Do Elephants Jump? Read Free Page B

with our families.
    Liquor flows more freely when patrons feel festive, and music and dancing set the mood more easily than
Wheel of Fortune
or
Everybody Loves Raymond.
A blaring television sucks the energy out of a room.
    Some bars have used modern technology to solve the television-audio problem in a Solomon-like way: they turn on the closed-captioning option on their TVs. CC might not be the solution if patrons are trying to hear the New York Philharmonic on PBS, but then, they never are.

Submitted by Fred Beeman of Las Vegas, Nevada.

W hy Do So Many Taverns Put Mirrors in Back of the Liquor Bottles Behind the Bar?
     
    No doubt, many tavern owners install mirrors in the back of their bars for the same reason most businesses do anything — because their competitors are doing the same thing. We were surprised that some bar owners couldn’t explain why they have mirrors behind their bars, but most of the same folks who weighed in on the last Imponderable had plenty of opinions about this one, too.
    Like a television, a mirror provides patrons something to look at when they might feel lonely, tense, or bored. And there can be more practical advantages, as Deven Black notes: “It allows patrons to check each other out discreetly.”
    Sometimes, the view might not be so pleasant (“Uh-oh, here comes my girlfriend! And I told her I’d be home at eight.”), but more than a century ago, some bars ensured that the view would be more pleasing to their clientele, as Gary Regan reveals,
    In the late 1800s, a “naughty” painting of [William Bouguereau’s]
Nymphs and Satyr
hung in New York’s Hoffman House bar. It was situated so that customers could stare at it through the mirror, therefore not blatantly looking at a naughty painting. Presume, therefore, that mirrors were and are used [by customers] to observe the scene without being obvious.
    Bartenders are not impervious to using the mirror for less than professional purposes, as an honest but lascivious bartender and beer columnist Christopher Halleron explains:

Mirrors provide an excellent, indirect way to check out the cleavage on the girl who just ordered a Cosmo.
    Although it may be a surprise to some libidinous patrons, there are things to look at in a bar other than beef- or cheesecake, and mirrors are an inexpensive accent piece in a tavern’s interior decoration. For one, mirrors bounce light around the room, and can also be attractive themselves. Many beer and liquor companies provide free mirrors with their name and logos emblazoned on them. Some bars prefer to use the mirrors to advertise themselves. Tom Hailand, design engineer at Cabinet Tree Design, believes that mirrors add “glitz,” and even point-of-purchase advertising on the mirrors can yield practical benefits to the bar:
    And where else would you put your sandblasted logo just in case the customers are so hammered they need the name of the bar in front of them to call a cab?
    Heiland also mentions an advantage to the placement of the mirror that was echoed by many experts — the mirror makes the liquor display look fuller. Mirrors have long been used by decorators to make rooms look bigger and displays more enticing. As one bartender told us,
    The idea is to make the liquor more appealing by spicing up the presentation of the bottles as well as making it appear that there are more bottles than there really are. It’s impressive when you walk into a bar and see a huge shelf full of liquor bottles behind the bar — the mirror provides the same effect with fewer bottles. The same trick is used in the catering business for veggie trays and other food presentations.”
    But the predominant reason for mirrors in bars, and probably the precipitating factor in the tradition’s beginning, was for security. Think back to the Old West, and it’s easy to see why a saloon owner would want advance warning before a gunslinger, with pistol packed, entered the establishment. There were times when it was