What's the point of a pub?
rant shitpost · 41 comments · 900 words · read ~446 times.
The UK is going through one of its periodic lamentations that "Things Are Changing And No One Asked Me". This time, it is over the loss of the humble British pub.
It seems every year0 there's another story about how pubs are vanishing1. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth as the Fabric Of Society™ is rent asunder.
To which I say "Good riddance. Most pubs are shit and deserve to go."
Let me explain. It is quite clear that the majority of the population2 do not find pubs to have a compelling value proposition.
Here's all the way pubs are crap:
- Expensive. For the same price as one pint in a pub, I can buy several cans from a supermarket.
- Alcoholic. Lots of young people don't drink. Many people are cutting down on their booze. Why go somewhere which will only reluctantly serve you a lemonade? Of course, with alcohol comes…
- Violence. I remember walking past a pub in Brighton which had bouncers on its doors at lunch-time. Drunk people can be aggressive. That also leads to…
- Unwanted sexual attention. Pubs can be fundamentally unsafe - whether its spiking drinks, groping, or being relentlessly flirted with. They often don't feel like welcoming environments. And, if you are in the market for a date, you are more likely to get a consenting friend via a dedicated app rather than hoping to bump into someone.
- Noisy. Everyone says they want to socialise - so why does your pub blare out music at full volume from a jukebox which hasn't been updated since the last century3?
- Grim. Sticky floors, filthy toilets, wobbly tables. My living room is just a much more pleasant environment.
- Feel free to supply your own further reasons.
To which the pub connoisseur has a mini episode of "No, it is the children who are wrong" and convinces themselves that there's nothing wrong with pubs. They are, of course, imagining their idealised pub whether the gruff old Landlord greats you with a nod, a buxom barmaid has already started pulling you a pint of your usual, and - goodness! - isn't that your old mate Dave in the corner?!
The reality is you walk in to a noisy bar, the air stinks of sweat, as you struggle to get the attention of the bored barman a fella taps you on the shoulder and growls "D'y'wanna buy some meat? It isn't stolen!"
Here's the thing. The customer is always right. If people aren't going to your establishment because they don't like it - you can't force them.
Lots of pubs are changing. They're offering more non-alcoholic options, they host social events during the day, they serve decent food, and attempt to keep the toilets clean.
But...
If I want decent food, I'll go to a restaurant - or get a takeaway. If I want some interesting beers, I can buy them online. If I want to meet up with friends, I send a message on the group chat. If I want to socialise, I go to a place where I won't be leered at and it doesn't stink of stale beer and farts. If I want to watch the football, I can do so at home on a bigger screen without the risk of the local psychopath giving me aggro for looking at him funny.
Whenever I rant about this online I get the usual pub-bores telling me I'm wrong. Apparently pubs are the cornerstone of the community (even though no one goes there any more) and more like a delightful social club (even though there are better options for socialising) and the combined Meat Raffle / Pub Quiz is what makes us truly British.
That's a load of old bollocks though, isn't it?
As I said4, I love going to decent pubs. What I can't stand is going to a decrepit or soulless hole where the only drinks on offer are generic larger and bottled cider, where the vegetarian option is being told to fuck off, and the entertainment is watching the pickpockets try their luck.
But, frankly, it doesn't matter what I like. Fashions ebb and flow. The Milk Bars of the 1960s are little more than a memory. No one has visited a video arcade since the 1990s. The village baker gave way to the cheaper supermarket loaf.
Sorry pubs, you had a good run. The choice was "adapt or die". Seems like lots of you chose… poorly.
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Seriously. This story is an annual tradition ↩︎
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Although they never seem to be entirely killed off. ↩︎
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Me? I bloody love pubs. There's nothing like finding a snug little table in a charmingly decorated historic building, where I can try a wide variety of interesting ales, while chatting to my friends the whole night through. ↩︎
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Because loud music makes you drink faster. ↩︎
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If you'd bothered to read the footnotes. ↩︎
Jim Killock says:
The bit missing here is why pubs are expensive and bad. That's down to (a) heavy taxation on beer and alcohol, set to favour supermarkets and drinking at home and (b) asset prices, which demand heavy rents, and make it easier to sell them off than invest in pubs.
