It used to be a place for the working stiffs to gather and was priced accordingly. Nowadays capitalization has been overused to the point where a lot of businesses are pricing themselves out of customers.
An average draft goes for $7-11 dollars in my city. And the $11 drafts are served in a smaller chalice than the cheaper stuff. I usually buy a 12 pack of beer for $24 from the store and get drunk at home when I can afford it.
Holy fuck! Even today you can get a 30 pack of average beer like bud Budweiser for 25 ish.
Back in the day I paid 3 a point for some cheap ass.
I’m buying IPAs they taste better to me and still feel like a bang for the buck, I grab a pack of Bell’s
Yes, but bear in mind a lot factory, construction, and industrial jobs are 7-3 or 8-4. So a working class laborer could go catch a happy hour with the coworkers or neighbors and be home by 5.
Also in the age of single income households men were often not expected to pull as much weight at home.
You guys are only working 8hrs? What a life to have. The company I use to work for extended their store hours in 6pm so 8-6 was typical with no overtime pay. Woww saying this out loud really makes me want to unionize.
Found the American.
In case you want real data rather than personal biases, the average us employee works fewer hours than the average new Zealander (or +62hr/yr ~1 hr/week if you use the oecd data). In neither dataset is the US at the top. New Zealand, Australia, and the US are all wayyy above the German/french crowd, though.
Even if the germans are taking two months off they’re still only working 6 hr/day, which explains their pay (american engineers seem to follow the pattern of 1-it sucks here->2-what about europe->3-actually, I will accept getting 3x pay for more work).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours
It depends on (sub)culture, but mainly yes.
Bars were often cheap too, so going to the bar multiple times per week was not expensive. The reason these bars were cheap:
- Outside of touristic areas ground is cheap.
- If the local government allows it, the bar can on the owners property.
- The owner and customers were often friends, so friend pricing would be standard.
- Health and safety regulations used to be less strict. Allowing for lower prices.
- The bar was open whenever the owner wanted, instead of on a fixed schedule, making it more easy to combine with a second job.
- Bars rarely had a menu, they just sold whatever they had in stock. Today customers would be upset if an item on the menu was not in stock.
Also,
- Parks used to be less safe and less well maintained, so buying drinks in the supermarket and consuming them in the park wasn’t really an option.
- The internet wasn’t a thing, so people who wanted to spend the evening gaming had to do so in the bar.
I live in England, but maybe twenty years ago I’d go to my regular pub most days, have a couple of pints and maybe some food, socialise with people I’d got to know there.
Obviously that doesn’t happen anymore, it’s way too expensive now. Going to the pub or out for a meal is a rare treat these days.
I live in a tiny NE college town where that happens but for breakfast at a dive coffeeshop. It’s loud, packed, the food and coffee are meh, but every single day I can walk in there and see 5-10 locals eating breakfast and shooting the breeze. There’s cliques who always sit together, and social butterflies who pick a different group every morning. A bottomless mug of coffee is $3, so folks will just come and hang out from like 8-11am. It’s great fun.
There’s a brewery next door that’s often busy at night but generally it’s a quiet town so folks are home chilling after dinner.
That sounds awesome.
It really is the dream
I like that in the US, New England (NE) is in the North East (NE).
Could be Nebraska.
It is, but they used to be NB.
Did this (Mon-Sat) together with a few friends and colleagues in my late 20s. We were regulars to the point of the cook always making something off menu more fitting for regular dinner, as well as no need to settle the bill every night. Once a month everything was tallied up.
Good times. Had to stop though since I found myself going through the fridge on a Sunday once looking for some alcohol.
edit: This was the tail end of the 90s btw, small town in Sweden
Had to stop though since I found myself going through the fridge on a Sunday once looking for some alcohol.
I had a similar experience except I’d open the fridge before work and instinctively grab a beer or start to grab one before I realized I was just there for creamer.
Still do.
I’ve been alcohol free since 7th April 2023 but it’s a stop on the way home to see mates that don’t game online.
UK pub that’s part of the community. We organise canal cleans / litter picks / quiz nights / charity events etc…
Pubs can be good and you don’t HAVE to drink booze. Bars now… They are a different story I feel.
On a side note I feel the ability to ‘legally’ drink (without a meal) from the age of 18 stops a lot of the idiotic drinking stuff I always hear about from over the pond.
Some of the older old dudes I’ve worked with used to. I actually convinced one of the avocado toast whiners he was wrong based on bar cost now and back in his day
Umm, I’m in my 40s and I do… 😬
Granted it isn’t like Cheers, I just need the change of scenery since I work from home 10-20 hours a day.
20 hours a day? Bro…
I work from home 10-20 hours a day.
That’s fair. Drinking at one’s workplace is usually frowned upon.
usually, upper management go for their hour and a half long lunches and come back blitzed is not uncommon, at least in the workplaces I’ve been.
I mean, people still do that.
Alcoholics, sure
Some. Not all.
Not all pubs are drink first. Food and socialising are also important things.
In rural areas it might be the only ‘communal’ space.
When I was in my 20s I frequented a local bar a few times a week and always thought it’d be cool if the bartender would just know what my usual drink was. Turns out that was not a great idea.
Walked into a bar/club one night and it was packed because some biker event. They had multiple bars but I usually went to an outside one upstairs because I could smoke outside, you know double down on being unhealthy. The bartender somehow saw me and my spouse walk in, ran out from behind the bar and grabbed two chairs stashed in a corner so they were out of the way of people dancing and asked people to slide over and put those chairs in at the bar so we could sit down. Everyone around the area had this look like the queen of fucking England just walked in and Ill never forget it. That’s the kind of customer service that will make sure you come back. The guy knew that business was seasonal, but if you treat your locals well when it gets busy like that, they’ll be the ones who are there when it’s slow season and he’d still have a few customers.
When I was younger I did this and it was the best part of my life. Having a place to go where everyone was welcome was very nice
Did everybody know your name?
Norm!
Morn!
and they were always glad you came
beer used to be a lot cheaper
And bars/pubs used to be fine with the regulars hanging out in the corner, only buying a pitcher of beer each per night.
Pub culture is definitely a thing in the UK though and I wish we had some of these neighborhood meeting places in the US too. They aren’t necessarily a place to get shitfaced but to get a simple meal and a beer.
Fraternal/Sororal organizations used to be a big thing up to the 60s with the Elks clubs, Odd Fellows, Shriners, etc. We’ve lost a lot of that community glue.
Car centric urban design and pub culture are incompatible.
though alcoholism is bad, the lack of thirst spaces is a much bigger problem
thirst spaces
I can’t decide if this is a joke or a Freudian slip.
Thirst spaces is a new term for this ancient person. Could you define?
I’m picturing a bunch of thot’s and dudebros mingling
meant third spaces.
though when taking about pubs, it could work
Yes, and it’s still pretty common.
