How To Go To A Bar On Your Own

• Leave the house. Congratulate self on good plan
• Return to the house to get Kindle (just in case)
• Select your outfit carefully - bar seats can be tricky to manage. Dresses and skirts will get shorter when you sit on a bar stool. Depending on the crowd this can be a positive... 
• Do a drive-by, but with your legs, of several bars to scour for an even mix of (a) empty spot at the bar (b) interesting looking people* (c) large groups**
• Select your bar, casually saunter in, look around questioningly as if you're meeting someone. Head to the bar and grab a seat. I like to sit in between a couple but not many people are open to this. I find being persistent works. Sometimes you end up with three seats to yourself.
• Ask for a menu and peruse it as if your life depended on it and there is nothing more interesting, because once they take it away, you are left with looking at your phone, bringing out your kindle or making an origami crane out of your napkin which you would think would be a huge talking point and have people flocking to you***
• Order something respectable and sophisticated. Like this****:

Classy.  Just like me.

• Consider ordering food - just remember, as a solo person, you are invisible to the wait staff so make sure they remember you by telling them everything you are allergic to. Eliminating gluten from your diet is tough but not nearly as tough as eliminating talking about eliminating gluten from your diet.  This is not the time to try - you need to drive the point home otherwise you will starve.
• Take a notebook and start drawing or writing in it - this is to draw people over to you to see what you're doing that has you so engaged. It will not work
• You will be judged for being a woman in a bar on your own. No one will believe that you just wanted to get a drink and hang out. And make new friends so you can invite them over for dinner parties where you will sit around and have witty and intellectually stimulating conversation.  Not around a fire pit.  Because you don't have one.
• At a certain point, you will realize that since you have no one to talk to, you have drunk a little too much, a little too quickly. That's when you receive an imaginary text "You can dance - Sincerely, Wine". And you do. And you can't. And it's a bar not a club. No one else is dancing. And they want you off the bar. But you had a hard enough time getting up there so there is where you'll stay. So you pretend it's a piano and you try and look all sexy and writhe around on the bar and then you fall off and realize getting down was easier although more painful than you first thought.
• If you have not been kicked out at this point, you take your seat with grace. And a little huffing and puffing which sort of ruins the grace part.

*This is very hard to tell. And hard to do without appearing judgmental. Luckily this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Avoid very beautiful people. You don't want the competition. You also don't want super ugly people.
**Sometimes they won't notice that you have attached yourself to them and are pretending to be one of the crowd. Casually helping yourself to the bottle of wine they have ordered will help you to blend. Generally. Sometimes you will have to leave. Very fast.
***You would be wrong
****This will also let your fellow bar-goers just what kind of person you are.  And they will want to be your best friend.  Sometimes, they won't know this immediately.