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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

Anybody think it's about price? At least the quoted guy thinks so

> Why go to a bar when you can go to a yoga class, WhatsApp your friends, crack open an inexpensive bottle of wine at home, and watch something on Amazon Prime?

And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see way more customers. Boston and some other US cities I have visited have, inexplicably, very high prices for bars and restaurants. Then you add taxes and tips.

Add to that the American sprawl and if you are drinking a few beers, you'll need an Uber to/back home. That makes your night in the $70-100.

No wonder Americans don't have $2000-$3000/month to spend on after-work bars.

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This times 1000.

Back in the day around 10 years ago I could go out and spend less than or right around $20 for a night out (a few hours at my local haunt)... now I am unable to do that for less than $70. My wages have not increased 3x; so now, I go out maybe a couple times a month... and I even still drink cheap well whiskey (Old Crow, ka-kaw!).

> GP: And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see way more customers.

I agree, but I don't think you'd see 3x the number of customers.

> Back in the day around 10 years ago I could go out and spend less than or right around $20 for a night out (a few hours at my local haunt)... now I am unable to do that for less than $70.

This makes me wonder where you live and what kind of bars you go to. I'm in a large American city that will appear on any list of most expensive cities to live in. Thinking about the places I've been to more than once, $20 would buy me about three beers - and even that price is vastly more expensive than the $12 price of a sixpack where I live. $70 would buy me enough beer to be passed out on the floor.

Now granted, I know there are fancy quiet bars for the wealthy. I was at one for someone's birthday once and mixed drinks started at about $15. And even $20 for a night out is high enough that I (not quite middle class in this city) can't do it often. But I wonder if you live in the most expensive part of your city, or if your tastes have become more expensive in recent years. To be sure, one isn't up for the atmosphere of a college dive every night, but I think in most cities there are still cheaper ways to go out with people.

Emphatically, no I go to the same cheap haunts I have for a decade. I drink the same cheap well whiskey.

Well-whiskey 10 years ago costed me $2.5-$3.5 now it costs me at least $7, closer to $8 or $9 with a tip. A meal at a pub used to cost around $6-8 now it costs between $13-$19 dollars.

Essentially, I believe, in larger cities prices are more stable for things like booze because you've already hit the acceptable limit for what people are willing to pay. In cities that are already the most expensive, the change will never be enormous, as you all are probably only seeing the increase in price due to inflation.

I spend a lot of time in the neighborhood described by TFA. My experience is that beers will run me $6-10 before tip. Eating anything other than fast food will be at least $12-15 often $15-20, perhaps more if I go to a more chef driven place. Again, before tax & tip.

None of these are fancy places. In fact this description applies to both the bar from TFA as well as the other bar the author mentioned, and both are frequently described as "dives" by people in the area.

When I moved here not quite 20 years ago the prices were about half of what I just described.

3 beers, a side item, a tip and 2 Ubers could take the total bill to $70. Now if you live in a walking distance (probably somewhere in the middle of the action in a walkable place like NYC) that could cut down the costs. This might explain why dense cities have more nightlife. It's cheaper both from a $ and effort perspective to go out.

I think you may have hit it. This article is about the "neighborhood" bar. In other words, it's a place where you meet with people who live nearby. A neighborhood bar is not a place that's a $10+ Uber away.

Which isn't exactly the fault of anyone who has to take one for a night out. This points to a nexus of problems with American cities, including sprawl, and the fact that few people know their neighbors.

Some friends that have a small bar told me the taxes and the rent are by far their biggest expenses. You cannot put 3x the number of customers in a place, but you can increase the taxes a few times until the number of pubs closing gets a temporary relief, then the upwards cycle continues.

Here in Munich, I am about a 5 minute walk to three different beer gardens in my neighborhood. A half-liter mug of beer is usually about the equivalent of $4.00. At some more famous Biergarten I think the prices maybe are a bit more expensive, but not even like London or NYC prices.

At one, we can get fresh-made pizzas for about €10 that'll feed two hungry people or more not-so-hungry people. At one we went to last night, I got a savory strudel with a salad that was a full meal for less than €8.

I would have a pretty hard time spending $70 including meals for my whole family unless I was going to get stone-faced drunk. We go out to the local Biergarten a lot here, because I can get a beer or two for myself and my wife and we can feed the kids some tasty food all for around €35-40. And we get to socialize with others who are doing the same thing. At many there are playgrounds where the children can play and socialize with each other on their own.

It's a very humane way to live.

I would definitely be sad if we lost all of our neighborhood beer gardens.

Move to a small town. There are still dollar beers and burgers to be had.

Careful...most of those cheap burgers are prison or school grade meat. Frozen pucks of gristle.

And you've gotten to the root of the decline of places like pubs: Inflation with mostly stagnant wages. Sure, you can have a "cheap" burger and beer, but more often than not you'll end up eating roadkill and drinking chemicals.

