The bar with the elephant
Click here to view it larger.
I bought this one last weekend because it amused me, and I’m sharing it today as a sort of palate cleanser between all the earnest portraits. It’s just a little snapshot (3.5 x 3.5 inches), with no date or identification. But it’s got a lot going on visually. It’s hard not to love the elephant mural, and I wonder what, if anything, is outside the frame of the picture. With the mural and their clothing (his tie!), it’s one of those pictures I wish I could see in color. Also, while this doesn’t seem to be an actual tavern, I haven’t decided if this is a bar in something like a social club, or if somebody set this up in their home. In any case, it seems they are all having a good time.
Pics of Then 
This is a basement bar that millions of Americans built in their homes. The wood paneling, the bar glasses on the back shelf
Likely the homeowner behind the bar and friends or neighbors sitting on the stools.
My father had a bar he built in our basement to entertain visitors
We also had pine paneling with the front of the bar covered in old New Yorker magazine covers.
Yes, I was leaning towards a bar in a home. I guess it was the mural that made it feel like it might be like the corner of the dance floor in a clubhouse or fraternal lodge or something. That sounds like a cool bar your dad built.
Ha ha! That must have been something to grow up with.
The bar area in the home I grew up in had a painting of a naked lady lounging on a bear skin rug. Can’t remember which of my parents painted it. Whether from a kit, or freehand.