Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Death of the Neighborhood Bar

bostonmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 164 posts

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#51

Post by futureastronaut »

seibelj wrote: post #13

On the contrary, I’m a lifelong Mass guy whose been in Boston proper for 12 years, and the bars seem better than ever. I’m in Jamaica Plain and Turtle Swamp brewery is packed every weekend and expanded into the neighboring building, which was abandoned and dilapidated before they came. My wife and I met a couple there from the neighborhood and we became good friends, we just went to their wedding. Downtown JP is in a…

There's quite a class divide between corner pub and brew-pub clientele. It feels like for every trendy brewery thriving, a few anonymous bars are failing. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is different, and I'm not sure that a popular brew-pub is a useful counterexample to the general decline of dive bars.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#52

Post by dang »

bluedino wrote: post #38
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier 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…

>> 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 type. Your white upper-middle class is showing

Please don't. Even if you're right, it only adds poison to the commons.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#53

Post by martey »

apo wrote: post #48

About half the article is about a regular named Richard, who dies: > When I heard that Richard was in a bad way, I figured he was at a low point in another cycle. I expected that I would just see him at the Plough the next time I dropped in. Instead, he died. Nothing is said about what killed him, but I suspect there might be a clue here: > Arguably, their [bars'] lifeblood—alcohol—has destroyed more American familie…

> Nothing is said about what killed him...

From the article:

> If the Plough provided him with a home in Boston and a community that was his own, it also helped him toward his demise. When he died at 60 in 2017, booze played a starring role in his precipitous decline.

Later in the article, the author also explicitly states that Richard was an alcoholic.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#54

Post by maxerickson »

acollins1331 wrote: post #11

My 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.

The article makes a statistical argument though, that the numbers of a certain sort of bar declined 17% after 2006. That 4 out of 5 bars are still there follows from that argument rather than addressing it.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#56

Post by brailsafe »

crazygringo wrote: post #22
thinkingkong wrote: post #5

If 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 agree with the others. While these may be options, they're all activities or events, not just a default place to hangout or be and where you're not there because one specific thing ties you together

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#58

Post by addicted »

icxa wrote: post #25
_red wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Harvard Professor Robert Putnam has pointed out: One of the effects of "increased diversity" is that there is a shift away from being a high-trust society. This causes, among other things, increased isolation and social disengagement. No doubt this isn't the only cause of pubs / bars closing, but it is a real measurable effect.

My spitball opinion on that: we had diversity in America during the beginning of the industrial age that we heavily relied on for it's host of benefits, innovation primarily as well, but it didn't create the conflict (conflict theory terms) we see today because you were expected to integrate (conform) to be "American", which was a shared set of values and beliefs. America is still today one of the few geopolitical di…

Except your opinion does not actually follow from the facts.

African Americans weren’t just “hyphenated subgroups” earlier. They weren’t even allowed to be in the same places as white male americans. Similarly, Chinese Americans formthe most part lived a separate life, and Japanese Americans were considered so different they were placed in internment camps during WW2.

Even the Irish and Italians were treated differently when they arrived, and had entire sub cultures.

The idea that the US is more hyphenated today just doesn’t seem to follow from what was actually happening in the 20th century.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#59

Post by i_am_proteus »

watwut wrote: post #28
_red wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Harvard Professor Robert Putnam has pointed out: One of the effects of "increased diversity" is that there is a shift away from being a high-trust society. This causes, among other things, increased isolation and social disengagement. No doubt this isn't the only cause of pubs / bars closing, but it is a real measurable effect.

Most locals have a single race living in them and almost all have single income group living there. Just about the only diversity pertinent to local pubs is gender diversity - it is more appropriate for girls to be in too.

In my experience, this is not true. Income group, yes, but racial mix tends to mirror the racial mix of the income group locally.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#60

Post by lb1lf »

rexgallorum2 wrote: post #32
Scoundreller wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget about the criminalization of drinking wine or beer in a park or beach in N. America.

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 place), whereas you can be in a drunken stupor and mostly be left alone as long as you're not drawing a lot of attention to yourself.

Then again, our drinking habits are mostly a DDoS attack on law enforcement - everybody going out Friday and Saturday night at around midnight, bars close at 2:30-ish at which point thousands of drunk-as-can-be people crash onto the streets.

Post reply on HN