I've had a lot of these same thoughts, too, regarding the third spaces of pubs and coffee shops, and how they are similar and different. I like both in different contexts. Definitely there is a gap in North American socialization around where to go when some or all members of the party don't drink alcohol.
One observation I might add is (as usual) a comparison to Europe: I notice that the strict distinction between places that sell coffee and alcohol doesn't really exist in traditional cafes there. Kafeneios and tavernas in Greece always sell both beer, wine and coffee; the same goes for cafes and tapas bars in Spain. And often these venues spill into shared squares or plazas where the socialization is more important than the liquid being consumed.
I wonder if this type of problem could be alleviated with more town squares. Public places people can just walk around and enjoy, with plenty of businesses near by that people can enjoy if they choose to. Want a drink? Go grab one and sit out with other people just enjoying the weather.
I've thought a lot about this too. I think one of the main blocks now to non-alcoholic (or non-alcohol-centered recreation) is the sort of "bowling alone" problem imposed primarily by suburbanization, but which has since crept even into urban spaces. And it's also inflected with a bunch of other negative trends in our society: litigiousness, everything-as-a-service (at inflated captive prices), and probably just a sheer lack of variety induced by the snail's pace of development and redevelopment.
There's this "annex" building in my neighborhood where someone wanted to build one of those axe-throwing/arcade/social-house sort of places. It ended up not getting built; instead, there's now a squash gym and a ninja gym in the units where that project was going to go. Both non-alcoholic activities; ideally, I'd love using them, right?
Except I actually spend more time at the powerlifting gym on the other side of the building, and the legacy bakery that's anchored another corner for a long time. They're more useful to me! Sure, some of that time I spend at the gym is time I might have spent doing not-nearly-as-healthy drinking over at some bar or other space, but I think it's also revealing that I don't really think of my gym time as "socializing" the same way I would a bar, even with the light socializing I do with staff while there.
But back to the squash and ninja gyms. The ninja thing is more kid-oriented, which is totally OK; they need their spaces too. The squash gym is for adults... but one look at that place and all I can think is, "Would I rather walk out of there $100 poorer on my first day from all these stupid startup and membership fees, or walk out of the brewery's trivia night $20-30 poorer and have just as much fun with my friends?". I *get* that it's expensive to keep these kinds of places running, and you pay for quality. But I can't help but wonder how much the squash place's insurance bills -- inflated by our society's ambient litigiousness -- are driving some of those pricing decisions. Or how much of their prices are being driven by high rents caused by a pretty obviously failing national commercial leasing market. And at the end of the day, I can't rule out the management/ownership simply being greedy bastards who, in the absence of real competition down the street, are charging bougie prices simply because they *can* (of course, *I* would *too*, in their shoes).
And lest I overindex on just that one place, most of the other businesses have similar pricing strategies. My gym does, though that one's important enough to me that I'm willing to pay for quality. There's an RPM Sports (indoor go-karts) location in the next city over, where you'd be lucky to get out of there for less than $250 for two adults in like an hour or two. There's the Pinstripes that costs >$100 for an hour of bowling on a Friday night, whose actual alley and lanes ironically take up less than 20% of their footprint.
It's not JUST that socialization is paywalled behind drinking at a bar. It's that a lot of OTHER, non-alcoholic forms of socialization are sitting behind even BIGGER paywalls. And it feels like we're sitting in this shitty market-failure of pricing strategies, where group- and regular-customer-discounts have morphed into a pretty ridiculous premium to just TRY any new thing. You have to all but be prepared to turn some new adventure into a freaking hobby just to pay a reasonable price for it.
And meanwhile, the bar or brewery down the street is offering a product without a price of entry, a la carte, with a high variety of price points -- from a $4 can of PBR to a $20 craft whiskey.
There's a spot in my neighborhood that I love which calls itself a "Tea Bar" . They serve various kinds of teas, hot and cold tea based drinks, Kombucha, etc. They're also one of the few spaces I know of where I can go during my work hours, after I'm done with coffee for the day but not alcohol focused either. They're set up for lingering, and they host trivia nights and such to bring people in in the evenings. I wish there were more spots like this, they're especially nice for remote workers like me.
