Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drinking from a brown bag is not "responsibly consuming freely", it is "covertly consuming".
I would argue that it is not really covert as brown bagging for public consumption is a well known social convention. Most Americans (especially those enforcing the law) know or assume that when you are obscuring a bottle with a bag and consuming from that bottle in public, you are consuming alcohol. It is not much more covert than not placing the drink in a brown paper bag.
Death of the Neighborhood Bar
141–150 of 164 posts
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, it takes a special kind of asshole to run a bar while "[his] own family has been afflicted by alcoholism." > Richard had spent untold hours trading stories with friends, cementing connections with them, with the space, and with the city outside. A few people had gathered to continue their remembrance. All changed utterly, everything constant, I ordered a drink from the bar and sat down. Yea, you killed him .…
And it takes a special kind of asshole to be a professional grave digger when his entire family will die and be buried. Same kind of illogical argument.
Now I can't help myself, and must point out that a grave digger in no way contributes to the death of the buried.
Beware the acute and chronic cognitive effects of alcohol abuse.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are most likely unfamiliar with what a "local" bar feels like. A local bar feels like a restaurant, one where you can hear others at the table: you go to it to talk with others not to get boozed or as a venue. When you enter a busy local, the predominant sound is the hubub of voices. If there is music, it's volume should be below that (no amplified speakers throughout). The issue is that many modern sports or nig…
I mean, I live in the UK - there's always a pub round the corner. And yes, there are pubs which are essentially restaurants and everyone is keeping very low volume level - those are fine. But the types of pubs that all my friends/co-workers go to after work(filled to the brim with people, TV on, half of the people there are just there for pre-drinks before going on a night out) - nope, can't do those. And yet my frie…
1. A wide range of ages that must include twenty year olds, middle aged customers, and elderly people.
2. It should have the vibe of a social friend's living room.
3. It doesn't have a primary goal of profit - would the owner still be there all the time if they won the lottery?
4. It is friendly to women: to quote a good-looking female friend from Shepperton "A bar I can go to by myself without getting hit on".
5. You could take a child there (not necessarily a child-friendly family bar, but neither should it be a booze palace where you wouldn't want to take your young son or daughter).
6. Unlikely to have music events or paid events that crowd out the regulars.
That said, I do get the feeling that this type of bar is harder to find over time in my country - maybe profit driven as younger drinkers do spend more - older drinkers get boozed at home with friends in my experience. I can think of examples I went to when I was younger in NZ, Ireland, and the UK.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amen! Drinking in public should be as ordinary and mundane as it is in Germany.
From my experience, (Norwegian, but have spent a year or so in Germany over a couple of dozen visits), the Germans have found a quite good balance: Drinking in public is OK. Being drunk and a nuisance in public is not OK. I wish we could adopt the same attitude back home - here in Norway you are likely to be fined for drinking in public (though the extent to which drinking is tolerated vary considerably from place to…
IME the result is the same. When we're young and stupid we drink in public because we have to and tend to over do it, then we learn that drinking in public is illegal and the lesson tends to stick even when we're older and not out to get blind drunk.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#145My reason for not missing the neighborhood bar much.
They have some value-- helping people socialize, notably. But the downsides are just too steep.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#146My guess is the bar is just lame. There are plenty of cool bars that are packed every night in basically every place I've ever lived.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#147If we remove alcohol from the equation I think whats more pertinent is the death of the “third place”. Churches are dying. If the article is to be extrapolated then smaller local bars are dying. Where do people go other than online to socialize. Thats important to understand.
My experience is that some churches are dying and some are growing. Unfortunately it's the ones I (and possibly you) would go to that are dying. Churchgoers are moving from mainline Christian denominations to more extreme evangelical or fundamentalist denominations. Evangelicals have become a majority of all Protestants [1]. Generalizing, these churches are stridently political in character, and often have social bel…
I left Catholicism 20-odd years ago when I got married. Started going to a Southern Baptist (evangelical) church, and have gone ever since.
