So, I went to a bar for the first time

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m 40, I’m not a huge drinker but I’m not a Mormon or anything. I’ve been to restaurants with bars. I’ve been to weddings with bars. I’ve been to funerals with bars. But somehow the occasion never arose to go to an establishment whose chief purpose is selling alcoholic drinks.

If I thought about it at all over the years, say if I was watching a movie where the people are in a bar, I suppose the idea filled me with sort of a low level of anxiety, the way haggling in a middle eastern market might…are the prices posted, can you pay with a credit card, how much are you supposed to tip, how does the bartender know who’s next, running a tab…how do you do that? But like I said, it’s never come up.

so it finally came up and I ended up a bar just like I’ve seen in the movies with masses of people crowded around desperately trying to get the bartenders’ attention, screaming at each other to be heard over the music.

How is that supposed to be fun? It felt like winning the lottery to get our drinks. How does anybody ever manage to get drunk under such circumstances?

Still, I’m proud of myself for going outside my comfort zone, though maybe I should be aiming for stuff more like “get a higher paying job” than "hang out in noisy place with screaming people’

2

There’s a reason people older than 30 tend to not hang out in bars. Actually, many reasons. To sum up why young people do it, to get laid.

3

I remember an amusing story about some female Doper who was bringing her mother along with her to some nice resort hotel, and she suggested to her mom that they go up to the hotel lounge bar later on as it was supposed to have a great view of the Pacific sunset (or something). Her mom reacted a little strangely to this suggestion and wouldn’t look daughter in the eye. After the second or third time daughter made the suggestion, the mother whipped around and huffed, “I am not going to accompany you to a bar to talk to strange men!”

4

North American lack of pub culture. So very, very sad. I guess that’s what happens when a continent’s beer is all watery crap.

I’ll have another pint of Guiness, barman, thank you.

5

So we have crappy beer. We also have hotter women. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

The OP was talking about a bar (which sounded nightclubby), not a pub. Canadians of all ages go to pubs all the time - we outgrow bars/nightclubs around 30. These are all generalizations, of course.

I’m not sure I’d be bragging about a pub culture that results in all your citizens being alcoholics, though. :slight_smile:

7

Lots of people over 30 hang out in bars; they just don’t hang out in the kind of bar described in the OP. That is, indeed, a young person’s game. And why it’s enjoyable is somewhat baffling; I hate crowds. I did it in college because that’s what we did. But I haven’t been to a club/meat-market bar in years. (I’m 31, FTR.) It’s too tedious.

But I bartend at a quiet neighborhood sports bar, and the majority of our regulars are over 40. When we do get younger people in, it’s mostly on weekends. We rarely get so busy that getting a drink is a problem. (Unless you annoy me all to hell.) Our jukebox is rarely so loud that you have to yell over it. Like drinks, there’s a bar for every taste. :smiley:

8

More like doper elitist culture.

9

Your sophistication and world-savvy might be better expressed if you actually knew how to correctly spell Guinness (a beer brewed in Ireland, which is a country in the EU)

PS— The EU is the European Union…

10

I was being tongue in cheek y’all, sheesh.

11

Dude, have you ever seen the women in Ireland (where I assume Koxinga is, due to the Guiness comment)? When I was there, they all seemed to range from “kind of cute” to “incandescent”.

I think our bigger loss, though, when it comes to pubs, is the music. Yeah, we have bars with live music, but the culture of it isn’t the same.

12

You were in the wrong bar at the wrong time. Come back when it’s not crowded, or find yourself a quieter bar with an atmosphere that you like.

13

Nah, I’m American, living in Asia. But my great grandfather was Irish, which practically makes me Irish too, doesn’t it?

14

Dude, I have more family in Ireland than I do here. Perhaps mine is the only family there noted for pasty complextions and bulbous noses.

15

You went to a crappy bar.

16

I think that’s actually supposed to be the appeal of a bar like that: the stimulation of being around all those people, the loud music, the activity. For some people, that’s a turn-on; for others it’s a turn-off (and for others, it depends on what kind of mood you’re in).

17

You know you bring up an interesting point that I hadn’t ever really thought of. I never go into a bar and ask about prices. I just go in and order a beer and that is that. I never would think about going into a restuarant and ordering without knowing what I was paying for, but in a bar it doesn’t even cross my mind.

Find a pub/bar that you enjoy and go there. Eventually you will be known (for good or bad!) and then you will understand the draw. My wife and I go to this little bar by our house to start off our Friday date night. We are big tippers there and they know us well–as soon as I sit down my beer is there in front of me, sort of a Cheers place. It is a very friendly place and we enjoy that drink to start off our Friday night. It is just a comfortable place to start.

We hit this place around 6 or 7 before it gets really crowded, it is a bit quieter then and we have good conversations with the owner and the bartender–and the younger crowd hasn’t arrived yet. We have hit it later in the evening and it was crowded but I still got my beer right away! Being a good tipper has its advantages you know.

18

Forget bars, you should go to cantinas.

19

As others have noted, there are different types of bars, just like their are different types of restaurants.

20

When I got home early this morning, I pulled out enough receipts from the bar last night that I got curious and added them up. The damage was $76 before tips…