anybody, it’s something they have to decide for themselves.” I asked him what he looked for in a bar and he said, “I need time alone.” I asked for a name to use for the quote, and he was reluctant, but I when I said it didn’t have to be real, he said “Tom.”

The bar was getting busier, and we didn't want to interfere with the bartenders by asking them more questions, so we decided it was time to head to our second bar.

We wanted to end the year with a particular place a few blocks away from Hooverville and across the street from Safeco Field (soon to be T-Mobile Field). Mindy’s dad's name is “Henry,” and he was not enthusiastic about our bar visiting project. His upbringing and choice are anti-alcohol, and he wondered why we couldn’t go to cafes rather than bars throughout the country.

He's a retired pastor, and when he told the pastor of his church (who's younger than Mindy and me) about our project, Dad was surprised that the pastor thought it was a good idea. After that, Dad seemed to warm a bit to the project, sometimes asking about our "tavern" visits.

That's why it really did seem imperative that we finish this project with a visit to Henry's Tavern. We got there at 7:50 on Thursday night, and there was a long line for the holiday light maze and skating rink at Safeco Field nearby and lots of foot traffic on the street. Mindy tried to open one of the double doors, but it didn't open, so she tried the other. It, too, was locked. She looked inside, and the hostess gestured that they were closed. (We noticed that the opening times, but no closing times, were listed on the window near the doors). 

We could see families with small kids finishing their meals inside. Henry's Tavern (probably fittingly) really did seem more like a restaurant than a bar, so we were happy that our last bar in the project was Hooverville.