Fern bar is an American slang term for an upscale or
preppy (or
yuppie
Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...
) bar or tavern catering to singles, usually decorated with
fern
A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes exce ...
s or other greenery, as well as such decor as fake
Tiffany lamp
Tiffany may refer to:
People
* Tiffany (given name), list of people with this name
* Tiffany (surname), list of people with this surname
Known mononymously as "Tiffany":
* Tiffany Darwish, (born 1971), an American singer, songwriter, actress kn ...
s. The phrase came into common regional usage in the late 1970s.
History
One of the first fern bars was the original
T.G.I. Friday's on the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue in a neighborhood on the
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
of New York City, where many young single adults lived at the time. The founder, Alan Stillman, borrowed several thousand dollars from his mother, leased a saloon and remodeled it, converting the ambience to one that he thought might be attractive to young single women. The bar opened on March 15, 1965 and was soon copied by other restaurants in the neighborhood.
Another early fern bar, also thought to be the original birthplace of the
Lemon Drop martini, was Henry Africa's in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
The bar opened in 1969 at Broadway and Polk Streets by out-of-work veteran Norman Hobday, who by his own account "took the opium-den atmosphere out of the saloons" in favor of "antique lamps and Grandma's living-room furniture." By some accounts Hobday copied the concept from another restaurant, Perry's, which opened several months earlier and was made famous as a singles "meet market" by
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. ( ) (born May 13, 1944) is an American writer notable for '' Tales of the City'', a series of novels set in San Francisco.
Early life
Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., to Diana Jane (Barton) and Armistead Jones Ma ...
's novel, ''
Tales of the City
''Tales of the City'' is a series of nine novels written by American author Armistead Maupin from 1978 to 2014, depicting the life of a group of friends in San Francisco, many of whom are LGBT. The stories from ''Tales'' were originally serial ...
''.
Hobday closed the establishment in 1986, and opened up Eddie Rickenbackers,
[ another eclectic bar, the next year.
]
Description
Typical drinks served included wine spritzers, Lemon Drop Martinis, frozen daiquirís, Harvey Wallbangers, and piña colada
The piña colada (; es, piña , "pineapple", and , "strained") is a cocktail made with rum, cream of coconut or coconut milk, and pineapple juice, usually served either blended or shaken with ice. It may be garnished with either a pineapple we ...
s.Houlihan's
Houlihan's is an American casual restaurant and bar chain with locations operating throughout the country, 60% of which are franchised. It is headquartered in Leawood within Johnson County, Kansas. The first Houlihan's opened on April 1, 1972, ...
.
Fern bars were gathering places for well-dressed "upscale" young men and women, initially during the sexual revolution of the 1970s and later the yuppie era of the 1980s.
See also
* Types of drinking establishments
* ''Cocktail'' (1988 film)
References
{{Bartend
Types of drinking establishment