Last Call: I Dream Of Vintage Basement Bars

Instagram has become, for me at least, an increasingly inhospitable environment over the past several months. If it's not celebrities flaunting their #blessed and highly choreographed lives in the feed, it's loved ones posting photos from fretfully large-looking gatherings in the middle of a pandemic. (Stop all the gathering!) I'd probably delete Instagram entirely if not for two powerful forces that continue to draw me in: friends' cute babies and the @vintagebasementbar account.

The institution of the vintage basement bar is sacred and rapidly disappearing. These bars hearken back to an era where basements could simultaneously function as social spaces but also still look like basements. Today's basements are dug out to insane depths to sport cathedral ceilings and nicer entertainment systems than anything on the upper levels. Those types of basements can be fun and relaxing, of course, but there's something refreshingly honest about checkered linoleum floors, exposed pipes, the smell of a nearby laundry machine, and a wood-paneled bar whose stock of brown liquors is doing all the heavy lifting to turn the basement into party central. The vintagebasementbar Instagram account understands this, and pores over real estate listings to showcase the very best examples of these midcentury treasures across the country. Here's a great example from a ranch home in Gary, Indiana:

Do these images provide instant nostalgia for you, too? I've known some spectacular basement bars in my lifetime, many of which have since been sacrificed to make way for man caves, teen zones, or whatever else might increase square footage and resale value. Indeed, some have become entirely new basement bars, complete with updated quartz countertops and chrome mini-fridges. But the tidy little basement bars of the past, in all their Formica glory, will always have my heart.