▷S2E11 A Lot of Life to Live: Sam Bail's Post-Alcohol Community
Sam Bail was feeling better. So much better that two months into her sobriety experiment, she knew she wasn’t going back to drinking alcohol. But she missed her softball team, and all the other relationships she made at her local watering hole—her “third place,” where she socialized when not at work or at home in a tiny apartment. And this is New York. In a city that has everything, was nursing a seltzer all night really Sam’s only option?
Find out what Rose Thomas thinks of Dry January, listen while she and Sam taste test a nonalcoholic sparkling rosé, and learn all about Third Place, the nonalcoholic bar that Sam Bail is opening in New York City!
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“You go to a bar, you have a drink, and I don't want to necessarily be the person who just sits around with a seltzer. So I kind of had the idea, especially in New York City, like everything is possible, right? There's a cereal bar in Chinatown that literally only does cereal, right?
There's all these Japanese-style listening bars that revolve around playing records and high-quality sound system. There's something for everyone. And so two years ago, I was wondering, why are there no non-alcoholic bars?
It's not that big a jump to imagine that you have something that's kind of like a bar, it's open late, but really have sort of the bar environment without encouraging people to drink. And there wasn't anything like that at the time. So I figured, why not try and do it?
Let's do it.”
“Welcome to Modo di Bere, the podcast about local drinks and local sayings. I'm your host, Rose Thomas Bannister.
Today's guest is Sam Bail, the founder of Third Place, a series of alcohol-free bar events in New York City. She aims to provide a social space that has all the vibes of a neighborhood bar for those that are sober, sober curious, or just taking a night off for drinking alcohol. Sam, welcome.
Hi, hey Rose.
My own goal here at Modo di Bere is to share local culture through drinks and dialect, while inspiring people to have fun and try new things. As a long time wine professional, it probably would have been simpler to market Modo di Bere as a wine project and make that my focus. But I've always insisted that I want to include all different types of drinks, not necessarily alcohol.
And I love it when people come up with creative ways to make everyone feel included, especially when it comes to celebration culture. So I've been following Sam's successful series of cocktail classes and pop-up events on social media and I'm really excited about what she's doing.
Yay, thanks for having me
“You're welcome. Before we start the interview, I want to let you know that Modo di Bere is a listener supported program and you can sustain the work I'm doing by visiting patreon.com/mododibere and signing up as a patron for $5 a month to unlock bonus content. If you want to support Modo di Bere right now for free, pause the episode, find the show on Apple podcasts, scroll down and leave us five stars in a written review.
It really helps more people discover the show. Sam and I will be here when you get back. So Sam, you're originally from Germany, right?
Yeah
From what town?
It's a really small town. It's called Ravensburg. You probably never heard of it unless you're into jigsaw puzzles, because we have one of the biggest jigsaw-on-board game manufacturers probably in the world, at least in Europe, in our town.
It's like a blue corner that says Ravensburger.
Oh, fun fact.
Yeah, so if you ever see a jigsaw puzzle, a box, you'll now know where it's from. That's my hometown. So it's in the southwest.
“It's about two hours west of Munich. It's not in Bavaria, though. It's in a different state. And yeah, it's just a small rural town, really.
Do you have any local sayings that you want to share from your hometown or elsewhere in your life experience?
Yeah, one of my favorites, and this is kind of drinking-related, I guess, so it sort of, you know, lines up with the podcast. It's Sechs Bier sind auch ein Schnitzel, which means six beers are a schnitzel, which basically means if you just drink enough, you don't have to eat. Oh my goodness, it's a meal.
Sechs beers are a meal.
I love this beer is food, beer is bread, is kind of an interesting concept throughout history. I love that.
It's very German.
“I have actually found that the Germans who I have met and asked about local sayings as I'm out and about, often the first saying that comes to mind is an idiom around beer. There's, I know, a nicht mein Bier.
Nicht mein Bier, yeah.
Yeah, so that would mean like, not my business.
I'm staying out of this.
Yes.
But like the German version of not my cup of tea.
Oh, okay, not my cup of tea. I thought of it more as like, I'm staying out of this.
Oh, not like, oh, sorry. And I totally confused though what not my cup of tea means. Like, yeah, it's not none of my business.
“So you could, but could you also use it for, I'm not into that.
Um, no, I think, I think you're absolutely right. It's more like not my, not my, not on my problems. It's like not, not on my business.
If we're looking for an English idiom for that one, we say, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Not my circus, not my monkeys. I know that one. That one's actually Polish as far as I know, which is really funny.
Yeah. I say that a lot. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Sam, here we are recording in the first week of February, 2024. I feel like dry January was a busy month of events for you. Yeah.
It was pretty wild. Um, I tried to limit it to just four events in dry January. I could have probably done a ton more.
“But in addition to running my own events, I did two non-alcoholic cocktail classes. I did a non-alcoholic wine tasting. I did a social with non-alcoholic beer flights at Talea Brewery and Williamsburg.
So along with those events, I also just did a ton of events that I attended myself. The thing I really like about the non-alcoholic industry is because it's still so small and growing. Everyone is really excited and everyone kind of knows each other.
So while it's kind of work, it's also just like hanging out with your friends a lot.
