In fact, pick several. Every city / town / village has at least one place where its people can come and exchange gossip over a drink of their preference, and if even long running TV shows and soaps are based around the concept of a local pub, there has to be something to it. Truth is, people need a place away from home, where they can chill, hang out, talk to people as they drink their coffees or nurse their pints and where they are able to just be. For those of us without roots to tie us to one single place, the place we visit regularly can make a huge difference in where and how we feel at home. It’s a constant in an ever-changing world, a place to which we can connect, and where we can reconnect whenever we are there. Best of all, providing the place still stands – in a whirlwind of events all around us – our regular spot becomes the proverbial eye of the storm from whence we can watch events around us unfold. 

For myself, most of my favorite memories revolve around that one place where I’d go get my coffee regularly and would make chit chat with the staff, regardless of where I was. From letting me hide out in a corner that would not be visible from the street after a quickly hissed, “your mother is coming,” on those days when I was skipping school, to texting a frantic food order to the person working that day when I was running between classes and work, the stories are many, as varied as the people driving them forward.

Finding a local  became the signifier of whether I truly considered the new place home or whether it was just a pit stop – albeit a very prolonged pit stop at times – before I moved on to a place that truly signified and embodied home. Interestingly, the places I returned to where I felt that I was now out of place, were the very same places where try as I might I could not find a local. Something was always off, either the atmosphere didn’t vibe or the place was just wrong (which actually comes down to the same thing). Finding a local for me personally meant that even if my old apartment is gone and I can’t live in the same neighborhood anymore for a variety of reasons, there is at least that one place providing stability. It’s a place that I know, a place where I feel welcome and most of all it is a place that no matter how much it changes will somehow, on some level, always stay the same. And part of moving to a new town for me always also involves the joy of finding a new place I can soon call my own, that helps me feel grounded. 

I remember the song coming out at a time when I was finding a place to hang out at, several places in fact. We were in our final years of secondary education, and going out was a process that had to be carefully negotiated with our parents and guardians for some of us, while others were free to come and go as they pleased. Funnily enough it cropped up again at the time of this writing, as these things tend to do I guess. Though I’d wager a guess that many (if not all) of these places don’t exist anymore, it’s great to see how new ones take on the familiarity of the old through the magic of a song.