Club Rules: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of a Regular at Mulligan’s

This ethnographic study examines how the identity of “regular” is constructed, maintained, and sometimes denied at Mulligan’s, a small-town, golf-themed bar in the rural Midwest. Using symbolic interactionism and Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and symbolic capital, the research draws from six months of participant observation and unstructured interviews with patrons and staff. The study finds that regular status is achieved through embodied ease, shared memory, and symbolic alignment with the bar’s rhythms, rather than simply frequency of attendance. Bartenders shape inclusion through subtle cues like recognition and humor, while newcomers often experience symbolic exclusion. The study concludes that third places like Mulligan’s are stratified environments where inclusion depends on affective labor and the ability to be recognized as a person who uses their socio-cultural fluency to reproduce the same socio-cultural experience of the establishment. This research highlights the dynamic and performative nature of belonging in everyday public settings.