Speaking of hanging out with your friends, listeners who have heard my interview with Giulia Alvarez Katz will know that this is the second show that I've done around the concept of the third place. Could you tell us more about this concept and why you chose it as the name for your business?
“Yeah, totally. So for me personally, bars, neighborhood bars were always a third place for me, especially when I moved to New York City. You know, you don't really have a living room or not a lot of space.
So for me, my neighborhood bar back in the Lower East Side was sort of my extended living room, and it was my third place. So just to recap the idea of a third place, right, your first place usually is home, your second place is work or school, and any third place is any place outside of that where you have social connections. And for me, it was totally my neighborhood bar, and I really love going there.
Any time of the day, any day of the week, I would know the shifts of the bartenders. I knew most of the regulars there. I knew a lot of the dogs that would come with the regulars too.
“At some point, I was in a softball team with some of the regulars, which was pretty fun because if you get a bunch of people who drink at bars every Saturday night and then you have to play softball games Sunday morning, does not result in a particularly good softball team. We had a lot of fun. We lost every single game that season.
So for me, neighborhood bars are a really important concept and a really important third place, but at the same time, for me, I realized that also encouraged me to drink a lot more than I probably should be during the week in particular. Just because that's what you do. You go to a bar, you have a drink, and I don't want to necessarily be the person who just sits around with a seltzer.
So I had the idea, especially in New York City, like everything is possible, right? There's a cereal bar in Chinatown that literally only does cereal, right? There's all these Japanese-style listening bars that revolve around playing records and high-quality sound system.
“There's something for everyone. And so two years ago, I was wondering, why are there no non-alcoholic bars? It's not that big a jump to imagine that you have something that's kind of like a bar, it's open late, it just doesn't have alcoholic drinks.
So not like a late-night coffee shop. I think the vibe is very different for coffee shops from a bar, but really have sort of a bar environment just without alcohol, just without encouraging people to drink. And there wasn't anything like that at the time.
So, you know, I figured, why not try and do it?
Timing is really interesting to me too. You started in late 2022, right? So I'm just thinking about the context of the pandemic and how many people's third places were lost.
And also the extra psychological impact for those of us who were in New York during early COVID. I remember first starting to walk around and just feeling this post-apocalyptic energy, particularly around seeing some of those local bars being closed. And when they were starting to come back, it was such a strange moment.
“And some of them didn't come back at all. And I think people really felt the grief of losing that location.
Yeah, that's a great point. I haven't even thought about it that way. But it's definitely, I think in a more broader context, I think there aren't a lot of third places in New York City anymore.
And a lot of places did close down during the pandemic. That's absolutely right. I haven't even made that connection.
And I think just that sense of community is really missing.
Yeah.
And that's kind of what I wanted to bring back with Third Place Bar.
I would love for you to tell us more about what you're doing and what your plans are for the future and what it's been like for people who come to your events to continue to be included in the culture of fun.
“Yeah, I have so many thoughts about this. So just for context, I initially, so initially the idea for Third Place was to really have a third place to have this permanent location, a brick and mortar bar that basically just doesn't serve alcohol, but sort of functions like a regular bar where people can come in, stop by anytime. They know the bartenders shifts, they know the regulars, stuff like that.
For me personally, I don't have a background in hospitality. I've bartended, but I've never managed or owned or opened a bar. So that just seemed like a very, that seems like a pretty big challenge to move from my life working in tech to opening a bar out of nowhere.
And I know some people do that. I'm not that brave or stupid, whichever way it is. And also like non-alcohol obviously is a pretty new domain.
So I didn't really know anything about the beverages there. I didn't know anything about what the customers wanted. So I figured I'll start with these pop-up events to kind of get a lay of the land.
“So I started doing these and it was mostly social events, either just an open bar night where I would take a coffee shop, turn it into a bar, turn on the lights a little, turn up the music a little. And then serve non-alcoholic drinks and say, do whatever you would do at a bar. Bring friends, bring a date.
I had a few dates, which is very cute. Hang out or some board games, you know, bring like, hold a meeting there, whatever it is. That worked pretty well.
The only problem with that is, from a financial perspective, it was hard for me to make that work.
Because you were renting the coffee shop.
Because I had to pay a rental fee and rental fees in New York City, even for coffee shops that are closed at night. You know, even if I'm saying, hey, do you want to make some extra money? They're still pretty steep.
“So it was just hard for me to make that work and including like paying my bartender a decent rate. So I moved to more of an event-based model with tickets or ticketed events. And I've basically done everything from friend speed meets, like speed dating, but platonic, which was super fun.
I did a movie in a mocktail night. I did picnics in the park. I did, what else did we do?
The cocktail classes we started doing. So non-alcoholic cocktail classes, non-alcoholic wine tastings. And that seems to work really well because it basically, it's a little bit more focused and a little bit more sort of intentional about the activity and the thing that we're doing.
But in the long-term, I do want to have that permanent brick and mortar location and sort of just open it up a lot more and make it a lot more accessible to people who might just not be available that particular day that the event is on, right? But, you know, have it just run it like a regular bar. So that's kind of the context for that, for like the things that we've been doing.
Music composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou: www.oumusic.bandcamp.com
Produced, recorded and edited by Rose Thomas Bannister
Audio assistance by Steve Silverstein
Video version by Giulia Àlvarez-Katz
