I’ve never intentionally gone to a pub on my own - I prefer to chill out at home, pubs are for socialising with friends and I feel awkward any time I’m in the pub alone. However, this is probably due it being unplanned - I can see how I would enjoy going to the pub on my own with the Sunday paper, but at the moment there are too many other things I’d rather be doing.
Almost always. I avoid loud crowd bars 'cause I go to relax. Downside is I never meet anyone who isn’t at least two of: ( married, male, over 50, obnoxiously drunk ). You really need to go find a loud crowd to meet people.
OK, I’ll go against the steam and say that, before I met my wife, I used to go to bars alone with the purpose of meeting women.
I did a lot more when I was single, but I still do it now, and mostly it’s because I’m a moderately heavy drinker and I just love being in bars. I like the atmosphere that a good bar has. I’ll have a book with me in case it’s dead, or there’s no game on the box, but I like talking to random people too. I talk to bartenders and I talk to the old guy sitting next to me. Those are the best, buy one of those guys a round and the next thing you know you’re having the strangest conversation ever. It’s a riot. I’m kind of the type that I’ll be a regular after my third or forth visit to a place. I’ll know the bartender and most of the regular crowd too.
That being said, it was a better time when you could smoke in there. Having to get up and go outside for a cigarette breaks up the rhythm of the camaraderie.
Only occasionally. I find it is bad for me to spend too much time in my house, so I might go to a movie, but sometimes I’ll take a book and go to a bar and read and have a beer.
Sometimes I’ll go and watch a game I can’t get on my TV.
I am not really that good chatting with strangers, so I don’t usually go just because I’m lonely.
If i did not go alone to bars and restaurants, I would not be in bars or restaurants very often. I spend a lot of time alone.
As a male, I’ve never found alone-in-a-bar to provoke any surprise but eating in some restaurants by myself occasionally does so.
The bar I go to; I have no idea who’ll be there. But I DO know, when I get there, I’ll know about 90% of the people who are there.
Yes, I go to pubs on my own, but in my neighborhood, not in places like Covent Garden. I go to watch some sports events that aren’t on free TV and, during the summer, sit outside and drink beer. I’m happy to get involved in conversations if it happens, but being a shy guy, that’s not my main motivation for going.
I play in a competitive (free) poker league, and I nearly always go to the venues they play at alone.
I generally know a couple of the players or dealers who’ll be there, though.
That sounds super cool, I’d love it if they did something like that around here. I used to be all about Pub Trivia nights, but then I ran one for a few years and got totally burned out on the whole thing. Unless they have nifty prizes from distributors, because I can always use a few more Guinness pint glasses or some free t-shirts.
There are a bunch of them here.
Mine: www.orlandoholdem.net
There’s also something called the Amateur Poker League, which is affiliated with the WPT and has venues all over the world. Doesn’t look like they have any in IL, though. 
I just started…found a place that has my favorite beer on tap for $3 (pretty cheap for Manhattan outside happy hour). I’m also trying to be more social, but so far that’s not happening…even with a few beers in me I tend to stare at the HDTV and pretend to be interested in the Yankees. 
I like to have a few beers, especially if some good beers are on tap. I pretty much only go when on a business trip, and always take a book, my pocket pc (so I can read the news, surf the dope or answer email) and sometimes my laptop to leisurely knock out some work project over beers and dinner. Or, often times I have customer presentations the next day, so I’ll be rehersing (sp?), finetuning or updating the presentation.
I don’t talk to other people and I’m not there to pick up anyone. Much better to use the bar for a hour or three to break up the monotony of getting up at 5:00, in the office by 6:00, work to 20:00 and then back for room service in the hotel. Rinse, lather, repeat.
My now ex wife was a bartender at the local dive bar. I was looking pathetic and quietly drinking my beer, she was a housewife for 17 years with three kids who just started behind the bar. Marriage problems obviously.
I of course did not pick up on these warning signs. I just thought she was pretty.
Oh well, lesson learned.
I pretty much never go to bars alone - just go with other people to hang out, pretty much the same reason as #3 in the OP.
Occassionally, like if I’m on the road traveling, but I’m not that big a fan of it. I generally don’t know what to do with myself since I don’t want to be one of those guys standing and looking around aimlessly holding his beer.
I do, and usually for just one reason. They are hotel bars, and I go there to grab a quick and relatively cheap meal. Most of them have a “bar menu” which is the same as the hotel restaurant’s menu, just more limited. I can eat the peanuts/popcorn/whatever and watch the TV while waiting. Sometimes I eat there in the bar, sometimes I take it to my room.
Sometimes, it’s not just for convenience, it happens to be the only place I can get something to eat at that time of night. Unless it’s a Marriott, in which case I can at least depend on having a dinner of cookies or potato chips, maybe some salsa and a bottle of spring water.
(And you thought computer consultants lived this kind of exciting life? One day I think I’ll do an Ask the Consultant thread, when I’m feeling especially mean and want to tell the world there is no Santa Claus)
I don’t think anyone ever thought that. Although every consulting firm I’ve ever worked for, they’ve always been pretty generous with the dining expenses while on the road.
For a long time, I had this idea that if I went out in public, alone, I was some kind of loser. I’m sure a lot of us have had that feeling; it’s the direct descendant of the dread we had of eating alone in the high school cafeteria. What changed it for me was traveling. I flew up to SF for a few days, asked the people at the Haight Music Store (now sadly gone) where to go to hear some good music, and I went. I hit The Saloon, the Lost and Found, Grant & Green, and finished off the evening at Pearl’s for some quiet jazz. (By that time, I must admit, I was ready for mocktails, not cocktails. I had drunk my fill of the true, blushful Hippocrene and I knew it.) I did this all by my lonesome, and then cabbed it back to Haight Ashbury where I was staying,. I had a fantastic time. I heard great music, met a couple of interesting strangers, and exulted in being in one of the most exciting places on Earth. When we travel we are more open to things like that. We might be to shy to go out alone in our home towns, but when we’re in another city we rightly feel it would be a waste just to stay in the hotel because we don’t have anyone to go out with.
So when I got back to L.A., I realized how stupid I’d been. I didn’t need to have someone to be out with. There were good pubs within a moderate walk, a famous blues bar just an easy bus trip away, and I had had enough sitting around at home, which had been happening a lot since my friends were mostly busy with relationships and unavailable. I started going out on my own all the time. The cool thing is that it brought me out of my shell a bit, and got me talking to people. And the really cool thing is, I met my wife at my regular pub. She wasn’t in any sense a regular, she just turned up there that night.
Going out on your own can be immensely empowering.
I swear that I can hear Charles Bukowski reading your post out loud…