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For better or worse, the same sort of sort-out that has shaken the US bar scene is likely to play out elsewhere, and Eire is not going to be spared. First, cars took the horse sense out of our mode of transport home from the pub or our willingness to walk further than across a parking lot, and set us up for a lot of misguided missile misery. It's taken a hell of a long time for a lack of responsibility to catch up with a portion of the population, but now we've now got puritanically susceptible portions of our populaces pushing a good idea to its illogical extreme. Going to a pub and having to drive a car home is risky in direct proportion to how low the legal limits are set and how zealous the local constabulary is. This may be part of the reason that the more rural pubs have been hit rather hard.

The smoking ban is another factor. It's odd for me to think back to when I was a teen and smoking was taken for granted as almost a right. Even in my parents' non-smoking house, it wasn't until the mid 1980's that anyone would think to ask if it was OK to smoke indoors there before lighting up. For good or ill, the ban has made drinking at home seem a much more live option to those who do smoke.

There always will be another portion of the population (males in their early 20s) that will be enamored with the loud flashy bar scene. Beer is just a means to buzz, which I suppose makes the unearthly noise level tolerable. These places will squeeze out the older, more adult-oriented pubs in the quest for a liquor license here, though I'm not sure if the system for licensing pubs is quite as bureaucratically strangled as it often is here.

So there will always be a place for the corner pub, they just won't be on as many corners, and will probably be in cities or towns that can put a reasonable quantity of customers within an easy walk of the joint.

[quote:2ou4tx4v]There always will be another portion of the population (males in their early 20s) that will be enamored with the loud flashy bar scene. Beer is just a means to buzz, which I suppose makes the unearthly noise level tolerable. These places will squeeze out the older, more adult-oriented pubs in the quest for a liquor license here, though I'm not sure if the system for licensing pubs is quite as bureaucratically strangled as it often is here. [/quote:2ou4tx4v]

Sounds like most pubs in Dublin. A license costs so much that they have to make the maximum amount out of it. The way to do that is the massive loud overpriced drinking emporium which attracts all people in their twenties not just the boys.

I don't go to pubs much anymore except for the few which have decent beer and nice food. Most bars are no fun as I can't hear what people say to me over the din. Also the din is usually the worst music you've ever heard.

I suppose though the pub trade doesn't want people like me in there as I don't drink enough for them to make much out of me. I agree with Rossa, a lot of pubs turned their regular customers away. But when the new leather couches start looking shabby will all the trendy people stay?

Shabby leather is the new black, dontcha know.

Anyway, I liked it when certain pubs were known as music pubs - and you went there expecting the music to be above comfortable conversation level - be it live music or dj. I also like more old-fashioned pubs. Heck, I even used to enjoy going to pubs to watch sports on tv. The trouble now is (and I'm obviously generalising here), like Bog Myrtle has said, pubs are trying to be all things to all people, or at least as many things to their target market. So now you have pubs pumping out loud music for the heck of it, about 400 tv screens showing English football, selling the same stuff. Added to that some places offer you your dinner to be enjoyed in this atmosphere.
We might laugh at the Wetherspoon style chains across the sea, but your average city pub might as well be part of a chain they're all so similar.

There is a fair amount of evidence that loud music makes people drink more[/url:3nqwnmw1].

The legal limits on sound volume are about 90 decibels (i think). Which is regularly exceeded[/url:3nqwnmw1] I believe. Its a logrithmic scale which makes comparisons difficult.

[quote:3nqwnmw1]Heck, I even used to enjoy going to pubs to watch sports on tv.[/quote:3nqwnmw1]

That's one thing that really annoys me. I enjoy going to pubs to watch sports or to listen to music. I don't enjoy going to pubs to have a quite pint and being made to watch sports (flickering in the peripheral vision where some ungulate part of your brain keeps warning you it is a lion attack) and listen to music. There is thankfully still some no TV and or no music pubs in Dublin but they are getting rarer.

It doesn't even have to be 'No TV', just turn it off when the match is over. A tv turned on in a pub is like a light to a moth for me, and others, and can be more of a conversation killer than loud music.

"a_friend_in_mead":25mkam2x wrote: There is a fair amount of evidence that loud music makes people drink more[/url:25mkam2x].[/quote:25mkam2x]
I suspect it's more closely related to tempo than volume to be honest - I'd imagine that a loud waltz would not have the same effect as banging techno - which is what you usually get in these pubs anyway, so the mistake could easily be made that when the music get's louder, the drink goes faster, whereas it's really when the music gets loud it also gets fast...