Following on the “English pub in Norway” thread I have been wondering about American pubs.
From films and TV they seem to be either; Cheers type local bars (quite like English pubs) with regular customers who go there most nights and interact. Or “roadhouse” type places where people go to get drunk.
So whats the reality?
Do people have a regular bar where hey would expect to meet people they know? If not where would they meet these people?
We have pubs?
No, we have bars and clubs. Different thing altogether.
I suspect the habit of frequenting a specific ‘alcohol consumption’ location isn’t as deeply ingrained in American culture as it is in England. Much more frequent that people meet at a restaurant before going out, but the restaurant changes from episode to episode.
I’m not saying the ‘pub’ concept isn’t in action here. But it’s a far smaller thing.
It depends a lot on where you are. Right now I’m in a mildly rural area of New York, and there is a nice little Irish bar nearby where all the “townies” meet just about every night just to gossip and and put a few back. That sounds like a pub to me.
Of course, I have also lived in numerous “college towns” where the exclusive fare is kids going to be loud and get plastered. I personally enjoy the latter only when I’m with friends, but I like the former quite a bit.
Clubs are something else entirely.
I think it might vary depending on the location, I found Florida (East coast, around Boca Raton) dire, even the English theme pub. San Fransisco and in and around DC have some good bars with an atmosphere that could certainly make you feel at home. Bar over there is not necessarily the same as bar over here (i.e. not always clattery metal and chrome places full of 17 year olds sucking on bottles of WKD). Many are micro breweries and you can get some jolly nice beers.
Plus you often get some free areas (all smoke free in SF) and table service. In the ones I’ve been in, there is , except for the seediest some expectation you will eat.
In fact, I found more decent bars and appreciation of good beer on my last trip to the States, than I could hope to find in Bournemouth.
Well, first, it’s rare that any American bar will call itself a pub. Most of the ones that do are deliberately trying to look like an English or an Irish pub and will be a little bit upscale. I don’t go to bars much, but here’s what the ones I have seen tend to look like: There are a lot of ones that are intended to catch people on the drive home from work. The regulars may stop in for a half-hour for one drink or for a couple hours for several drinks, but it’s important to note that these are not generally “locals” in the way British pubs are. Most of the regulars can’t walk to and from them from their houses. Most residential neighborhoods in the U.S. don’t have bars in them. Yes, there are some neighborhoods where you can walk to a local bar, but it’s not typical. The bar in Cheers was intended to be one of the these “stop on the drive home from work” bar, but in some ways it’s not typical of those sorts of bars at all.
Then there are “get-together” type bars slanted toward particular audiences. Every university in the U.S. has a few bars near it that are known as student hang-outs. There’s frequently a certain amount of picking up of members of the opposite sex. In most of them on crowded nights, someone who’s obviously older thas a standard college student would feel out of place. Most medium-sized to large cities have a number of “singles bars,” where there’s a lot of single people looking for members of the opposite sex. At many of these places, it’s typical for the customers to tend to be of the same general age, race, and social class. Often the bars deliberately slant their customer base by only playing certain sorts of music. There’s a type of bar called the “sports bar” which has lots of big TV’s playing various ongoing sports. Every big city has a few bars whose main customers are gay or lesbian. Some of the bigger bars of this “get-together” type shade into something that’s closer to a nightclub or a disco.
Most medium-sized to big cities have a few bars which are known as the places where hard drinkers go. In big cities, frequently the bars in hotels serve as upscale “stop in after work” or “singles” bars. And, of course, many restaurants serve alcohol, so many people doing their drinking there when they eat out.
