Why the Long Face?

Where did the bar joke come from, and will it ever go away?

• A guy walks into a bar. “Ouch,” he says.

• A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender says “Hey, we’ve got a drink named after you.” The grasshopper says, “You’ve got a drink named Steve?”

• A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

The most famous bar in the world is without doubt the one that this guy walked into. You know, that guy. And that bar. Although sometimes the guy is a grasshopper. Or a horse. (Why the long face?). Or another animal. (A baby seal walks into a bar. What’ll you have, the bartender asks. “Anything but Canadian Club on the rocks.”) Sometimes the guy who walks into a bar is a trinity like the holy spirit: A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar. “What is this, some kind of joke?” the bartender asks.

The “guy walks into a bar” is a venerable joke template, much like the “knock-knock” joke. It has persisted because it’s endlessly adaptable and easily replicable. It can serve as a blank canvas for lame dad jokes, dark humor, and even more esoteric riffs. (“A Taoist walks into a bar.” <end of joke.>)

Perhaps you’ve wondered, as I have, why this guy keeps walking into a bar. Why doesn’t he walk into a laundromat, or a library, or a Waffle House? Why is it always a bar? And, not to dwell on it too much, what does this bar look like?

Wikipedia and many other online accounts report that the very oldest “walks into a bar” joke dates to the ancient Sumerians in the Bronze Age. Found on a clay tablet, the original joke went like this: “A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”

I’ll let you compose yourself. Now, the pedigree of this joke, which has several other equally inscrutable translations, seems suspect at best. Some scholars have suggested that it wasn’t actually a joke (maybe it was a pun), and that the dog didn’t actually walk into a bar, but possibly a brothel. And nobody really understands the joke regardless of translation or context. But that doesn’t stop internet sleuths from endlessly claiming this is the oldest bar joke in the world.

Even if this was the first, the template for it apparently died out for roughly 5,000 years. (Where are the “Knights Templar walk into an alehouse” jokes? Or the one beginning “a gunslinger walks into a saloon?”) The earliest modern bar joke I could find dates to the latter half of the 19th century. Between 1879 and 1882, this joke made the rounds, appearing in dozens of small-town newspapers:

This joke establishes the classic format: someone walks into a bar, has an exchange with a bartender, there’s wordplay and an unexpected application of logic, hilarity ensues. Across America, knees are slapped.

But the “walks into a bar” joke didn’t truly come into its own until the middle of the 20th century. That’s when the joke walked into a bar, and essentially never left.

The cultural timing was perfect. Jokes of the 1950s tended to be punchy and punchline-driven. (Take my wife. Please!) Ba-da-boom! The bar joke set-up was quick and easy, and listeners could grasp the situation immediately, allowing for a swift detour into wordplay or absurdity. The jokes at the time were mostly family-friendly and rarely sought to break taboos. These jokes could get in and out of the bar in 10 or 15 seconds, tops.

A kangaroo walks into a bar and orders a martini, drinks it and pulls out a five dollar bill to pay for it. The bartender picks up the dough, gives him his change… and charges the kangaroo $1.50 for the martini.

As the kangaroo’s leaving, the bartender says he’s never seen a kangaroo in his bar before.

“No,” says the kangaroo, “and at these prices you never will again!”

— 1956

By the 1970s the bar joke set-up was incorporated into dozens of comedy routines. Launching a joke with “a guy walks into a bar” was a form of audience pre-gaming — listeners were halfway to a guffaw before the joke even got underway.

The joke provides instant momentum (a guy walks into a bar; he’s never just sitting there), it conjures a familiar setting, and it has a built-in straight man in the form of a hapless bartender, who is rarely the hero of the joke. It is flexible enough to accommodate lame puns, social commentary, and observations about the sexes.

The “walks into a bar” joke eventually moved beyond the wholesome, midcentury sitcom humor, took on a darker, more risqué edge, and evolved into something of a meta joke. When it starts, audiences expect a dated set piece, but instead get something from the fringes. (“A murderer, a wife-beater and a liar walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘What will you have, officer?’”)

Gilbert Gottfried was famous for delivering this joke at roasts:

A guy walks into a bar. He looks up and sees a sign hanging over the bar that reads:

Cheese Sandwich — $1.50
Hand Job — $10.00

He looks around, checks his wallet, and walks up to the bartender. He says, “Are you the one that gives the hand jobs?”
The bartender leans in and purrs, “Yes, I am.”
The guy looks her dead in the eye and says, “Well, wash your hands! I want a cheese sandwich.”

How will the bar joke will fare in the rapidly morphing age of social media and internet humor? It may do just fine since humor is getting shorter and punchier to accommodate declining attention spans and character limits on social media platforms. The joke may meet the moment.

But humor has long been migrating away from the “set-up, punchline, bada-boom, bada-bing, I’ll be here all weekend” format, and often relies more on absurdist or literal, anti-humor takes. (A guy walks into a bar and says “ouch.” A second guy walks into the same bar and also says “ouch.” A third guy sees what’s happening and uses the door.)

The most durable element of the bar joke is arguably the bar itself. It hasn’t changed even as the bar world has evolved and become balkanized. Nobody today starts a joke with “a guy walks into a craft cocktail bar,” or “a guy walks into a sports bar.” The bar that the guy/horse/rabbi walks into hasn’t changed in 50 years. I can picture it and so can you: a Michelob sign in the window, worn and torn naugahyde bar stools, a sepia interior from ancient cigarette smoke, and a disaffected bartender watching a baseball game on a black-and-white TV high on a shelf. It’s a capsule containing the 1970s.

You walk in here carrying a piece of asphalt that you found outside. What’ll it be, the bartender asks. You say, “One for me, and one for the road.”

Don’t forget to tip your server.