Popination Explanation

A series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: let’s back up a little.

I’m hitting the pause button today for a few reasons, the first of which being that, regardless of a robust bevy of vaccinations populating my system, I have come down with a case of The Winter Crud (™) and so am incapable of writing much brilliant fresh prose for you today (as much as it can be argued I do when I’m well).

The other reason is that I’ve noticed a few more followers and subscribers lately, who have certainly missed the initial posts wherein I created the Monday Popination pieces which have become a tradition here at Zuko’s Musings. So I thought I’d give my sick brain a rest, and give y’all a wee rundown on this glorious and fun series that got bigger and longer lasting than I expected.* What’s that? Yes, yes, I know it’s Tuesday today. Ssh.

As you’ll recognize if you follow my publication, I do a Popination piece each Monday, a Fight Clip Club on Wednesdays, and a vocab word on Fridays. Then, we’ve got Saturday Morning Serial which is all about my memoir.

Back in April 2023, I came across a vocab word for my Friday series that I aligned with so well that I had to divide my writings on it into two parts. That word was:

Popination

I was interested in this old word as connected to my fascination by 3rd places:

In the spirit of my continued fascination with urban areas and Third Places, I want to treat this Vocab Word o’th’Week as an assignment in musing and reflecting on the many pubs of my past (and the relatively few pubs of my present). Pub culture isn’t as much a thing in the US as it is in the UK, for example, but we definitely have a robust bar scene that’s all our own. I averred in my piece on the Third Place that our ability to popinate is affected by car-centered and suburban infrastructures that sprawl across the country.

And I thought it would be fun to do an overview of some of my favorite Popinations past and present:

The past sections don’t go all the way back into my childhood accompaniment of my parents to restaurant bars, where I’d lick the salt off their margarita glasses at José Muldoon’s, or sip a Shirley Temple at the beautiful bar at the Boulderado. Or my forays to a dive bar down the block with my friend in elementary school, where we’d commandeer the Pac-Man and Galaga and Joust games and eat all the Goldfish crackers out of every bar bowl, till the nervous barkeep kicked us out. Hey, it was the ‘80s.

Nor do they stretch even far enough back to my college drinking days in the glorious ‘90s, either—honestly, I bar-hopped and pub-crawled way less than just drinking at friend’s parties at our various homes, so. The original Old Chicago in Boulder was really my only regular haunt from college. That and Oasis Brewery, whose blueberry brown ale still lingers on my palate…

(O hey, I haven’t written about Oasis yet. Or Jose Muldoon’s. Hmm…)

After these two Popinations posts, I was told by a few readers that they would enjoy following a series of essays that were this unhinged combination of personal storytime and that took place in bars and pubs. So after my then-Monday regular series was done (I forget what that used to be—maybe my Lord of the Rings lecturettes?) I made Mondays into Popinations. And it’s been that ever since.

Continuation

I don’t see any reason why I’ll not continue Popinating for the foreseeable future. The bars and pubs and suchlike in Denver and its environs are plentiful, and I seem to have no problem finding words that end in -ation. No, really—I continue to be surprised by how many -ation words there are in the English language. My cup runneth over.

So there you have it: the story of Popinations. If you’re a local, let me know if you have any Popination suggestions, and hey—maybe next time I travel I’ll put out a chat and ask for your input on other places, too.

Next week, look for the Popination I meant to compose this week, and send me healthy vibes in the meantime. And happy holidays and so forth.

*that’s what she said.

Check out this excerpt from a lexicography nerd site: it’s from The Daughters of Isenberg by Alicia Tyndal Palmer, and the first known documentation of it says that it comes from the Latin:

1623 - The English Dictionarie or an Interpreter of Hard English Words, Henry Cockeram; "Popination, an outragious drinking"

How cool is that?