![]() ![]() Once upon a time, people were paid once a week or every two weeks, credit cards were relative luxuries, there were no ATMs and bank hours were shorter and sometimes nonexistent on the weekends. Most bar owners agree that the bar tab was the victim of our all-encompassing, modern credit universe. “Get an AmEx.”īrown’s reference to a credit card is very much to the point. “Want to reconcile your tab once a month?” said Derek Brown, owner of The Columbia Room in Washington, D.C. To their minds, it had been ably replaced by a system more reliable and immediate. ![]() Neither Reiner nor any other bar owners I asked, seemed to think anything valuable had been lost with the death of the bar tab. Some were even contemptuous of the very idea. Answers from other prominent bar owners across the United States were similarly swift and decisive. “NO WAY!” was bar owner Julie Reiner’s succinct reply when asked if she used tabs at her bars Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club or Leyenda. I’d bring in my paycheck, they would cash it and I’d pay my tab out of paycheck.”įinding a bar that uses tabs today, however, is as hard as finding one with a free lunch. Cleve had tabs at a couple bars back then. “In downtown Boston in the 1970s, there were a few who did it,” said Brother Cleve, the Boston-based cocktail mentor. Along with other bygone bar services, such as cashing customers’ checks and accepting their mail, tabs were one of the ways that saloons asserted themselves as community centers. They represented a tie between bar owner and bar customer-a bond of trust. That’s because tabs were never just a business arrangement between a saloon and the strapped-for-cash. For Norm and his temporary benefactor, Sam Malone, the tab represented more than just an onerous IOU.
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