Quote:
Originally Posted by niwell
It's a ripoff at chain restaurants, but I think in a local where you can sit at the bar and chat with the bartender while enjoying a few drinks it's definitely worth it. The latter with tip generally ends up to be the same as the former beforehand - places I go usually have tax included in the list price too. I have no doubt this kind of going out is in decline overall, but certainly still seems to be going strong in certain circles / areas.
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Exactly... I go to bars and breweries pretty often, usually in the late afternoon. I finish up my work, have a pint of good beer that I can't get in a can, maybe read a book. The servers know me and chat a little bit. Sometimes I'll run into a friend who is passing by on the street outside, or who coincidentally decides to have a drink at the same time as me.
On top of that, meeting a couple of friends in a bar for a chat is a very different experience than going over to their house. Not better, just different, and when everybody has been spending 95% of their time at home, it's great to get out once in awhile.
I feel like, here in Montreal at least, there are fewer taverns/dive bars, but a lot more bars with decent food, good beer, and wine or cocktails that you can't easily have at home. Just off the top of my head, there's about 30 bars within a 2km radius of my apartment, which is probably the same or even more as five years ago. Some of them are places where you drink and dance, others places where you drink and eat, but they're all drinks-forward. The situation is definitely the same in similar parts of Toronto and Vancouver (although in Vancouver the bar scene is more of a brewery scene because of licensing restrictions).
One borough in Montreal, Verdun, had absolutely no bars until 2013 (they were banned in 1965) and now there's a dozen of them... so there's clearly still a big market for bars.