SCIRE

Scire.bar opened in a converted observatory annex on a night when the jet-stream pushed an unseasonable warmth across the ridge. The walnut shelves were already installed. The brass fixtures, a little too polished. The first guests arrived wearing tweed and did not order a thing for the first twenty minutes — they simply looked at the coasters, which, on closer inspection, were printed with rolling averages of supernova brightness.

We built this place for the guest who reads on the train, the guest who loses their place in a museum, the guest who keeps six tabs open about the lifecycle of stars. There is no menu on the wall because the menu is printed on everything else: the rim of the glass, the paper sleeve of the stirrer, the back of the receipt. What you order depends on what you choose to read.

“Knowledge is not a nightcap. Knowledge is the whole evening, and the walk home, and the lamp left on for you.”

— House rule, posted above the cash register, 1962

The bartender is usually reading a paper — not a newspaper, a paper — when you walk in. They will put it down. They will pour something while you speak. They will pause in the middle of an explanation about a variable star to ask whether you would prefer your drink more on the bitter side, and then they will continue the explanation exactly where they left off, and you will not feel talked down to, because the whole point of the place is that it does not talk down.

There are no television screens. There is a small card catalog behind the bar, arranged not by author but by question. If you ask the bartender for a drawer, they bring it to your stool. You read as long as you like. Your glass is refilled quietly, the way a library is refilled with books — without fanfare, and only when you are not looking.

“The trouble with curiosity is that it is a very thirsty animal. We try to be a very generous bar.”

— A. Varga, proprietor

We keep a single seat at the far end of the bar unreserved every night, under a lamp with a green glass shade. It is for the guest who comes in alone, with a book, and an unanswered question. That seat is the reason the rest of the bar exists. Everything else is furniture.

— The House