Two bartenders on what they miss about the watering holes of the Before Times.

Remember bars? Remember crowding into low-lit spaces, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger and shouting at your friends over the din of music and other peoples’ conversations? It’s been over a year since this experience played out in Monterey County – while bars have been allowed to reopen outdoor seating so long as they serve meals (basically, be restaurants), the classic bar experience is but a memory from the Before Times.

No one spent more time in bars than bartenders. So what do they miss most about these watering holes?

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Francis Verrall, the bartender at Mezzaluna in Pacific Grove, says of the closings and reopenings and reclosings of the past year. “I definitely miss the energy of the busy restaurant and bar, the chatter and the laughter. It’s not quite the same when you’re sitting outside.”

Gracie Gutierrez, a lifelong bartender who recently started the mobile bar service Point Break Cocktails (pictured, above left), misses the way you get to know people at a bar. “What I miss most is being able to interact with somebody based on their cocktail preference,” she says. Your choice of a drink, she asserts, says something about you. “It’s a really great way to start conversation and get to know someone.”

And what do these bartenders hope to order the day they can walk back into a low-lit room, pull up a stool at the bar and shout an order? For Gutierrez, who is still new here and excited to get to know the local bar scene, it’ll be a tiki drink. Verrall says he’s most excited about the return of live music and dancing. But also – “Maybe like a nice cold, draft beer. I think that would be good.”