This seems to get at a larger problem we have as a society, a lack of spaces, especially cheap or free spaces, just to simply hang out. As you point out, more and more places seem designed to discourage people staying for any length of time. And "renting" a table for $15/drink simply isn't realistic for alot of people.
As to alcohol in particular, I am starting to see more places including bars offer mocktails on their menu. These are usually cheaper (though not CHEAP) and are a beverage option that naturally lends itself to multiple rounds, unlike coffee or tea. It's a trend I would like to see more often.
Traditionally, one of the main reasons why alcohol is associated with socializing is that alcohol reduces social anxiety for many people. It's been called a "social lubricant." I am informed that marijuana works the same way. In some ways you could view a bar as a public party that all are invited to crash.
Using alcohol purchases as the paywall also excludes anyone under 21, at least in the United States. A lot of people seem bizarrely invested in keeping youths out of all sorts of spaces.
This was my thought as well. When my kids were little, I could bring them to a McDonald’s with an indoor playground (now closed). That and the public library were the only indoor places where kids could be free to act like kids.
Now that they’re older, it feels like EVERYTHING starts at $20/person - usually more (a hefty price to pay if you don’t have a job!) Teenagers in our town tend to hang out at Dunkin Donuts, as it’s one of the few places in town that doesn’t limit who can come in and for how long.
Coffeehouses are very old. From old Persia to 1600s Europe, intellectual and scientific flowering happened in coffeehouses. They were briefly popular again in the beatnik/hippie era, much more common than alcohol bars. Alcohol belonged to our martini-guzzling parents who were semi-conscious most of the time.
One thought on alcohol - for millenia, humans consumed beer, wine and sake - and usually at varieties much weaker than we do today. Liquor was made in minute quantities until the early modern period where stills became better and could make large quantities. Before that alcohol poisoning was unheard of and, likely, impossible.
Kava almost certainly was consumed for longer than liquor, but less than beer, wine, cider, mead and sake. I kinda stray lightly with liquor for that reason.
I've had a lot of these same thoughts, too, regarding the third spaces of pubs and coffee shops, and how they are similar and different. I like both in different contexts. Definitely there is a gap in North American socialization around where to go when some or all members of the party don't drink alcohol.
One observation I might add is (as usual) a comparison to Europe: I notice that the strict distinction between places that sell coffee and alcohol doesn't really exist in traditional cafes there. Kafeneios and tavernas in Greece always sell both beer, wine and coffee; the same goes for cafes and tapas bars in Spain. And often these venues spill into shared squares or plazas where the socialization is more important than the liquid being consumed.
I wonder if this type of problem could be alleviated with more town squares. Public places people can just walk around and enjoy, with plenty of businesses near by that people can enjoy if they choose to. Want a drink? Go grab one and sit out with other people just enjoying the weather.
I've thought a lot about this too. I think one of the main blocks now to non-alcoholic (or non-alcohol-centered recreation) is the sort of "bowling alone" problem imposed primarily by suburbanization, but which has since crept even into urban spaces. And it's also inflected with a bunch of other negative trends in our society: litigiousness, everything-as-a-service (at inflated captive prices), and probably just a sheer lack of variety induced by the snail's pace of development and redevelopment.
There's this "annex" building in my neighborhood where someone wanted to build one of those axe-throwing/arcade/social-house sort of places. It ended up not getting built; instead, there's now a squash gym and a ninja gym in the units where that project was going to go. Both non-alcoholic activities; ideally, I'd love using them, right?
Except I actually spend more time at the powerlifting gym on the other side of the building, and the legacy bakery that's anchored another corner for a long time. They're more useful to me! Sure, some of that time I spend at the gym is time I might have spent doing not-nearly-as-healthy drinking over at some bar or other space, but I think it's also revealing that I don't really think of my gym time as "socializing" the same way I would a bar, even with the light socializing I do with staff while there.