@edent says:
Welllll… yes and no. I'm not overly convinced that getting someone to push a mop around the floor and sticking some air-fresher in the gents is a massive investment. Similarly, we hear a lot about the housing crisis, so building some homes in a central location seems pretty good to me.
I think the acid test is whether people would still go to a pub if the booze was cheaper. Given lots of people don't drink, and some of those who do get violent on cheap booze, I'm not convinced it would be a winner. Similarly, if the hotels in Blackpool were cheaper, I don't think that'd stem the tide of people going on holiday somewhere nicer.
@Edent
Yes! Being tee-total and not really liking people, pubs have never held an appeal to me, largely for the reasons that you say.
Have you got a new-ish "retro" arcades near you?
We have one in Newbury, and I love it.
Fixed price for an hour, free-to-play games, not over-sold, and loads of machines.
@neil @Edent +1 for the retro arcades, we have one in my area too (Arcade Club, they have a few dotted around the country).
I actually like pubs as a place to get reasonably priced food, and the menu usually suits most people. No interest in drinking though, and the lack of no alcohol / caffeine / fizzy drinks is a pain.
@neil I have visited a lovely one in Birmingham. But, let's be honest, they're nowhere near as prolific as they once were.
@Edent I'm lucky enough to have a good pub near me. I can nip in on the way back from walking the dog and enjoy a pint by myself while reading a book. I do miss being young and having a local. I could pop in at any time, unplanned and see who was around. That's suffered from the same sort of network effect as social media. There's no point in seeing who's around. Nobody's around any more. They're not there because a) there's no point in seeing who's around and b) my friends aren't local any more
@Edent Through both personal thoughts (and those of friends), plus observation, I wonder if the coffee shop has taken the place of the pub for a lot of people?
The nice, quiet pub drink has been replaced by the nice, quiet coffee shop drink (especially as you say for socialising).
@Edent I used to live about 4 doors downhill from an excellent pub, with a cellar full of different ales.
I was generally skint but went there whenever I could.
After I moved away, though, I didn't go to the (new) local nearly as much - it basically just sold lager and held no appeal.
The last time that I went to the pub on anything but a group night out was after we'd had a row at home and needed some breathing space. Even then, that pub had a thai restaurant attached
@Edent I *like* going to a good pub, particularly with a group of people.
But I don't do it anywhere near enough to complain about pubs closing - I'm not exactly supporting them financially
@Edent
> Feel free to supply your own further reasons.
Quality roulette... some people hold up draught beer as the be all and end all of beer quality, but the sad truth is that both keg and cask product in pub is a complete gamble, and an expensive one at that. The pubs consistently providing superior quality are very few and far between. Plus the wine is often budget at a steep markup, and that often applies to most of the other products... somewhat a result of pubs struggling to make the margin they need to survive these days.
Sadly your money is safer spent at the supermarket, where it stretches a lot further. (Or, IMO, preferably at an indie bottle-shop.)
I think many people are happy to socialise online these days too, we don't need to spend our evening renting an expensive seat with bad beer just to talk to other people.
Don't get me wrong, personally I love a *good* pub... but there are none anywhere near me, and I cannot afford it anyway.
I organise regular meet-ups for "London OpenStreetMap". I've been doing this for about 20 years now, and it's almost always in pubs. Because we're interested in welcoming new people, people have often suggested to me that we should do fewer pub meet-ups, and try something different. It does increasingly feel like the wrong kind of venue for welcoming along younger people (quite interesting in the study you link there, where it lists a lot of different theories, some of which I hadn't thought of)
I probably won't change tack too dramatically any time soon though because we've got a good thing going on with a friendly crowd of folks who do enjoy going to the pub. But also if I'm honest there's something about this that just doesn't compute to my middle-aged pub-addled brain. It's not that I disagree with your criticism of pubs, but where you've written "there are better options for socialising"... Are there? I just can't see it working as well if I try to tell everyone to meet-up in a cafe instead. For one thing, they suffer from many of the same problems anyway (Over-priced drinks. Music can be too loud etc). But I dunno. Maybe we should try it.
@Edent full agreement with your argument tbh - if all the pubs disappeared I'd be very upset - if it's just the naff ones I'm not very bothered. Living in a city and having a couple of nice pubs nearby with more further afield is more than enough - and there are only so many I can support with my custom!
