Hearthly wrote:
Who really goes to the pub regularly these days?
When I was growing up pubs were places you went to because they were better than home. There was one telly in the house that you couldn't choose what to watch on 'cause your dad had it all booked out, and there was fuck all else to do, so of course you were down the pub with your mates all the time once you could get served. (Yes you might have had a computer on a portable telly in your room or something, but there was no internet or shit like that.)
Pubs had alcohol, and pool and darts, and pinballs and video games and fruit machines and fanny - it was the obvious choice, and because loads of people liked going to the pub, they were lively places to go to.
Fast forward to today and thinking around my friends who have offspring of 'pub-going age' hardly any of them bother, and why would they? Pubs are shit, the drinks cost a fortune, and there are far more forms of entertainment at home. Why pay £1 for a game of pool on a knackered table with shit cues when you've got Battlefield 4 at home and can Snapchat pics of genitals back and forth with your girlfriend?
And amongst my peers the number of times we go to the pub per year probably doesn't even get into double figures, we'll do a session once in a while as a sort of social occasion, but the old concept of 'going out to the pub' as a standard leisure pastime is just totally gone.
The prices don't help of course, a decent lager will set you back north of £4 per pint, bitter probably about £3, and if you move onto spirits things can get very expensive, very quickly.
I don't think the pub will die out completely, but the current trend of their numbers substantially declining still has some way to run IMO.
I can relate to a lot of that, despite not being in my early 20s, or quite as old as some as you lot.
When I was A-levels age, I rarely went to pubs, as I couldn't see the point and din't enjoy it. Spending money to spend time in a dark, loud place filled with carcinogenic fumes and aggressive randoms… No thanks. My main friends could afford to go regularly, as unlike me they didn't enter further education and had jobs or were on the dole but living with parents, but I couldn't spend income that I didn't have. (I wanted to save what money I had for going to university as well.) And to be honest, I didn't like how my friends acted in pubs, they were the violent sort so that wasn't an issue, but went all introverted and quiet and miserable whenever they consumed alcohol in the pubs. At home, in a well-lit atmosphere where we could hear each other, and perhaps play a few games, it was OK. Even quite good fun. But not in pubs.