But back to the squash and ninja gyms. The ninja thing is more kid-oriented, which is totally OK; they need their spaces too. The squash gym is for adults... but one look at that place and all I can think is, "Would I rather walk out of there $100 poorer on my first day from all these stupid startup and membership fees, or walk out of the brewery's trivia night $20-30 poorer and have just as much fun with my friends?". I *get* that it's expensive to keep these kinds of places running, and you pay for quality. But I can't help but wonder how much the squash place's insurance bills -- inflated by our society's ambient litigiousness -- are driving some of those pricing decisions. Or how much of their prices are being driven by high rents caused by a pretty obviously failing national commercial leasing market. And at the end of the day, I can't rule out the management/ownership simply being greedy bastards who, in the absence of real competition down the street, are charging bougie prices simply because they *can* (of course, *I* would *too*, in their shoes).
And lest I overindex on just that one place, most of the other businesses have similar pricing strategies. My gym does, though that one's important enough to me that I'm willing to pay for quality. There's an RPM Sports (indoor go-karts) location in the next city over, where you'd be lucky to get out of there for less than $250 for two adults in like an hour or two. There's the Pinstripes that costs >$100 for an hour of bowling on a Friday night, whose actual alley and lanes ironically take up less than 20% of their footprint.
It's not JUST that socialization is paywalled behind drinking at a bar. It's that a lot of OTHER, non-alcoholic forms of socialization are sitting behind even BIGGER paywalls. And it feels like we're sitting in this shitty market-failure of pricing strategies, where group- and regular-customer-discounts have morphed into a pretty ridiculous premium to just TRY any new thing. You have to all but be prepared to turn some new adventure into a freaking hobby just to pay a reasonable price for it.
And meanwhile, the bar or brewery down the street is offering a product without a price of entry, a la carte, with a high variety of price points -- from a $4 can of PBR to a $20 craft whiskey.
Nailed it.
There's a spot in my neighborhood that I love which calls itself a "Tea Bar" . They serve various kinds of teas, hot and cold tea based drinks, Kombucha, etc. They're also one of the few spaces I know of where I can go during my work hours, after I'm done with coffee for the day but not alcohol focused either. They're set up for lingering, and they host trivia nights and such to bring people in in the evenings. I wish there were more spots like this, they're especially nice for remote workers like me.
Yeah, this is great!
This seems to get at a larger problem we have as a society, a lack of spaces, especially cheap or free spaces, just to simply hang out. As you point out, more and more places seem designed to discourage people staying for any length of time. And "renting" a table for $15/drink simply isn't realistic for alot of people.
As to alcohol in particular, I am starting to see more places including bars offer mocktails on their menu. These are usually cheaper (though not CHEAP) and are a beverage option that naturally lends itself to multiple rounds, unlike coffee or tea. It's a trend I would like to see more often.
Traditionally, one of the main reasons why alcohol is associated with socializing is that alcohol reduces social anxiety for many people. It's been called a "social lubricant." I am informed that marijuana works the same way. In some ways you could view a bar as a public party that all are invited to crash.
Using alcohol purchases as the paywall also excludes anyone under 21, at least in the United States. A lot of people seem bizarrely invested in keeping youths out of all sorts of spaces.
This was my thought as well. When my kids were little, I could bring them to a McDonald’s with an indoor playground (now closed). That and the public library were the only indoor places where kids could be free to act like kids.
Now that they’re older, it feels like EVERYTHING starts at $20/person - usually more (a hefty price to pay if you don’t have a job!) Teenagers in our town tend to hang out at Dunkin Donuts, as it’s one of the few places in town that doesn’t limit who can come in and for how long.
Coffeehouses are very old. From old Persia to 1600s Europe, intellectual and scientific flowering happened in coffeehouses. They were briefly popular again in the beatnik/hippie era, much more common than alcohol bars. Alcohol belonged to our martini-guzzling parents who were semi-conscious most of the time.
One thought on alcohol - for millenia, humans consumed beer, wine and sake - and usually at varieties much weaker than we do today. Liquor was made in minute quantities until the early modern period where stills became better and could make large quantities. Before that alcohol poisoning was unheard of and, likely, impossible.
Kava almost certainly was consumed for longer than liquor, but less than beer, wine, cider, mead and sake. I kinda stray lightly with liquor for that reason.