Thank God The Beer Is Back

On May 6th, Los Angeles (my city of residence) entered the yellow tier of COVID safety. The yellow tier means a few things: increased movie theater capacity, indoor dining availability, the reopening of saunas. But most importantly, it means you can just get a beer. 

Throughout the pandemic in Los Angeles, the beer was taken away from us. It’s not that you couldn’t pick up a six-pack, and it’s not that you couldn’t order a beer with dinner. It’s that whenever you ordered alcohol, you had to order food. It was the law. You couldn’t just get a beer. 

This seems like a small inconvenience in a dire time, but I think that it drastically changed the pace of social interactions. 

Every social interaction comes with a generally agreed-upon duration. A dinner is a 90-minute engagement, 60-minutes minimum. A picnic is 2 hours. A guest at your house is at least 2 hours, maybe more. But a beer? That’s a beautifully concise, sub 40-minute thing. 

The wonderful part about getting a beer with someone is that it’s flexible. If you’re having a great time, you’ll order another round. If you’re getting hungry, you’ll grab a bite. If things really ramp up, maybe you’ll catch an Uber somewhere. But no one will be mad if you pass a $10 bill to the bartender after 40 minutes and go home. 

When you get a beer, you can talk about business, or you can not. You can discuss politics or just watch the game. You can ask how someone is feeling, about their relationship troubles, or you can mumble odd observations and stay away from anything meaningful. And that might be the most meaningful thing of all. 

During the pandemic, relationships were tricky. Never before did you have to question whether or not to give your closest friends a hug. A virus became an oddly political affair, and everyone had a stance. People hunkered down, turned inward, and stayed inside. There weren’t many new friends being made, because everyone only hung out with only their closest friends. Add in a large scoop of social activism about police brutality and racism, and suddenly everything became so heavy and meaningful. None of this is a bad thing! But I’ll be damned if I’m not just a bit tired of it, at least for the evening.

So I say: Thank God the beer is back. Because maybe a meaningless conversation over a marked-up glass of mediocre hops is exactly what we need right now. 

P.S. Want to get a beer? Hit me up.