I used to live down the block from the bar in the article. Fantastic bar, staff, food and live music...
Death of the Neighborhood Bar
151–160 of 164 posts
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#152As a 28-year old, I never understood the appeal of a pub as a meeting place. I think my main issue is that in loud places I just cannot for the life of me understand what is being said. I've had my hearing tested and it's absolutely fine, better than it should be at my age actually, and yet it's as if my ability to decode human speech goes to zero as soon as I'm in a loud environment, especially if there's sport even…
Our local neighborhood pub is a very different scene at 5pm on a Tuesday, compared to 11pm on a Friday night. Bunch of local guys hanging out with the bartender yammering on about their downstairs neighbors playing music too loud, or cooking fish at 2am and the whole building smells like fish until breakfast time. Then Friday/Saturday night it's full of loud tourists looking to get ripped on tequila before staggering down the street to the next bar.
Some bars are just loud and noisy all the time. Depends on the location and the venue. We live in a tourist district with probably at least a hundred bars within walking distance, we visit two regularly (maybe once a week, midweek), and a third occasionally for a change of pace. Business district bars are also pretty chill from 4:30-7 as people are coming out of the office and wanting to blow off steam and complain about their boss or whatever.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these are third places, though; they're more expensive commercial activities, and non-participatory performances. Not the same thing. They don't facilitate the same social or psychological functions as the relaxed, inexpensive, unstimulating and improvisational third-place.
> None of these are third places, though; they're more expensive commercial activities Many meditation and Buddhist activities are free or donation only. It's a common attribute that Buddhist retreats are completely free before and during the event, and only after you receive a piece of mail soliciting a donation. There _are_ more commercial meditation based activities but those are more lifestyle than spiritual.
You're both a) cherry-picking and b) overlooking the second half of my post.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#154If 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…
>social beliefs unacceptable to most of us
the mission of the church is not to feel you warm and fuzzy, and appeal to the latest social trends and what's deemed politically correct these days.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I read this earlier and was sort of speechless. 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.
Nor a bartender is contributing to the death of people, even when they drink themselves to death. Let's see where is the personal responsibility of each of the people involved.
I saw this kind of logic trying to blame gun manufacturers, but it should extend to car sellers (there are many more deaths in traffic), knife sellers, soft drink sellers (diabetes kills), etc. No, they are not contributing to someone's death just because they sell them something that person uses and eventually die.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#156Anybody think it's about price? At least the quoted guy thinks so > Why go to a bar when you can go to a yoga class, WhatsApp your friends, crack open an inexpensive bottle of wine at home, and watch something on Amazon Prime? And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see way more customers. Boston and some other US cities I have visited have, inexplicably, very high prices for bars and resta…
This times 1000. Back in the day around 10 years ago I could go out and spend less than or right around $20 for a night out (a few hours at my local haunt)... now I am unable to do that for less than $70. My wages have not increased 3x; so now, I go out maybe a couple times a month... and I even still drink cheap well whiskey (Old Crow, ka-kaw!).
Here in Munich, I am about a 5 minute walk to three different beer gardens in my neighborhood. A half-liter mug of beer is usually about the equivalent of $4.00. At some more famous Biergarten I think the prices maybe are a bit more expensive, but not even like London or NYC prices.
At one, we can get fresh-made pizzas for about €10 that'll feed two hungry people or more not-so-hungry people. At one we went to last night, I got a savory strudel with a salad that was a full meal for less than €8.
I would have a pretty hard time spending $70 including meals for my whole family unless I was going to get stone-faced drunk. We go out to the local Biergarten a lot here, because I can get a beer or two for myself and my wife and we can feed the kids some tasty food all for around €35-40. And we get to socialize with others who are doing the same thing. At many there are playgrounds where the children can play and socialize with each other on their own.
It's a very humane way to live.
I would definitely be sad if we lost all of our neighborhood beer gardens.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drinking from a brown bag is not "responsibly consuming freely", it is "covertly consuming".
At a summer "Shakespeare in the Park" type of event up here in Puritan Massachusetts, it seems totally appropriate to bring some wine along if you like and judging from the throngs of people around me, many people agree. It's not "freely" in the sense of "you can't get hassled for it", but it is "freely" in the sense of "you likely won't get hassled for it" which is probably what GP meant.
This is the American mentality - it's accepted that you will break the law, because it isn't being law abiding thats important, it's not getting caught. It's quite a different attitude to many places in Europe, where obeying the law is the default.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to disagree because I had misunderstood the GP. But if you’re both considering mega churches to be an example of evangelicals then I while heartedly agree. The mega church is the worst thing to happen to Christianity. While once you could be part of a small community and you’d notice new visitors and introduce yourself that doesn’t seem to be the case at the larger churches. I recall visiting small church…
A pro-church atheist is a great description for me too, it never occurred to me but that's a great phrase. Yes, I'm definitely including megachurches (esp. nondenominational megachurches) as evangelicals, and I totally agree with the friendly small church vs dystopian megachurch experiences. Just about any TV pastor is an evangelical as well. For someone who's not a believer, I'm surprised at how sad this state of af…
> If I could point at any one evangelical belief that for whatever reason offends this atheist, it's Prosperity Gospel. The idea that you should follow Christ so that material wealth will be drawn towards you, in correlation to how hardcore you are about Jesus.
Surely there is nothing worse than the prosperity gospel. I didn’t think there could be something worse than the glorification of suffering until I understood the prosperity gospel.
I honestly wish we could found a church based on teaching and practicing meditation and communication techniques. I think it would be a good place to raise a kid since churches are largely about raising kids.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Drinking in public is OK. > Being drunk and a nuisance in public is not OK. In my experience, this is basically the way it already is in many places in the US. As long as you put even a modicum of effort into complying with the letter of the law in front of cops (ie using a brown paper bag, putting alcohol into a non-obvious container, etc) and you're in compliance with the spirit of the law (ie not being a loud an…
The problem with this approach is that you're still in violation of the letter of the law which means it's up to the cops to decide if they will pursue or not which means now they can pursue you for your skin color, accent, etc and use the letter of the law as an excuse.
Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar
#160Earlier 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…
> coffee shops Central Europe is losing the vibrant cafe culture it used to have, where people could sit together for hours and chat. Cafes today often blast loud pop music and send staff around more frequently to pester clients who seem to have finished their drinks, as owners believe this will prevent people from loitering. Instead, customers will quickly drink what they ordered and then get out, freeing the table…
City?