Since I’ve not seen anyone else mention it I’ll chime in that Scotish licensing laws are vastly different from England. Here you can easily stay out to 1am (there’s normally a bar open that late within staggering distance of where you are), 3am if you wanna jump in a taxi somewhere. Perhaps later if you’re happy to go clubbing.
During ‘special times’ (the Festival, Chirstmas, New Year, any other excuse they can make fly) everywhere opens later and it is indeed possible to get a drink, somewhere, at any point of the day or night.
I remember being in New York, which I’d been lead to believe was a 24hr city, and being surprised when people told me I’d not find I drink after 4am. This turned out to be something of a challenge for me, and I suceeded, although I think that the place I ended up was of seriously dubious legality.
Lord Mayoring is indeed rhyming slang for swearing (as is hail mary-ing). It’s quite old fashioned, from the Alf Garnett era.
I don’t think Americans can fully understand the role the pub plays in Brtish life. If you watch any of our soaps you will soon see that they revolve around the pub, The Queen Vic, Rovers return and Woolpack etc.
My mum is a little old lady and very respectable. She plays in her local pub’s dominoes team. This isn’t at all unusual. She doesn’t call anyone a cunt though.
After this weekend (itwas my birthday yesterday) I will be avoiding pubs for a little while. As I can’t afford a new liver and don’t want to turn yellow like George Best.
Being a continental, I found the fact that pubs had a curfew tout court very strange, indeed.
Where I come from, pubs close when the last person leaves, or when the bartender thinks he won’t make enough money out of the two lone drunks at the bar to make it his while to stay open.
A lot of places I know close at 8.00 in the morning, for cleaning up purposes only. They’re back in business two hours later.
irish/british/Scottish seem to have a different relationship with drink then continentals. Not the way yojimbo describes, that’s exactly how people on the continent behave. Drink is just something you do while you’re having fun with your friends.
Maybe it’s a certain age group, maybe it isn’t, but it seems to me that more people over here drink to get plastered. Preferably really fast, too. Maybe that is because they know that at a certain time, the bar’ll be closed. I think it’s a bit dangerous to unload all bar/pub/club goers on the streets at the same time. It’s only asking for trouble.
And, I, for one, am glad that there’s going to be smoking ban. The way the government went about it, is, as usual, the textbook example of “incompetent”.
There should be a choice - smoking bars, or non smoking bars. They’d each attract their own clientele, and everybody would be happy. Bar staff could choose in which bars they’d like to work.
See, there’s this little thing called “choice”.
Tisn’t nice of the minister for Health to take that away from us.
Yeah, most Australians don’t live in areas close to night life districts. IRRC, my city – with a population of 1.4 million – has but 2000 people living in the CBD, with a few thousand others nearby to other entertainment precincts. This is a sprawling, low density city too, so there’s bugger-all public transport after hours.
However, skippering (having a “designated driver”) is a time-honoured practice, and taxis are everywhere plentiful. (On that note, I noticed a few pubs over on the east coast allow a designated skipper (he or she has to wear an wrist band or similar marker) to enjoy free soft drinks all night. Great idea.)
Drinking driving is a HUGE concern here – the level of (state) government advertising reaches almost saturation point. I’ll note that unlike the US, Australia has a UNIFORM limit of 0.05% blood-alcohol content. Further, every police car in the country carries a breathalyser, plus my state has several “booze buses” which set up on the side of the road and breath-test check every single driver that passes through.
We still all get sloshed – we’re just a lot more careful about doing so.
On Australian pub opening hours:
The laws are a LOT more liberal these days: the default closing hours for pubs with “tavern” liquor licenses is 12 AM, but special licenses extending closing time to 3 AM are ultra-common. Nightclubs are licensed to serve until 6 AM (many nightclubs are pretty laid-back and cruisy, so they can easily serve as pub substitutes – they’re not all loud and noisy.) In my state, the casino is open all hours.
Suffice to say, it’s possible to get a drink no matter what hour of the day it is.
On the subject of non-smoking, surely having a “no smoking” area in a pub is like having a “no pissing” area in a public swimming pool.
I don’t smoke (but have nothing against those who do). I just don’t enjoy the smell of smoke on my clothes after a night out.
