Nick's in the Sticks

          There is an innate part of our nature that drives each one of us to leave a souvenir of ourselves on this planet so that people will remember us.  As I looked up at the ceiling in Nick’s, each of the decorated dollars on the ceiling did just that.  Some were signed by an individual while others were signed by a group in order to commemorate their outing.  No matter what the message was, they all left a mark.

            It seems that dining establishments attempt to appeal to this desire.  Why do they do this?  Lining the interior walls of Depalma’s Italian Café are wine bottles with messages on them left by the restaurant’s patrons.  The Oasis has people’s pictures on the wall as karaoke stars as well as carvings in the tables denoting various people and the dates they had been there.  A restaurant chain in Louisiana, Time’s Bar and Grill, posts pictures of people who are able to finish the restaurant’s biggest hamburger.  Mugshots, a chain here in Tuscaloosa, has the same tradition.  The pervasiveness of this practice is so evident that there are even television shows dedicated to showcasing any restaurant that will let you leave your mark if you can defeat their trials.

            Until Nick’s, I had never really thought of why restaurants might do this, though.  I originally thought that the only desire restaurants were trying to appeal to was the desire to eat good food, but these establishments are also trying to appeal to the desire to be recognized and leave something for other to remember us by.  It’s nothing big and grand, but you still get that small feeling of accomplishment, a pseudo-legacy.  In leaving a mark on a restaurant, a person can express pride or accomplishment, can commemorate a memory, and can form a connection to the restaurant.  Each one of these things is interconnected, but each one is unique and is fed by a different side of our nature.

            People enjoy having their accomplishments recognized.  Recognition allows a person to feel validated and when a representation of that validation can be hung upon the wall of a restaurant, the person’s sense of pride is even more fulfilled. There’s something about these minor accomplishments that makes them important. They’re nothing like winning a marathon or graduating college, but they don’t need to be.   That is, there’s no legitimate reason to feel good about carving your name in a table or eating a huge hamburger in under twelve minutes, but we do.  Maybe our desire to feel good about something is in some way self-fulfilling.  We want to feel good about something, so we do.  All we need is some sort of medium, and these restaurants give that to us. Most importantly though, what you have done will remain a living memory passed on to all who see the evidence of your accomplishment.

This commemoration serves as a concrete message to future onlookers, including ourselves.  Even those who may not desire the accomplishment aspect of a left mark may feel some joy in the recollection of the memory.  We treasure memories of our friends, of doing something interesting, of eating good food, or even of a certain time in our lives.  People dedicate time and money to preserving those memories so that they may reflect on them later on in life.  When a restaurant allows you to leave a mark, they are inviting you to store your memory with them, and it makes sense.  People come together over food.  If anything should be worth preserving, it should be coming together with people, and that is what restaurants are meant to provide.

The memory we make that is left as a mark can continually connect us to place where we eat.  In some sense, what we have done at the restaurant is not only a part of the restaurant’s décor, but also part of its memory.  When we leave a mark on a restaurant, we solidify our memory of our time there, not only to ourselves, but to the restaurant as well.  That solidified memory helps form a connection between us and the restaurant.  By forming that connection, we increase the likelihood of returning.  When we return, we can look upon the memory and fondly remember that time, we can point it out to friends, or we can try to top that same memory. Our marks leave a world open to us.  They give us the ability to have some affect on the restaurant’s day-to-day dealings.  The first person to carve their name into a table or staple a dollar bill to the ceiling started a trend.  By participating in it, we continue the trend and encourage others to leave their marks as well.

I never would have thought that leaving a mark at a restaurant was such a big deal, but I’ve now realized that it’s one of the many reasons people are drawn to places like Nick’s.  By allowing people to leave their mark, Nick’s has itself become a mark on Tuscaloosa.  It seems as if there is  a community around the restaurant. Maybe it formed through the ability Nick’s gives to its customers to leave a mark, thereby strengthening the bonds they have to Nick’s.  Leaving a mark allows a person to form a connection to a place, to feel accomplished, and to preserve memories.  Sometimes it’s hard to leave a noticeable mark, but restaurants like Nick’s open their doors so that people can leave their own marks there.  We create memories and share them.  We eat, drink, and laugh. We carve names into tables.  We staple decorated dollar bills to ceilings.  We leave our mark.