The science behind the nostalgia of our favorite bars: The Salt: NPR

It's just past noon on a Wednesday at Air Devil's Inn, an aviation-themed dive bar in Louisville, Kentucky, where Kristie Shockley, owner, spends cold canned beers at the counter. Behind her, two muted TVs play reruns of Gunsmoke.

"Well, this has been a domino effect of challenges," said Shockley. "It has been going on for at least two years, one thing is breaking – we're fixing this problem, another thing is breaking."

What makes sense – the building that houses the Air Devil's Inn was built in the 1870s. It was a school, then a speakeasy, and for about 80 years it's been this bar.

However, as repair costs escalated, Shockley was not sure that the bar would pass in the summer, so she launched a call for help on social networks – and some regular customers even planned an advantage.

On February 24, several local bands played and the $ 8 coverage fee of participants was used to help repair Air Devil's Inn.

Shockley said his bar had a loyal clientele.

"Every night, every bartender has his own regulars – and they're not just regulars, they're their friends," Shockley said.

Air Devil's Inn would not be the first old bar to shut its doors – but in the comments section of the Shockley article on Facebook asking for help, many people shared their personal memories from the place.

After digging a little more online, it became obvious that this was not unusual. There are active Facebook pages dedicated to bars across the country that have been closed for years. People always keep memories of their first appointments, photos of their university years, videos of their favorite local bands.

In 2018, the New York Times published an article on how, because the city is constantly changing, its bars and restaurants are constantly closed or replaced by new ones.

"It's a New York pastime to deplore this phenomenon to which it seems that all our beloved hauntings are victims," ​​wrote Time Journalist Meghan Louttit, who published earlier this year an article dedicated to saying goodbye to Output, a nightclub in Brooklyn that closed on January 1st.

The word "nostalgia" is frequently mentioned in articles and social networks about long closed bars.

But how can we come to form these special feelings for a place?

Dr. Keith Lyle, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Louisville, said that before talking about nostalgia, we must first understand certain elements of memory.

"Events like going to a bar are made up of many features," Lyle said. "What you taste, feel and what you feel emotionally is treated in an area of ​​the brain."

Then, what the brain does through a very complex process is putting all that information together into one package. This package is what we consider a "memory".

"" Remember ", is reliving that brain activity," Lyle said. "So we are really reliving something that has happened in the past." Often, when you talk with people from previous experiences in one place, they mention this "revivification process".

Michael Jones, an author, is a member of the Facebook page dedicated to Tewligan's Tavern, a bar and music venue in Louisville that closed more than 20 years ago.

"It was a dive bar, but it was open enough for everyone to play," Jones said. "It was just a moment when Louisville's indie rock scene was starting."

Jones said he spent some formative years at Tewligans. His experiences there, listening to music and meeting friends, inspired him to write an essay on the bar.

He still remembers seeing particular bands very well, but now that Tewligans is closed, Jones said he's a bit sad to talk – and that's where the concept of nostalgia is a little blurry about the scientific plan.

"You have a memory, and then you have emotional" labels "attached to the memory," said Dr. Don Katz, a scientist who studies memory at Brandeis University.

"That's why you go back to the restaurant where you ate a good meal and avoid the restaurant where you had a bad meal – and my rats and my mice do almost the same thing."

He described nostalgia as "having a particular nostalgic emotion evoked by a memory, and having that memory itself evoked by the very fact that he possesses an emotional" etiquette ".

But, said Katz, studying nostalgia has its limits in a lab environment.

For example, scientists can tell if a rodent "likes" or "does not like" the particular food memory.

"I can show if [the rodent] "I can not show that this memory is repeated spontaneously: a nostalgic look crosses the face of my rat when he thinks of a food that he has already seen." appreciated – and I can not show the nuances of this emotion very well. "

Katz added that it was almost impossible to do the same thing with humans – at least in a lab. All you can do is ask them, "Hey, are you nostalgic?" and wait for their answer.

But Lyle said that he believed that most of us know when we experience nostalgia.

"You feel you can almost touch it again," he says. "Almost taste it again, almost feel it again, almost see it again – because in your brain you live this activity, but now you know that there is no physical equivalent . "

Which, says Lyle, is deeply sad for our brain.

And that may also explain why people post online about their memories of a specific bar that interests them a lot. They re-access and treat these still fresh sensory beams.

Back at Air Devil's Inn, the owner, Kristie Shockley, said that someone had asked her what she wanted in the end for the bar.

He asked: "What are your hopes for the future?" Said Shockley. "And I said that I hope people continue to arrive."

Because, whatever their power, good memories and nostalgia will not pay the bills.