No. I prefer the smell of stale beer, vomit and chili sauce with kebab grease.
Blimey, I don’t half fancy a night out after reading ths thread…
Mehitabel I would agree if everytime you went out drinking it was to the point of oblivion but once is a while is, quite simply, fun! “Everything in moderation, even moderation”, as some cunt said.
And the Brits above were not talking about to the point of oblivion anyway, just getting drunk. Yes, the England has a serious drinking culture and Scotland and Ireland are that cubed. Binge drinking is the norm frankly but a Brits capacity to operate with large amounts of alcohol inside him seems to surprise our Continental cousins (not South African, Aussies or Kiwis though). On a Friday or Saturday night 5 to 10 (20 fl oz) pints might be a “usual” range?
Wait for the flood of twenty-pint-a-night dopers posting in…
When I was a much younger man we used to drink our age - ie 19/20/21 pints. THis took all day though (a “Leo Sayer”). Nowadays I can only manage that sort of thing with chemical assistance
One of the more surreal experiences of my life was being on a Leo Sayer and Leo Sayer himself walking into the pub we were in. That was odd.
So would Americans have anything approaching this? (which is great fun, but a serious dent on the liver)
Not as odd as when Brad Pitt spoke to you in the pub bog…
Anyway, the best I ever done on a leo sayer was 22 pints and 6 bottles of beer, and believe me I felt sair (pun intended) for about a week after that.
Usual intake is 8 pints unless a big football match is on then things get into double figures and memories disappear (from what I’ve read elswhere on the SDMB most american dopers will see this as an alcohol problem)…
Reminding me of a patient I saw, he was a North Dublin taximan.
We asked whether he drank
“Ach no, sure I work 18 hour days, I don’t have the time, except for Saturdays, and then I only get time to go to the pub for a couple of hours.”
It transpired that in those 2 hours he would drink 18-20 pints of Guinness.
irishfella and I kept our costs down last weekend, we got up on Sunday at 7:30am, drank a 6 pack while watching the rugby (poor show), went back to bed for a couple of hours, woke up, made a roast dinner and some brownies, drank 2 bottles of wine, ate dinner and dessert, watched dvds, ate pizza. Good day, not too sloshed, no hangover.
On the other hand, my friends went to an early licenced pub from 7:30 am til 8pm, when they went home and started on Buckfast. They havn’t been seen since, and have apparently spent the last 2 days in bed, recovering.
Not unless you’re doing it frequently. If it’s just every once in a blue moon, I don’t think anyone would really have a problem with it.
[quote] Originall posted by owlstretchingtime So would Americans have anything approaching this? (which is great fun, but a serious dent on the liver)
Not really, no. We just generally drink until we don’t feel like it anymore.
Except on your 21st birthday. A lot of people have the tradition that you have to do 21 shots. I was in college during my 21st birthday and ended up doing 14 shots of vodka before noon. Then aced a Spanish presentation I had to do. My professor thought it was hilarious since I was quite obviously drunk but I was speaking better than I do sober. He said I should get drunk before class every time after it was done.
I for one really enjoy the “pub” experience, or as close as it comes 'round these parts. Generally, wherever I am for a good while (as in living) I try to find one nice, local place with friendly regulars and make myself a regular as well, stopping in very night or so for a couple brews and chatting with the others.
'Course, now I’m utterly broke and have a kid, so I don’t get out any more.
Side story: My grandmother is English and once a couple years back one of her nephews came to visit while I happened to be in town. Now, this guy was easily twice my age, but we spent the evening over beers and then started right back up the next morning, hogging the living room having beers all day long watching an old James Garner film and bullshitting. My grandmother kept rolling her eyes and bitching at us for drinking too much, but it was a blast. He was a great fellow who enjoyed beer as much as I do and we had a great time.
If anyone recalls my comment earlier in the thread about hanging out with UKers more, this is where it stems from.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about the time this rugby team from … Sandhurst, maybe? came to play the local team and found themselves down at our local bar afterwards. Holy Hell was that a good time!
I’d just like to point out that nothing in that quote, or in the full text of the cite, says ventilators don’t work. It merely says they haven’t been proven to “address the health effects of secondhand smoke”. Nor have they been proven not to.