Bars vary wildly in the US. Some are dirty hole-in-the-wall type places populated with locals who eye you suspiciously as you walk in. Some are filled with young-20s people who are looking for someone to bring home that night. Some are “sports bars”, decorated with sports memorabilia on the walls, and big TVs broadcasting popular sporting events. There are “Cheers-style” neighborhood pubs, “cigar bars” specializing in martinis and high-priced Scotch, bars catering to recent immigrants from a particular country or people of that extraction who live nearby. (Near where I live there’s a wonderful Irish pub - the interior structure and decorations were all shipped over here years ago, and the food is superb.) There are microbreweries that serve their own brews and a selection of other beers and alcohol. There are bars with live bands, or karaoke, or just recorded music played over speakers. Some serve food of some kind - the Irish pub I mentioned has a full menu, sports bars may serve burgers or just appetizers (chicken wings, fries); others may serve no food at all or simply have some baskets of pretzels on the bar. (Of course many bars are part of a restaurant, or develop into a combination bar/restaurant later.) It all depends on where you’re looking for a bar, really.
Oh, missed the last question - I would second Jonathan Chance and Wendell Wagner’s comments about going to a pub to hang out with friends not being quite as common here, from what I can tell. Grabbing a beer somewhere on the way home from work is probably more common, and you might well meet with friends there. College-age and young 20s people might do that more, though it’d be more frequent around the weekend than during the week.
I’d group the bars in the us into 2 catagories.
They either mimmick a style of pub, like an english pub. Or they specalizing in certain things, like there is a good beer bar (something like 150 different types of beer on hand) near where I live. Or you have things like the Tiki hut in Seattle which specalizes in caribbean or south pacific food and drinks. Also piano bars and wine bars. Each with their own theme and own crowd.
Generally, they are slightly quieter and normally cleaner than the rest of the bars out there.
Also see, Dives. These are places to get trashed in. They serve alcohol with maybe a pool table or two, maybe they have some nice features like a fishtank or a sofa.
Yeah what JC said… we have pubs?
I wish we had pubs… when I was in the UK I loved them. I’d hang out at one if there were any here. We have bars and they suck. They probably have regular clientelle, but I wouldn’t know, I can’t stand to be in them long enough to tell, let alone repeat business.
Though I’ve never been to GB, my impression is that every small town has a neighborhood pub. I think that therein lies the difference - we’re too spread out here to have a neighborhood gathering place. Neighborhoods (AKA “sub-divisions”) are not self-sustaining — you have to drive away from yours just to get simple groceries. Plus, there are various laws restricting the placement of liquor-serving establishments.
I have to drive 30 minutes into downtown Raleigh to get to a decent Irish-type pub. And since they’ve gotten trendy here in the past 6 years, there are at least 4 Irish pubs within a 5-block radius (sure wish somebody’d spread the wealth a little bit).
One thing about these, though - they all have live music at least two nights a week. The bands all insist on setting their amps to 11, and at that point these small establishments lose any conversational ambience. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t find loud music to be conducive to effective “relax & unwind” time.
-Tygr, still looking for Callahan’s place. [sub](“Now that’s what I like to see - a place that’s merry.”)[/sub]
I live in a small-ish town. I can count 10 local pubs without thinking about it. Heh. I’ll be going down my particular local, The Leathern Bottel (est. 1758) for a quiet pint with a good book tonight. Lovely.
On the other hand, I found a nice pub on, of all places, Melrose Avenue in LA.
Bars here vary highly. Wisconsin, particularly the towns along Lake Michigan, quite often have neighborhood bars/restaurants that are close to English pubs, with lots of walk-in traffic (and stares for strangers.)
In most suburban communities, everything is a drive-and-park situation.
Our bars tend to be segmented, catering to particularly age groups or uses. Sports bars are very popular in the suburbs; around major factories there will be blue collar saloons; colleges will have a collection of bars for dancing, just drinking, sports, pizza.
Here in Huntsville, Alabama, I live a couple blocks from a neighborhood bar. I would neither call it a “themed British-style pub” nor a “dive.” It is a local bar that serves dinner specials, and it serves as a gathering place for the locals.
By that definition, then, it seems to be a “pub,” but not a “British pub.”