I woke up twenty-four hours ago, reached for my phone, and found that I had a number of messages waiting.
Then I saw a screenshot.
“This is where we start to say goodbye.”
Well, fuck.
To call it a gut punch doesn’t quite get there.
Our friends at LBM in Lakewood announced that after nine years and a whole lot of fun, they’ll be closing their doors for good on October 10.
I stared at that screen for a long, long while.
Many of you know LBM because of us, and plenty of Cleveland westsiders know us because of LBM. Over the years, we’ve joked about being sister bars or sibling bars, whatever you want to call it. But it was always more than just a bit of friendly cross-town connection.
We were born two months and seven days apart.
Two strange ideas, dreamed up by people who loved hospitality and creativity and believed, perhaps irrationally, that there was still room in the world for places with an actual point of view.
And people thought both ideas were crazy.
They were opening a Viking-themed heavy metal bar in Lakewood.
We were opening a serious cocktail bar in Lorain, Ohio.
Neither idea sounded like a solid business plan.
And yet.
Nine years later, here we are.
Or, more painfully, here we are for just a little while longer.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since I saw that post.
Not about bars, exactly.
About places.
The rooms we choose to spend our lives in.
Because somewhere along the way, a place can stop being just a business you frequent. It sneaks across some invisible line. You don’t notice when it happens. There isn’t a ceremony. Nobody hangs a little plaque on the wall announcing that this establishment has now become emotionally significant.
You keep showing up.
And other people keep showing up.
And eventually something happens.
Someone remembers your name.
Somebody knows what you’re drinking before you order it.
You recognize the guy three seats down even though you have absolutely no idea what he does for a living.
You meet someone.
You bring someone.
You celebrate a birthday there.
Maybe you celebrate ten birthdays there.
You stop in because you’ve had a great day and want to share it. Or maybe you’ve had a terrible one and don’t feel like talking to anyone.
You sit down anyway.
That’s the strange alchemy of these rooms.
Community rarely announces itself as COMMUNITY.
Most of the time it looks like somebody sliding over one stool because they see you coming.
It looks like someone asking, “Hey, where’s Mike been?”
It’s someone bringing in a cocktail recipe they found online, hoping Jack will make it for them (he probably will). Someone walks in with a book to recommend to Page. Someone comes straight from the movies to talk to Hiatt about the latest release. Someone brings Wyatt a sample of some strange liqueur to taste and figure out what to do with.
It’s two people who probably would never have met anywhere else arguing about Steely Dan versus New Order.
It is ordinary.
Until it isn’t.
We have a term for these places now: third places.
Home is first.
Work is second.
And then there is somewhere else.
The coffee shop. The barber shop. The library. The corner tavern. The bowling alley. The bookstore. The diner with the same six people sitting at the counter every morning.
Places where, for a little while, nobody particularly requires anything from you.
You don’t need an appointment.
There isn’t an agenda.
Nobody sent you an event invitation.
You can stay twenty minutes or three hours.
You might know everybody.
You might know nobody.
But keep showing up long enough and eventually somebody notices when you don’t.
We underestimate how important that is.
Especially now.
We’ve built a world where almost anything can show up at our front door. Food. Groceries. Books. Drinks. Movies. Music. Even work.
Hell, increasingly, other people.
We carry little glowing screens in our pockets that promise us everything, but somehow we end up spending more and more time alone.
We are endlessly connected.
And sometimes remarkably lonely.
That’s why a room full of people now feels almost wonderfully old-fashioned.
There is no formula involved.
No feed.
No comments section.
Just people.
Sitting next to other people.
On purpose.
I own a bar, so obviously I’m not exactly an unbiased observer here.
But I don’t think this is really about bars.
It’s about place.
And about what happens to communities when we lose the places where they can happen.
Because that’s the part that is easy to miss when one of these places closes.
On paper, a business closed.
There will be spreadsheets, leases, equipment, liquor licenses, and all the cold, practical things that come with ending something that started as just an idea on paper.
Eventually another sign may go up.
Something else may occupy the room.
The world will keep turning.
It always does.
But something is lost that can’t just be passed along with the liquor inventory.
A thousand tiny moments lived there.
First dates.
Last dates.
Bad jokes.
Great songs.
Terrible songs.
Whiskey poured for somebody who just got the job.
A beer poured for somebody who just lost one.
Friends who became lovers.
Lovers who turned strangers.
Strangers who became friends.
People who walked through a door one night because somebody said, you have to see this place.
And nine years later they’re still telling stories that begin:
“Remember that night at LBM when…”
That’s what disappears when a place disappears.
Not the furniture.
Not the drinks.
Not the address.
The possibility of making another memory in that room.
And maybe that’s why yesterday’s news hit me so hard.
Because after nearly a decade building one of these places ourselves, we know just how unlikely the whole thing really is.
Every independent bar, restaurant, bookstore, record shop, or coffee shop—every quirky place someone insisted should exist—is a small act of resistance.
Someone looked at an empty room and imagined people inside it.
They imagined music.
Conversation.
Light.
Noise.
They imagined a Tuesday night that hadn’t happened yet.
Then they signed a lease and scared the hell out of themselves trying to make it real.
Some of those places last six months.
Some last nine years.
Some get lucky enough to last generations.
None of them last forever.
Maybe that’s part of what makes them matter.
So this isn’t a eulogy for LBM.
Not yet.
There are still weeks left.
There are drinks to drink, music to play, hugs to give, and probably several very debatable decisions yet to be made under those Viking helmets.
And I hope that room is absolutely fucking alive until the last person walks out of it on October 10.
But their announcement reminded me of something I think we all occasionally forget.
Go to the places you love.
Not someday.
Go.
Sit at the bar.
Buy the book from the bookstore.
Buy that record.
Drink the coffee at the coffee shop.
See the weird little band you’ve never heard of.
Go to the library.
Eat at the cafe.
Walk into the strange little neighborhood joint somebody told you about and find out why they love it.
Put the goddamn phone down for an hour.
Talk to somebody.
Show up.
Because these places need us.
But maybe, in ways we’re just starting to understand, we need them even more.
LBM wasn’t just a Viking-themed heavy metal bar in Lakewood.
And Speak of the Devil isn’t just a cocktail bar in Lorain.
At their best, places like these are simply rooms we have agreed to share.
And if we’re very lucky, somewhere along the way those rooms become part of the story of our lives.
Maybe gathering places don’t create communities at all.
Maybe they give communities somewhere to happen.
And maybe that’s enough.