As for American “pubs” versus British pubs, there have been a whole lot of generalizations thrown about and, as everyone knows, generalizations are generally bullshit. So, here’s mine. It doesn’t matter what the place is called; where it’s located is the key. If it’s in or near a business district of a major city or a tourist area, it’s not going to be like a British pub, no matter what they call it. It’s not expected that people are going to spend the entire night there, doing serious drinking and getting rowdy, unless it’s a “sports bar”, and even then it’s only expected during big, locally important games. One other exception is singles’ bars, which are often in touristy areas and where long evenings of drinking are expected, but not much rowdiness (except in “Spring Break” towns, but that’s a different kind of rowdiness).
For the equivalent of a British pub, you need to get out of the downtown area, to a neighborhood bar. In my area, particularly in Southie (South Boston), which is still heavily, though no longer exclusively, Irish, they are often called pubs, though they may also be called taverns, bars, or none of the above. They’re often just named for the current or former owner, as in “Jack’s”, or a place; often a place in Ireland.
Blue collar, neighborhood bars (Yes, it’s un-PC of me to equate neighborhood bars with blue collar bars. Deal with it.) are the closest equivalent we have to British pubs. They’re also the place to go if you’re going to swear a lot, and don’t want to get the fisheye. This I know from personal experience, since I tend to swear more than the “typical” white collar worker (aka; “professional”). In Boston, anyway.
It’s taboo here, too, but for almost the opposite reason. It is only used to refer to women, and it is always an insult. (“Gangsta” rap culture may be an exception to this rule, but being a middle-class WASP, I can’t claim any real knowledge of that culture. My impression, though, is that it is replacing “bitch” as the generic term for woman.)
FWIW, if someone were to call me a ct, I’d definitely be surprised. I’d definitely be confused. And, I might be amused or I might be seriously insulted, depending on who said it and in what tone of voice and in what context. And, that’s about the best you could hope for, from an American. In most cases, you could expect something to hit you in the face, shortly after calling someone that. The only question being whether that 'something" is a drink, an open hand, a fist, a chair, or some combination of the above. If you were to call a cop "ct stubble", I doubt you’d be shot, as someone claimed. The paperwork on shootings is horrific. But, it’s still a very bad idea. You’d almost certainly find out how painful “resisting arrest” can be.
Umm, yeah. That sounds pretty much like me after half a dozen beers. But, as I said, I’m sort of unusual in that regard, for a professional. Sounds like your fucken Aussie working fucken class bars are the same fucken thing as our fucken blue collar bars. Fuck, yeah.
Oh, and if you actually hear someone correctly pronouncing the word as it’s spelled, fucking, either they’re odd, they’re unused to swearing, they’re deliberately emphasizing it, or they’re talking about actual sex, as opposed to using it as an adjective or adverb. Personally, I have a tendency to use the phrase “Bloody fucking hell!”, carfully enunciated, when moderately annoyed with a situation. Otherwise, it’s fucken. People spell it out, on the board, but it’s not generally pronounced that way.
And Cheers, As Seen On TV[sup]TM[/sup], was a composite of a number of types of bars, as represented by the various characters. You’ll never find an actual bar with that makeup. Sam and Coach represented the sport bar. Norm and Frazier represented the typical “downtown”, white collar bar, and the two types of patrons they get; Norm being the serious, but non-rowdy, drinker, and Frazier being the “have one or two after work” patron (at least, initially). Woody and Diane were wild cards, thrown in just for comedy. Carla and Cliff represented the blue collar bar. They’re the ones you want to see in a bar, if you’re looking for a “pub”.
The real bar, The Bull and Finch, on which Cheers was (very) loosely based, was a dive, frequented mostly by kids from the college down the street and the occasional brave tourist. But, it did have a “bar in the round”, a back room with a pool table, and a restaurant upstairs. And, it was at basement level. Other than that, though, there was little resemblance, until they turned it into a tourist trap, following the show’s success. The franchise chain of Cheers bars are closer to the TV show bar, in appearance, at least. But, they’re tourist traps, not real bars.
Damn, that was long winded! I think I need a beer.
