Etiquette for a local

One night last week I invited a friend I hadn’t seen in some time to get together for drinks, and, when the matter of location was raised, I proposed a fashionable new cocktail bar downtown I’d heard was rather good. Only when the hour struck and I set out for the place did it occur to me how conspicuously close it was to my apartment — half a block down the road, in fact, scarcely five minutes away by languid stroll.

When my friend arrived I felt obliged to apologize for what seemed to me a scandalous violation of an implicit term of the social contract: when arranging to meet with someone for drinks or dinner it’s impolite to suggest any bar or restaurant markedly more convenient for you than for them.

Now this is a delicate point. And there are of course exceptions that permit one to indulge in the occasional proximate pub or eatery — when the proposed place in question is of special interest at the time to both parties, for instance, or when its reputation has made it a must-try spot. However, the oft-employed claim that “there’s a new place near me that I’ve been meaning to try” does every so often merit the nuisance of the inconvenienced friend, and certainly someone living out in the middle of nowhere will be resigned to making allowances for hang-outs with the more centrally located as a matter of fair-mindedness and deference. (One of the things you’re paying for with a downtown apartment, after all, is the privilege of being near the action.) Generally, the rule should be, that it’s acceptable to meet nearer one man than the other in cases where the bar would seem an attractive destination wherever it happened to be.

Each of us knows when our recommendation breaches the terms of this mutual understanding. You know, when you swear by the buffalo chicken wrap at the ramshackle dive across the street from your apartment, that under no circumstances is it seriously worth another person’s trip. You are aware that an offer to experience the charming sights at sunset of a neighbourhood that happens to be your own can only be disingenuous, however amazing the wing deal at the sports bar nearby on Wednesdays.

And you surely must sense, deep down, that there is no good reason to ask someone on the west end of Toronto to cross over to the east for a mere drink: at a certain point the arrangement itself becomes a kind of social favour, and it’s only right, in the very least, for the inviter to cover the first round for the invitee.