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Death of the Neighborhood Bar

bostonmagazine.com

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Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#91

Post by AdrianB1 »

bscphil wrote: post #68
rubyn00bie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!).

> GP: And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see way more customers. I agree, but I don't think you'd see 3x the number of customers. > 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. This makes me wonder where you live and what kind of bars you go to.…

Some friends that have a small bar told me the taxes and the rent are by far their biggest expenses. You cannot put 3x the number of customers in a place, but you can increase the taxes a few times until the number of pubs closing gets a temporary relief, then the upwards cycle continues.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#92

Post by AdrianB1 »

Thriptic wrote: post #72
lb1lf wrote: post #60

Earlier 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…

Drinking from a brown bag is not "responsibly consuming freely", it is "covertly consuming".

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#93

Post by whiddershins »

gambiting wrote: post #87

As 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…

Pubs don’t have to be loud.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#94

Post by slipperymate »

gambiting wrote: post #87

As 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…

I've the same issue at times, it's called hidden hearing loss.

https://hear-it.org/hidden-hearing-loss

https://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2017/010...

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#95

Post by AdrianB1 »

bluedino wrote: post #39
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.

You can blame it on young people. Nobody wants to be on a beach with a bunch of bros being loud, passing out, fighting...

It is a negative thing, but it used to be a way of life. No idea if there is a correlation to decreasing levels of testosterone and sperm count in males in the past half of a century since we have reliable data. Possibly taming men to extinction, possibly completely unrelated. Looking at my young male cats, playing and fighting is a big part of their lives. I think this is true for most higher species.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#96

Post by bnjms »

mwfunk wrote: post #83
bscphil wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

This is such a sad phenomena and it's really accelerated in recent decades. What it means to be an American Evangelical has also radically changed over the years- for example, 100 years ago, the Southern Baptists were very vocal, activists even about preserving the bounds between Church and State. It was the official Southern Baptist position that not intermingling Church and State was critical to a functioning socie…

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 churches with my grandparents in our (likely evangelical) denomination and always being greeted and invited to potluck. The few times I’ve visited mega churches it felt so impersonal and hollow. I am a pro-church athiest but I’d like to see the likes of Joe Olstein pass away.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#97

Post by AdrianB1 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
csomar wrote: post #16

Anybody 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…

If multiple sellers, who presumably are not colluding to raise prices, are selling at a certain price, then that just happens to be the market price. Cities have very expensive rent, high pay, high everything costs, so the price of the products reflect that. Also, a bar (or club) is dependent on its social atmosphere, partly dictated by the type of clientele it brings in. A place that sells $5 beer is going for a dif…

Correct, but there are many times less rich people than regular people. If all the pubs are targeting rich people where will the majority of the world go?

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#98

Post by Thriptic »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #92
Thriptic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: Death of the Neighborhood Bar

#100

Post by sneak »

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 believe that the activity-based stuff you list is quite orthogonal to the concept of “the third place”.
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