I have always hated the bar scene, even when I was young. Now that I am in my mid 40s I hate it more. But I also hate the fact that I have no idea where to go to meet single women.
No joke. It was obnoxiously loud in there. I gave up trying to listen to anyone once the music started.
Robin
You forgot to mention that the music in these places usually sucks ass. I rarely go to the local bar anymore, but when I do, they’re still playing same five or six Top 40 craptastic hits they were playing years ago. Jesus Fucking Christ, don’t people ever get tired of hearing the same shit?
Some reasons why i think there is loud music:
-Unique expreience. You can’t crank up your home stereo this loud
-Makes drugs seems trippier
-You can hear the music clearly, and not worry about people near you chatting and messing up your dance stylez
I forgot if your talking about clubs or bars or raves…
I would pit the bar scene too, but I did really well there, so I’ll have to pass. Shit, learn to dance. learn to pick up people. Learn to communicate by smiles and nods. Or, if you really like quiet places, join a fucking book club.
It’s not so much nightclubs or even regular bars that bother me. In my neighborhood, there are a number of really great and fairly pricey small restaurants, some of whom inexplicably bring in live music during weekends. Sometimes it’s a regular band, sometimes it’s some obnoxious deejay who just hits buttons to play music. Either way, it’s always way too loud.
Have I mentioned that these are small restaurants? Very small, in some cases. So naturally the volume is excruciating. Once you’ve had the appetizer and ordered the meal, it’s kind of hard to pick up and go, and no appeals to the wait person will help (they generally don’t like it either, but it’s not their decision).
I’ll never understand why nice restaurants do this. Or coffee houses, other than the occasional folkie with a guitar. I know to avoid those places in the future. Maybe I should write letters, never thought of that before.
Perhaps you should learn to have a nice conversation with someone. I know, don’t go to bars and clubs if you don’t like drinking and dancing, but why the hell do restaurants and "fucking book club"s do this kind of thing? Maybe it’s attitudes like yours, that if you don’t want to dance and scream and drink (even if it’s just for one day) you must be a loser bookworm.
Alma - your first post is more what I was talking about. Around here it seems that EVERY eating establishment where someone could go with a date for a night out (and I don’t mean a first date, either, but even just to go with someone and relax) has music that BLARES. There’s a small Irish place I used to frequent that had live music. Picture a small area, maybe 10’ wide, and about 40’ long, with small tables and 2 guys singing and the speakers and amps up all the way so that instead of it being easier to hear, it’s actually harder due to distortion and the self destruction of my ears. Now, that’s just one place. I can take out a map of downtown and point to every place possible to go for a nice meal, and that isn’t some shitty chain restaurant and ALL of them have music extremely loud at one night or another (if not every night). And not all them even have a place to dance. WTF? Sure, I could go to a REALLY nice place and get quiet music, but for just a casual get together with good food, forget it. And the argument that the music is loud so that your conversation stays private- how private is it when everyone is YELLING to be heard to the person in the seat next to them. It’s mind boggling.
I had the same problem, I was essentially deaf in any setting with a lot of ambient noise, so I went with the smile and nod approach. Unfortunately, being a chick I ended up unknowingly agreeing to things I wouldn’t have agreed to if I had any idea what I was being asked.
This is one reason why I love my local bar. No live music, and a jukebox with a rather varied selection, probably the only place you can go from Johnny Cash to Bauhaus to Beethoven. (Although perhaps too much David Bowie.) The music is not played too loud for conversation.
Just the other night, someone started playing music on the jukebox for the first time that evening. It was pretty loud. I was just about to ask the bartender to turn it down, but he did so before I could ask. It helps that the bartenders often like to talk to the customers , and they want to be able to hear.
Hey, abby. How you doin’?
(nod, nod)
Thank you for that!
I always liked that song but I didn’t know it was the Tubes.
Tell me about it. In Cleveland, 99% of all bars fall into the following categories:
- Extremely loud bars catering to the college and early 20something crowd.
- Extremely loud, uber-hip bars catering to the uber-hip mid-20 to mid-30s crowd.
- Gay bars.
- Old man bars where it’s a union card-holding sausage party until the clock strikes 2:00 AM.
- Bars where whitey ain’t welcome, know what I’m sayin?
If you’re over 35 and not a blue-collar Joe, forget it. If you want quiet and upscale, forget it, even in old-money communities like Shaker Heights.
I thought I found an ideal local - hundreds of beers from around the world, intelligent patrons, friendly staff, good conversation - until 8:00 PM, when the uber-hip crowd floods through the door, and the sound system is cranked up to 11 with the beat of East German trance music. The ojly other places where I feel comfortable charge stiff cover charges for live jazz and blues bands on most nights. Sigh.
Now that sounds like fun. You could try a little mortadella, a little knockwurst, a little keilbasa and…
What?
I have a feeling it’s not just the volume of the PA system in some places, it’s the decor. One of the nearest bars to my work, a tapas bar, suffers from terrible acoustics. They’ve opted for the minimalist style of pale-wood/brushed aluminium tables/chairs, cement floor and such a minimal ceiling that it’s stripped back to bare cement and ventilation pipes.
And when they have music playing, not only is it too loud, but the definition of the sound is so terrible as to make each tune unrecognisable, which is tied up with the plain volume of chatter in the place. My thinking is that without the soft furnishings to absorb some of the noise, the hi-hats in the music combined with noise of conversation just rattle around the room uncontrollably.
While some pubs here still exist (before their inevitable transformation into faceless over-glossed bars) that’s where I’ll be going.
Alma…where in Chicago do you live? Not to hijack, but when I lived downtown, there were plenty of places to go and talk without screeching like a wildebeest.
To be honest, I like a bar with some music. I’d also rather not scream at my date, but to be honest, you have to scream at women to make them understand things! 
Me: “I like books, and you?”
Girl: “I have boobs!”
No complaints.
::d&r::
-Cem
Sounds like Cheektowaga, at one of dose der bars der like da Peter K’s der on dat Harlemroat der, across from da Townpark der.