@Edent I would prefer a café with childcare facilities (I don't use, but would be happier if parents had more options) and a separate quieter space with lots of irregular fabric shapes to dampen and absorb sound.
but also jfc pubs and clubs can go to hell. Drunk people are nasty, rude, loud assholes, wtaf.
As someone who visits the UK every year I love going to pubs for a local feel as we travel around. I mean, I almost never go to bars in the US because I'm either at work or at home but on the road I definitely like visiting a pub.
@MxVerda @Edent I'm a former DJ, rave organiser and hedonist + a CAMRA member, but rarely go to pubs and clubs these days. I am driving more often so booze and other intoxicants are understandably verboten for me - and folk in town are less well behaved these days making the streets sketchy. The elephant in the room no one in the industry talks about in public is the "good days" when pubs and clubs thrived were when DUI and other kinds of lawless behaviour often went undetected and unpunished >>
@MxVerda @Edent a lot of suburban/rural pubs and "country clubs" should have died out in the early to mid 1990s when the Police got the "SL2" electronic breathalyser rather than the "blow in the bag" type, but they were basically kept going by the rave scene and laundered money from sale of partydrugs - even if the landlord/venue manager wasn't directly profiting from it (and many were!) they indirectly benefited as folk often combined booze and stimulants (so they could still drive home) >>
@Edent i love a good pub and a pint, but all your comments hold. What is up with the prices of non-alcoholic drinks ? Noisy pubs make my head hurt
@MxVerda @Edent this carried on until 2015 in England and 2019 in Scotland when the govt introduced formal drug driving tests and legislation with defined maximum accepted amounts of some drugs, and the Police got the equipment and resources to test for substance use - if you track back these "doom and gloom" reports and expand it to nightclubs and festivals, many start around 2015/6 (also around the same time the "legal highs" all got made controlled substances)
Same could be said for the decline of clubbing. Expensive drink, violence and sexual harassment. not my idea of a fun time. adapt or die as you said about pubs.
news.sky.com/story/uk-cou...
@yvan @Edent there are still good pubs near me, but there are not good people in the streets (as I would be walking/taking public transport to them), so if I do drink (rarer these days as I'm on a diet) I do so alone at home - the only person I could get into a fight with would be /myself/, and I know not to do that (as you will always lose!)
@Edent I wish that there were so-called pubs that had anything else but coca-cola and coca-cola-owned brands. And decent alternatives at that.
Totally agree - it's one reason why I've enjoyed the growth of micropubs. Better beer at cheaper prices without brewery leaseholds, a nice and more social environment etc...
To be fair, we do have a local which does lots of community stuff, had a book library during lockdowns etc...
The flipside is knowing landlords who worked for breweries and got screwed over in various ways...
@Edent I saw this earlier and decided not to bite until I'd had time to think about it.
I once had an article in BEER magazine arguing with Mel Cole that all pubs should be saved.
My stance on that has changed in the last 15 years and while you're both right and wrong I'm a bit annoyed that you dismiss pubs that you don't personally like.
The pub bores aren't entirely wrong. Some of the pubs that you dislike still do have that community thing going - there aren't many left. (1/2)
@Edent I'm in one right now. My local. The beer is crap, the carpets are sticky, the decor hasn't changed in 25 years but it's a place a lot of people call home. I don't come here for a black forest gateaux imperial milk stout. I come here to find out what's going on locally and find help for stuff if I need it.
You're welcome to go to pubs you like but don't diss the ones you don't. I got called out for doing exactly that a few years ago and I realised the error of my ways. (2/2)
@Edent Addendum: we didn't have a pub where I grew up. I used to watch Cheers and be envious of what was happening there.
I moved away as an adult and found that these places did actually exist.
The first pub I was a local in came together when Wifeface and I moved into our first house together and came up with everything from wardrobes to sofas that we needed. Those days are gone but there's still a sense of community in the few places like that left.
If that makes me a pub bore so be it
@mw1cgg that's fair.
But, I assume, those places are thriving and have plenty of customers?
If so, great!
If not, they're failing their market.