Most people just can't afford to hang out the bar all the time anymore.

And don't forget about the criminalization of drinking wine or beer in a park or beach in N. America.

Amen! Drinking in public should be as ordinary and mundane as it is in Germany.

From my experience, (Norwegian, but have spent a year or so in Germany over a couple of dozen visits), the Germans have found a quite good balance:

Drinking in public is OK.

Being drunk and a nuisance in public is not OK.

I wish we could adopt the same attitude back home - here in Norway you are likely to be fined for drinking in public (though the extent to which drinking is tolerated vary considerably from place to place), whereas you can be in a drunken stupor and mostly be left alone as long as you're not drawing a lot of attention to yourself.

Then again, our drinking habits are mostly a DDoS attack on law enforcement - everybody going out Friday and Saturday night at around midnight, bars close at 2:30-ish at which point thousands of drunk-as-can-be people crash onto the streets.

> Drinking in public is OK.

> Being drunk and a nuisance in public is not OK.

In my experience, this is basically the way it already is in many places in the US. As long as you put even a modicum of effort into complying with the letter of the law in front of cops (ie using a brown paper bag, putting alcohol into a non-obvious container, etc) and you're in compliance with the spirit of the law (ie not being a loud and disruptive drunk asshole in public), the cops will generally leave you alone and you can responsibly consume freely in public venues.

The problem with this approach is that you're still in violation of the letter of the law which means it's up to the cops to decide if they will pursue or not which means now they can pursue you for your skin color, accent, etc and use the letter of the law as an excuse.

Drinking from a brown bag is not "responsibly consuming freely", it is "covertly consuming".

At a summer "Shakespeare in the Park" type of event up here in Puritan Massachusetts, it seems totally appropriate to bring some wine along if you like and judging from the throngs of people around me, many people agree. It's not "freely" in the sense of "you can't get hassled for it", but it is "freely" in the sense of "you likely won't get hassled for it" which is probably what GP meant.

This is the American mentality - it's accepted that you will break the law, because it isn't being law abiding thats important, it's not getting caught. It's quite a different attitude to many places in Europe, where obeying the law is the default.

I would argue that it is not really covert as brown bagging for public consumption is a well known social convention. Most Americans (especially those enforcing the law) know or assume that when you are obscuring a bottle with a bag and consuming from that bottle in public, you are consuming alcohol. It is not much more covert than not placing the drink in a brown paper bag.

But you can't _not_ use the bag, that's the point. You know they know it's alcohol, they know you know, etc., yes. But you still have to pretend. I find it a substantial difference to be honest.

> Being drunk and a nuisance in public is not OK.

IME the result is the same. When we're young and stupid we drink in public because we have to and tend to over do it, then we learn that drinking in public is illegal and the lesson tends to stick even when we're older and not out to get blind drunk.

Typical of Northern Europe and much of the US, unfortunately. Blame moral crusaders and prohibitionists. I like the German approach. I can sit on the street in Germany, play music for tips, and drink a beer without being hassled by anyone. And I do.

You can blame it on young people. Nobody wants to be on a beach with a bunch of bros being loud, passing out, fighting...

There's a decent argument to be made that the over-consumption which leads to the obnoxious behaviors is a result of the laws that make drinking a rebellious activity.

> Nobody wants to be on a beach with a bunch of bros being loud, passing out, fighting...

People regularly pay $20+ to be in that environment for an evening indoors.

It is a negative thing, but it used to be a way of life. No idea if there is a correlation to decreasing levels of testosterone and sperm count in males in the past half of a century since we have reliable data. Possibly taming men to extinction, possibly completely unrelated. Looking at my young male cats, playing and fighting is a big part of their lives. I think this is true for most higher species.

The price, and the noise. Many bars are so loud that I would pay to avoid being exposed to them. Friends who have gone to Spain and Italy say bars there are designed for conversation.

If multiple sellers, who presumably are not colluding to raise prices, are selling at a certain price, then that just happens to be the market price. Cities have very expensive rent, high pay, high everything costs, so the price of the products reflect that.

Also, a bar (or club) is dependent on its social atmosphere, partly dictated by the type of clientele it brings in. A place that sells $5 beer is going for a different clientele than a place that sells $15 beer (i.e. richer people).

Correct, but there are many times less rich people than regular people. If all the pubs are targeting rich people where will the majority of the world go?

Here it's a 15 minute walk to half a dozen bars that serve $3 and $4 drinks. There's cheaper housing that is closer to those bars, so it isn't a special location or anything, just a normal smaller town.

Sure, but then they'd die out because they can't pay rent anymore.

I’m not sure why you think the high prices are inexplicable. The rent in those cities is higher than elsewhere. Thus they charge more money.

Prices are an issue. I support cheap liquor!

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