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Cultural Differences: Pubs v. Bars
Sep. 18th, 2013 10:14 amThere is a fascinating conversation going on over here at Bart Calendar's place. It dovetails with one of the things I've found strange about living in the US, the attitudes towards drinking. Now, I'll accept that as I understand things there's currently a lot of debate in the UK about drinking habits among the young but as a lot of my data seems to come from the Daily Mail, I have to wonder how much of it is made up shit.
However, my experience of moving to the US was that I found people in the US tended to go out and binge drink more than people in the UK, and that, in general, there seemed to be a fairly binary relationship between alcohol and a lot of the people I knew here who worked for me. If they weren't going out to eat, they seemed to think that if they were going out for a drink, the goal was to get seriously drunk.
My introduction to that came on St Patrick's Day, which isn't actually all that big a holiday in Ireland (except for a parade created to capitalize on the wallets and expectations of tourists). It was the last day of the 6 Nations and I went to the pub at 6am to watch the games. By the time I left at 1pm, I'd been drinking fairly consistently for about 6 hours but there were people in the pub who were wasted who'd been there less than 2 hours. The idea of pacing drinks just seemed to be an alien concept. You don't have to get drunk everytime you have a drink...
I can maintain a steady, slow, rate of drinking for a long time. At conventions I (and many others) will maintain a steady intake of beers from morning to... er... well... actually morning :) - but at no point actually getting seriously drunk. That's not to say I haven't been hammered at Cons it's just less frequent.
Since moving here I've also noticed that bars are just less welcoming places, on the whole, than a pub in the UK or Paris. I'd think nothing of walking into almost any pub in the UK with a newspaper, buying a drink and sitting down quietly for an hour or two. In the US I've spent a lot of time looking for a place to do the same. A lot of bars just are too dingy and dive 'like' where they actively look like a place you wouldn't go into. Others are too up market where it looks unwelcoming. Finally, many bars, for local licensing reasons are basically set up as restaurants.
It took me years to find a 'local' where I live now. And even after 3+ years as a regular, they still seem confused that I'll 'pop in' for a swift one while walking the dogs or shopping or just to do a little work, and then head off.
However, my experience of moving to the US was that I found people in the US tended to go out and binge drink more than people in the UK, and that, in general, there seemed to be a fairly binary relationship between alcohol and a lot of the people I knew here who worked for me. If they weren't going out to eat, they seemed to think that if they were going out for a drink, the goal was to get seriously drunk.
My introduction to that came on St Patrick's Day, which isn't actually all that big a holiday in Ireland (except for a parade created to capitalize on the wallets and expectations of tourists). It was the last day of the 6 Nations and I went to the pub at 6am to watch the games. By the time I left at 1pm, I'd been drinking fairly consistently for about 6 hours but there were people in the pub who were wasted who'd been there less than 2 hours. The idea of pacing drinks just seemed to be an alien concept. You don't have to get drunk everytime you have a drink...
I can maintain a steady, slow, rate of drinking for a long time. At conventions I (and many others) will maintain a steady intake of beers from morning to... er... well... actually morning :) - but at no point actually getting seriously drunk. That's not to say I haven't been hammered at Cons it's just less frequent.
Since moving here I've also noticed that bars are just less welcoming places, on the whole, than a pub in the UK or Paris. I'd think nothing of walking into almost any pub in the UK with a newspaper, buying a drink and sitting down quietly for an hour or two. In the US I've spent a lot of time looking for a place to do the same. A lot of bars just are too dingy and dive 'like' where they actively look like a place you wouldn't go into. Others are too up market where it looks unwelcoming. Finally, many bars, for local licensing reasons are basically set up as restaurants.
It took me years to find a 'local' where I live now. And even after 3+ years as a regular, they still seem confused that I'll 'pop in' for a swift one while walking the dogs or shopping or just to do a little work, and then head off.
