With bars shut down all over the world, that sense of community has now been absent for over a year. But one bar in Mexico decided to do something about it by recreating some of those sounds at a bar for those confined (限制) at home.
Started in 2012 by Oscar Romo, the bar named Maverick was a little neighborhood spot with live music and a small patio (露台) outside. It was a place for everyone to interact and Romo called it "A Place For Encounters".
Things went well until the pandemic (疫情) hit in 2020. "Everything was closed," says Romo with a sigh. "We were not allowed to sell anything for two months. Obviously, the bar was hurting financially." But what hurt Romo most was that the sense of community they had worked so hard to build evaporated overnight. I didn't realize how important it was. Those normal things that you took for granted are now not there. It's really painful, he says.
Romo determined to do something and that was where things got interesting. Considering the silence the outbreak brought about, he came to a realization: It was the sounds of the bar that really brought the sense of community home.
"People came here because of the conversations, the atmosphere, the music and the sense of being with stranger," Romo says. So he recorded each of those sounds individually on a website, called IMissMyBar.com. The idea was that customers could put all the sounds together, and feel like they were in Maverick, while sitting around their homes, having a drink. It really worked.
The website has been getting noticed and shared by people who are going through the same feeling of loss around the world.
“What we want is for people to realize how important bars are in our lives, really, not just from the drinking angle, but from the social life," Romo says.