@Edent This one is thriving. But that's because it's the only one left this side of town. We had 8 pubs at one point, all of which I would call "local pubs". There are enough people left who want that sort of pub so this one survives.
One day that may change.
But until that day I will enjoy my £3.70 pint of shit lager and the surprisingly excellent £8.50 roast dinner.
Actually there is another one but I don't count it because it's the only pub you can go to if you've been barred
@Edent A vote here for cafes that open late as an alternative. I mean late as in 10-11pm, not Costa late. Light snacks, cake, etc. Maybe that happens anyway in major cities but definitely not in the sticks. Pretty sure it was a thing back in the 60s?
@Edent
Pubs can still be a key part of a community, witness the number of villages which have organised their own community pub when it commercially failed.
They fail for all the reasons that businesses fail but there's a more common thread. Managed pubs where the pub is owned by a management company and the landlord is tied by contract to purchase either all or most of drinks from the Mgmt Co. at their prices.
That is a significant cause of failure.
@Edent having moved to a country with no pub culture, all I can say is that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. It’s a valuable third place that’s open later than a typical coffee shop.
I feel like the number of cafes/coffeeshops rise every year, does that balance things out?
What we need are Dutch type coffeeshops to replace crap pubs. But we still need good pubs to sell me Sunday roasts.
Fair enough points - including the footnotes. Good pubs are increasingly hard to find (and usually expensive), lousy ones are ten a penny.
I love a good pub, but I'm 100% behind your comments.
My local is nice: no jukebox, no TVs, excellent menu, and they provide a community space for the local choir to perform, the local mens' group to have their breakfast, the local womens' group to do whatever it is they do in there, the village cricket team to celebrate their wins or drown their sorrows, me to go and cowork once in a blue moon, and so on. (Why yes, I do live on the edge of the Cotswolds, how did you know? 😅)
The food and alcohol is expensive, but that's true of any restaurant I'd go to. And the atmosphere is nice: roaring log fires in the winter, dog-friendly areas, lots of faces I know, etc.
I'm probably in there once every couple of months. My metamour and I will go there to drink and play some board games away from the chaos of our house. Or some subset of the family will go out for a date night or a family meal. When we have more guests over than we can fit into our house, we're grateful for the pub's accommodation options (and our friends tell us their breakfasts are excellent).
But sure: 90%+ of pubs can close down and I won't bat an eye.
@robinwhittleton @Edent I have recently been meeting up with an ante natal group post natally, I generally much prefer a cafe - but pubs are so much bigger on average, and usually pretty quiet during the daytime - so they’ve been easier to meet at
@80Hz @Edent
At least one of the (many) Costa's near me is open until 11pm...
I usually end up going McD's though if I want a break and a coffee. It's cheaper, and almost as good (apart from one particular branch where it's always dreadful.)
I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've chosen to visit a pub in all my >50 years. I don't like noise, crowds, or people I don't know. Tried it a few times when I've been single and lonely. It never helped.
@robert @Edent
The end-of-business-day closing hours must be a provincial thing. I'm sure they don't see the point of late opening, can't help but feel though that there's a big of chicken and egg.
Agree on McD's coffee being pretty good - they're happy to compete with the more specialised chains.
@Edent
Huh, I assumed milk bars were an entirely fictional invention as a place to meet your droogs before a bit of the ol' ultraviolence.
Acabo de leer un post en el blog de Terence Eden en el que reflexiona sobre si los pubs (entiendo que en un contexto británico, que no tengo claro cuán extrapolable es) son necesarios. Y hay algunas cosas que me han salido de ojo porque quizá no sea mi entorno y porque quizá haya habido […]
@Edent I don’t care about pubs, teatotal and don’t like being around drunk people. When I was in high school we used to go to tea houses, there were couple of them nicely located in the city where I lived back then.
Then I went to uni and tea houses disappeared from my life. They weren’t anywhere where I was, only pubs were near. It did feel like I had nowhere to go to a third place.
I miss tea houses.
@Edent @manum every take on this topic is pure confirmation bias in action.
Normally in rolling waves of age bands 😉
Sincerely, a bar (often), pub (sometimes) and club (often) go-er.
It's like someone that doesn't listen to music saying "live gigs are dead!" because the stats are down in a cost of living continued crisis.
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