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From what I've seen of it, the UK doesn't have this problem. I doubt much of Europe has this problem. This strikes me as a uniquely American problem: self-infl
by ttymck 3y ago
From what I've seen of it, the UK doesn't have this problem. I doubt much of Europe has this problem.
This strikes me as a uniquely American problem: self-inflicted as most of our problems are.
- wesleychen 3y agoAre you saying that bars in the UK are quiet? That sounds terrible if true, but I find it hard to believe.
- Zizizizz 3y agoMany pubs don't play music or if they do it's very quiet and I don't notice. They are normally loud enough with the sound of conversation
- condortg 3y agoThat's probably true of pubs, but if you want to go somewhere with a good cocktail or whisky selection, for example, it's very hard to find somewhere with low volume music.
- bowsamic 3y agoWell that's not really a focus of British culture traditionally. The main people who want to drink cocktails are people going out clubbing. The main traditional drinking places (pubs) serve mainly beer, cider, and wine. The situation is similar in Germany. That said, in the UK with the "plastic pubs" it is now way more common to be able to get (bad) cocktails anywhere. Though one experience I will never forget going into a fancy bar that opened in my mum's small town and asking for a martini and the bartender looking confused at me and serving me a shot of pure unchilled vermouth in a near-empty tall glass...
- Symbiote 3y agoWe now have a couple of vermouth bars in Copenhagen, and I even noticed one of them had a "pop up bar" at the metal festival. The bar you visited was just ahead of its time.
- episteme 3y agoIt depends where you are. In Scotland it's hard to find a pub without a good whisky selection and in any UK city a pub will be able to make a wide range of cocktails. Having said that, some play loud music and some don't.
- jon-wood 3y agoA pub may have the ingredients to make a wide range of cocktails, but most of them won't have staff who actually know how to do so well. If you're lucky someone will have had some training in making cocktails and be able to make something passable. If you're unlucky they'll grab the bottle of premix from under the bar. Cocktail bars are a distinct thing, and have staff who actually know what they're doing, unfortunately they usually have exactly the same problems described in this article of being uncomfortably loud.
- pmyteh 3y agoWe have both kinds, for different occasions and audiences. Many pubs have no music, or quiet background, and are decent places for conversation. Most bars have pretty loud music as part of the atmosphere. There's a relatively fuzzy line at the loud and late opening end between bars and clubs, for which music and dancing is the whole point.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago"in the UK" is a little broad. Bars in the city of of London, in the hours after work, are far from quiet. A suburban or village pub may be different. You get to know which one in your local area suits your needs. e.g. I could point you to a local pub with craft beer and a quiet cosy corner, and suggest to avoid the one with the loud sports TV always on. In the actual City area, with the tall buildings, the quiet kind will be nearly impossible to find at 6pm on a Friday.
- reidrac 3y agoAvoid karaoke night (really, unless you're certain age and want to sing), and generally sport pubs. Good traditiona oubsl, even the family friendly, are usually quiet.
- ehnto 3y agoTerrible? It's amazing. Often warm and welcoming, a murmur of conversation and you're not having to raise your voice to speak to your friends or family. You don't go to the quiet ones for a raging night out, but for catchups with friends or a dinner with family. Really it's a delight.
- andybak 3y agoThat's a particular type of pub and one that is often hard to find in a town center.
- jwarren 3y agoThat's absolutely not the case for the most part, depending on the bar and the time. Go out to a city centre on an evening, especially Friday or Saturday. Most bars and pubs will be busy, noisy, and definitely playing music. There are absolutely quieter pubs available, but you need to know where to go.
- christkv 3y agoSpanish bars are pretty loud only from the people in them never mind the tv on full blast.
- anthk 3y agoAnd without the TV. Seriously, I can't stand pubs/bars, my GF looks me like I was an alien. I prefer cafeterias allegedly targeted to " middle aged women", they are far quieter.
- diob 3y agoI don't think it's unique to America, I've experienced it in Australia.
- ehnto 3y agoOn a night out even the pizza shops are blazing loud dance music in Aus in the busy nightlife spots. Lately it's even hard to find restaurants that don't put the music too loud during the day. Why are we always yelling.
- fhars 3y agoSo that you cannot sit around the table talking with friends after finishing the pizza and they can serve more customers with the same number of tables. Next question?
- ehnto 3y agoYes, not an edge case of capitalism really is it. The system working as intended to serve the people what they want. Pizza and tinnitus.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoA quiet local pub is self-evidently not usually noisy other than live music nights where amplifier volume seems to always be 10, but I have had my ears blasted hallway to meeting each other by music in all of the last 3 UK venues I've been to (two urban pubs and a rooftop bar), and all the urban pubs near an old workplace were almost unbearable. In fairness, the volume in those was mostly due to being absolutely rammed to the gunwhales, I only specifically remember one of them adding music to the din.
- leoedin 3y agoUK cities definitely have this problem. We also have local pubs which don't play music and have lots of soft furnishings, but go into any pub or bar in the city on a Thursday evening and you will have to shout. Go anywhere "trendy" and it's got loud music, reflective ceilings and you can barely hear anything.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoPainting the culture of every European country, city and social gathering space with the same broad brush is uniquely American too.
- sojournerc 3y agoNo, plenty of Europeans on this forum will paint all Americans with an equally broad brush. It's not malicious, just ignorant.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoI’ve been to plenty of loud ass bars in Europe. There’s nothing uniquely American about this sentiment in my experience
- ttymck 3y agoYeah, I think I wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to the _existence_ of loud bars. The "problem" is that we have few-to-none of the quiet bars. The drinking/third-place culture in America is simply worse than the rest of the world (outside of NYC).
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoI think there’s a fair amount of truth to this. Really the only reasonably quiet bars in America that I’ve been to (which is a decent amount, I happen to like both traveling and drinking) are almost always either a hotel bar like the OP references or one of the dimly lit hipster speakeasy style places. Hotels have the downside of often being boring and expensive, and coincidentally the hipster speakeasy bars also often have the same downside. At least you’ll often get a bit more effort into your $25 cocktail when some bearded mixologist is shaking it up at the hipster joint.
- InCityDreams 3y ago>I doubt much of Europe has this problem. Oh, yes it does.
- freddie_mercury 3y agoYet another histrionic American who thinks they are uniquely bad based on having gone to a few places in Europe..... Bars/clubs in Asia -- where I live -- are much, much worse on this than anything in America. So, no, it isn't even remotely a uniquely American problem.
- resolutebat 3y agoI was once at a rave in Estonia that had the loudest sound system I have ever seen in my life, speakers stacked to the very high ceiling of an old Soviet factory. I was wearing earplugs, but it was still uncomfortably loud and I could feel my pants vibrate with the bass. There was one guy, high as a kite, who was literally hugging the speakers. I hope he enjoyed the rave because I'm pretty sure he got tinnitus as a souvenir.
- beebeepka 3y agoSounds exactly like how rave / techno events used to be here in Bulgaria. Super loud bass can make you horny. I still remember two dudes playing with each other's nipples standing right next to the huge, double stacked, two-speaker Cerwin Vega bass boxes. This was 25 years ago.
- tsm 3y agoI've certainly experienced it in UK cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, London…). Agreed that rural/small-town pubs and 'old man pubs' tend to be pleasant and at a reasonable volume.