Bar culture is dead as well.
Agree, for reasons already stated – rising prices, disinterest among the young – and it’s really starting to show.
I have only been a bar regular once, and it ended two months ago when the sports bar I frequented for six years shuttered for good after they could no longer afford the downtown lease hikes. It was fun while it lasted, but I don’t plan on being a regular again. Bars are time and money lost, at least as often as I was going there. Worse, the fellow regulars were net nulls.
Are barflies fun? Have they good stories to share? Do barflies pick great music from the jukebox? Can they talk sports? Yes, on all counts. But are they anything more than that?
In large part the social life of a barfly is strictly limited to their bar. And they don’t have social ambition to better themselves within the usual social realms they lack (church, extended family) nor can afford (country clubs, travel). A barfly’s lack of aspiration is a symptom of having little to no vision for their lives. And with a lack of vision beyond the bar, barflies have limited capacity to enact bigger, longer terms plans for themselves, such as eventually buying a house, moving across the country, pursuing college, shifting into a new career, or losing thirty pounds at the gym. They are frozen on their barstools, literally and figuratively.
Barflies are as friend-worthy as anybody else, but aren’t much more than what you see of them running up a tab while watching the NFL. They are single-connection friends, dependable for only sharing drinks with – not much else; no golfing together, or running a 5k, or joining your fantasy football league. Losing my barfly circle after my corner bar closed has turned out to be not much of a loss.
