Storm Chaser | Winter Comforts

When I was in my twenties, I spent the better part of my leisure time at a certain bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, situated in a basement-level space on that somewhat charmless stretch of Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central squares. It was called the Cellar, and it possessed all the elements of a good cold-weather New England bar: subterranean feel, brick walls, brass bar, gold light, and a cranky, quick-witted owner with an inexhaustible supply of hilarious stories.

And it had another advantage, too: The stairs leading down to it were open to the elements. On snowy nights, that meant being very careful descending to the bar, and being even more careful toddling back up them hours later. But it also meant sitting inside this warm bunker of a bar, with its big glass wall facing the stairs, and watching the snow eddy and fall just feet from you. You’d get a gust of wind when the door opened—a little reminder of what you’re missing, a light dusting of snow on the floor—and then the door would close, the snow would melt, and warmth would prevail.

Herman Melville wrote, “[T]o enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.” That pretty much sums up how I feel about drinking in bars in New England in the wintertime. It’s the contrast that makes the experience: wet and dry, cold and warm, solitary and in good company, grimly sober and happily inebriated.

The key—the genius, in fact—of great New England winter bars is that they manage to constantly remind you of all the unpleasantness of the season while also keeping it safely at bay. You can see the snow without having it go down the back of your shirt; you can hear the wind without having it cut you to ribbons. They’re like aquariums, these bars, only reversed. From your dry, comfortable little enclosure, you can watch nature’s full fury, diminished and defanged and safely contained behind a thick sheet of glass. Meanwhile, you sit, coat off, drink in hand, unclenched, protected and cozy.

The Cellar has since enclosed that stairwell—wisely, as a particularly cherished pastime of my crew there was sipping beer while watching friends try not to fall down the stairs. But I found myself thinking back on those days during a recent visit to another fine establishment: the Cape Arundel Inn, in Kennebunkport, Maine. There’s a bar area on the first floor where you can sit in a plush chair by a big picture window and stare out at the ocean, cocktail in hand, your back warmed by the fireplace. When I was there, a storm was raging, and the wind was howling in off the sea with such force that it pelted the window with seawater, crusting it with salt. Wave after wave of it came like that, with the sky turning the same color as the raging gray sea. And yet there I was, sinking deeper into my chair, ordering another drink, my sense of calm accentuated by the bedlam playing out on the other side of the glass.

It’s temporary, of course. You know you can’t win. You can’t stop it. You eventually will have to go back out into the elements, and when you do, they will have their revenge. This is New England, after all. But for the time being you sit, staring out that window, warm and happy and impervious. Try all you want, you think. You’ll never get me in here. —Joe Keohane