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I do find that some places focus on quantity of beer taps rather than quality, or perhaps more specifically, a variety of high quality beers.

For the national chains like Buffalo Wild Wings, this manifests as a large tap wall that's filled with Bud, Miller, Coors, and other macro crap.  Maybe a handful of local beers but still not usually the interesting ones.

For the local places, it's sort of the other way around.  They might have 30 beers on tap, but 23 of them are IPAs or APAs.  2 of them are macro crap.  So that only leaves 5 that might possibly be of any interest to me.  It's why I generally avoid beer bars anymore, and just head directly to the specific breweries I know of, that make a variety of high quality, interesting beers rather than a bunch of IPAs and APAs.

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/atlanta/best-atlanta-breweries

We have a lot of places here, but that's true everywhere today.  I was in Seattle around 1988 when this was a new thing, craft beer restaurants.  They had good food also.

I've been to New Realm, we can walk there easily, and it's not bad.  The beers are fine and the food is decent if a bit pricey.  They have a large patio and roof area, and the patio is critical for us, we like dining outside.

Ha!  Yes indeed, Falling Rock Tap House is awesome, I've been there many times and in fact am friends with one of the two brothers that founded it and operate it. 

Steve Black is a friend and was a fraternity brother of my brother's at UT, and he and his brother Chris opened Falling Rock something like 20 years ago now.  But they both started out at a similarly-conceived chain of beer bars here in Texico called "The Gingerman" which has locations in Dallas, Houston, and Austin.  In fact they opened and managed the Austin one, quite successfully, on behalf of the concept owners who lived in Houston.  But the owners never cut them in for an ownership stake despite promises to do so, so they went to Denver and opened Falling Rock in the middle of a MUCH bigger beer scene at the time (and still, but the gap is smaller).

Anyway, yes, I love their tap wall.  They do have a lot of hoppy ales but because they have SO many taps, they also have a lot of other great stuff.  Steve's not a hophead at all and in fact he and I used to drink Celis Belgian-style ales almost exclusively together, back in the mid 90s when he lived here in Austin.  That's one reason why Falling Rock cultivated their close relationship with New Belgium when they opened up in Denver.

Anyway, unfortunately most "beer bars" here in Austin are still WAY slanted toward the hoppy ales, though.  There are a handful that cater more to European/world beers and those are the ones I tend to go to.

But Pilsners are also quite popular here because, well, it's so damn hot, and lagers in general are making some inroads around here, which is nice.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Yard House is another example of your first point--they've got tons of taps, but maybe 25% of them are interesting.

IPA/APA are popular, true... I do think it's starting to shift a little more, where lagers are making a comeback. But yeah, tap lists are still dominated by hop-centric ales. Even here in SoCal, where San Diego County is the home of somewhere around 154 breweries, who probably brew around 1000 varieties of IPA, I'm starting to see the tide turn back towards other styles. There's a local gastropub here called Bru, and they have 32 taps. There are 12 IPA/APA beers on the list, so about 1/3. But that still leaves 20 taps for everything else, which isn't as dire as you make it out to be.

My favorite beer bar is Falling Rock Tap House in Denver, with about 70 taps and a motto of "No Crap on Tap". They have a very diverse list, not overly populated with IPA/APA. Granted, that means that of their 70 taps, maybe 1/3 of them are IPA/APA, but that still leaves a lot of room. And they also have about 65-70 varieties of beer in bottles too, also heavily craft-oriented. (Although I think you can get Coors in bottle/can, just not on tap.)

If you're ever out that way, I recommend a stop. They also make great greasy pub food...

There's a category of bar/restaurant called "gastropubs" that in general focus on a relatively small menu of high quality food, as well as having a decent variety of high quality beers and sometimes craft cocktails available as well.  As you might expect from their name, they also tend to be fairly pricey, at least compared to standard "pub-grub" so they end up being the kinds of places I go when traveling for business and am on the corporate expense account, rather than paying for it all myself.

I like to think and thank the Czech influence for the presence of pilsners in Texas.  That would be my guess.  As a person of Czech heritage, last name only, if we're really honest about it, they are a stubborn uncompromising people.   You can do your IPA thing, we're going to stick w the pilsners. 

IPA/APA are popular, true... I do think it's starting to shift a little more

Good,friends don't let friends drink them.And they must be stopped - in our lifetime.....before they kill our taste buds  

To me they all just tasete like beer.