Upon arriving at one of Chicago’s most popular, zeitgeisty pizza restaurants on a buzzing Friday evening, my date and I beeline for the last two bar seats. I feel under the marble counter in fruitless pursuit of a hook for my fanny pack. I huff audibly and dangle my bag from the edge of my knee, but it slips off. The rest of the meal is a game of Tetris, with the bag, drinking vessels, and plates shifting places in an endless effort not to cross the invisible line dividing my space from the diner next to me. After all, there are unspoken rules of etiquette at the bar.
Installing a few under-bar hooks seems like a low-lift design choice for a restaurant, bar, or café. So why do bag-toters often find ourselves suspending them from our own appendages—or worse, relegating them to the dark, sticky nether region between the foot bar and the wall?
Maybe the owner doesn’t like how they look or worries that overstuffed purses and backpacks will rip them out. Nicole Alexander, principal designer and founder of interior design company Siren Betty Design, dismisses the structural theory.
“There is no reason other than aesthetics or that the hooks are forgotten about,” she says. I wonder if any such absent-minded owners identify as female; Alexander doesn’t indulge me.
Do bar hooks prevail more in cold places than warm ones? It feels reasonable enough to expect under-counter hooks in Chicago—with our ghastly winters requiring scarves and insulating layers—that I’m melodramatic when I can’t find one. Urban Forage Winery in northerly Minneapolis went so far as to remind patrons about its “subtle” but “strong” under-bar coat and bag hooks in a blog entry on its website in January 2019.
Responding to an informal poll I conducted over social media, a drinks industry publicist in New York agreed it’s more noticeable when city bars and restaurants don’t feature hooks. He said New Yorkers even expect under-counter outlets for phone charging. (Priorities!) A marketing manager in balmier Raleigh, N.C. said she never has trouble finding under-counter hooks. Likewise, a travel writer in hot, vibey Miami extolled the prevalence of hooks at the bar. (They also noticed another hospitable trend of under-seat baskets for handbags cropping up at posh restaurants.)
So much for my regionality theory.
A filmmaker and producer in Brooklyn observed that newer joints seem likelier than old ones to feature hooks; a couple of New Orleans residents agreed. One added that hooks are particularly rare in the touristy French Quarter, where customers tend to be “messier,” i.e., more apt to forget a bag on a hook under the bar.
Some places, like cafés, might intentionally forgo hooks to keep patrons from lingering—in the vein of posting a “no laptops” sign on the door. Is the trendy, hook-less pizza place trying to tell me something?
I hang my bag on my knee again to make room on the bar, but it falls. As I reach to grab it, my arm unintentionally grazes my neighbor’s outer thigh, breaking the biggest unspoken rule of bar seating. I guess I should start carrying around one of those portable purse hooks. I hope I have space for it in my bag.