If you agree that everyone has a right to think as they please, you'll have nothing against evangelicals. Say you want to support abortions. You will surely get passionate arguments in return. You won't be given a position of leadership. You will not be in sycn with the rest of the congregation, and probably won't feel good about hanging around (as long as you keep vocalizing these ideas. That's not what the church is there for.) But nobody will be treated disrespectfully, and nobody will be subjected to anything unlawful.
On the flip side, evengilical churches do a great job of feeding the hungry, digging wells where they are needed, helping with disaster relief, etc. These are really important works, and given without care for the beliefs of the recipient.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#148If we remove alcohol from the equation I think whats more pertinent is the death of the “third place”. Churches are dying. If the article is to be extrapolated then smaller local bars are dying. Where do people go other than online to socialize. Thats important to understand.
I honestly can't understand that at all. The "third place" has exploded and has never been more vibrant in the history of mankind, at least if you live in a city. Yoga classes, coffee shops, CrossFit, meetups, hiking groups, rock climbing, dance parties, marathons, evening painting classes where they serve wine, improv comedy shows, improv comedy classes, cooking classes, language classes, indie band shows of every t…
I don’t drink anymore but when I lived in NYC I went to the neighborhood bar and was part of a loose knit group of people who went there too. Classes, schedules and fees don’t point to the same thing.
I do miss the mid 90s indie coffeeshop scene.
I think some of these things may die off when people our age have kids. I didn’t have a kid when I did these things before. Maybe schedules and fees facilitate third place activities when you’re negotiating time with your co-parent. Now my kid is mid-teens and I have my free nights for third place things. But I’m not likely to attend a thing at a time and pay a fee. I’ll go for a trail run, with my partner or by myself.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly can't understand that at all. The "third place" has exploded and has never been more vibrant in the history of mankind, at least if you live in a city. Yoga classes, coffee shops, CrossFit, meetups, hiking groups, rock climbing, dance parties, marathons, evening painting classes where they serve wine, improv comedy shows, improv comedy classes, cooking classes, language classes, indie band shows of every t…
That is true, but those are all interest based activities, things you do at 7pm on a Tuesday night, between getting off work and passing out while watching netflix. They aren't places where one can go to simply 'be', or to mingle with strangers. In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub afterwards. Think of the Prancing Pony in the Lord of the Rings...a place where locals and travell…
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is that some churches are dying and some are growing. Unfortunately it's the ones I (and possibly you) would go to that are dying. Churchgoers are moving from mainline Christian denominations to more extreme evangelical or fundamentalist denominations. Evangelicals have become a majority of all Protestants [1]. Generalizing, these churches are stridently political in character, and often have social bel…
I've got to disagree with you on this one. I left Catholicism 20-odd years ago when I got married. Started going to a Southern Baptist (evangelical) church, and have gone ever since. If you agree that everyone has a right to think as they please, you'll have nothing against evangelicals. Say you want to support abortions. You will surely get passionate arguments in return. You won't be given a position of leadership.…
You say I wouldn't feel comfortable hanging around should I be the sort of person who says what I think about these issues. If that were because churches were non-political spaces (like some neighborhood bars), that might be fine. But the point of my comment was that evangelical (and some other) churches have become heavily politicized spaces. The rules are, in fact, that you can say whatever you want, as long it agrees with extreme right-wing conservative dogma. In many (especially smaller) evangelical churches, you'll even hear it from the pulpit on Sunday. As it happens, I just visited the "Bible Belt" and got to hear evangelical Christians trash my so-called "environmentalism" (I tried to recycle plastic).
> On the flip side, evengilical churches do a great job of feeding the hungry, digging wells where they are needed, helping with disaster relief, etc. These are really important works, and given without care for the beliefs of the recipient.
Here again I must say my experience (I grew up in an evangelical church) doesn't match this. In my experience, churches treat these like mission opportunities. Any charity given is closely tied to the recipient's willingness to listen to the Gospel. And that's even putting aside the extremely questionable organizations that often run these programs, like groups tied to Franklin Graham.