Sound panels. They’re insanely effective. I put up a few at home, and now I complain about every place that doesn’t have them.
BILLION DOLLAR IDEA: A BAR, BUT YOU CAN HEAR THE PEOPLE YOU’RE WITH
WHAT!? TELL ME AFTER THE NOISE DIES DOWN.
meanwhile when the noise actually does die down: SO THAT’S WHY I NEED A NEW HEMROID CREAM.
I mean, there’s some personal choice involved here. My wife and I and a friend, all middle aged, visited a bar recently to hang out and burn some time and it was busy and noisy (like, piped music and chatter noisy). We moved on and found a less busy bar where we could talk.
Back in the late 90s, at a seedy bar with my tech-head buddies, we snagged a booth/table with a crappy half blown speaker that was pumping music so loud you couldn’t hear ANYTHING. My buddy whips out his multi tool and proceeds to stand up and snip the wire going to the speaker. An amazing idea that I’ve really never had the chance to replicate, but inspired me to carry a multi tool a lot more.
I’m at an industry get together right now at an event space that is all concrete walls and has music. Taking a break coz I’m tired of shouting
Grogan’s Castle Lounge on Dublin. No music, live or otherwise. Only drinks, conversation, and legendary toasties.
These ‘factory look’ restaurants ,with high ceilings with all the pipes and ducts exposed, can fuck right off. Then they pump in music so everyone has to shout, adding to the ‘ambiance’. That shit is the laugh track of social interaction.
It’s even crazier that office spaces are designed like that. And then managers are suprised that everyone wears headphones in the office.
while saying you have to be in the office because of the interaction
Finally someone who agrees. Plus they charge so much for some tiny burger. Get a ceiling grid with those acoustic panels using the burger profit. The polished concrete floor never helps too.
I went to a club that boomers go to the other day. Carpet, clean toilets, soft lighting, and meals that cost less because their profit comes from poker machines. Hell yeah brutha
We have supper clubs here, which are apparently highly regional… as in I never saw one when I was more than a few hours out of my region, and that was several years of looking. Meanwhile nearly every town here has at least one.
It’s mostly boomers, tho you’ll find considerable millennial representation these days as well (not typically much younger people). A nice low ceiling, dim light, carpeted place that expects you to sit for a drink or two and socialize before food, take your order long before you are seated at your table sort of thing. Slow, quieter, intimate, and so popular they are gathering spots for old people. Also the food is usually killer, and/or stuff you can’t get elsewhere, for decent small town prices. No poker machines tho.
Oh, you don’t need the music to need to shout. The high ceiling achieves that by itself. Echo, space to fill, or something. Not to knowledgeable about acoustics.
I really wish they made restaurants with low ceilings. You take the tallest people who are likely to come, you add maybe 30 cm, and that’s more than high enough, right? No, they’ve gotta have ceilings so high they could genuinely fit two floors in the one they have. It’s a waste of space, too.
Indeed. It is like drinking in a sweatshop.
Absolutely. When I go to a bar or restaurant, I prefer a place that doesn’t look like a co-working space. Also, when I see anyone using a laptop in there, I’m out.
Aren’t these everywhere? Where I grew up they were called taverns, but this basically every bar that isn’t some scam for young people. Find yourself a dive bar and enjoy.
A pub?
I feel like pubs in Europe are different than they are in the US. If you go to a dive bar in the US there’s a real chance you might end up stabbed or shot.
My personal conspiracy theory is that bars have bad acoustics so that you have to shout, so that you get a sore throat, so that you feel like you need to drink more.
That’s good, but it’s just so people dont linger too long and will leave after they’ve spent money. If bars and restaurants were comfortable people would hang out at them for hours and that’s bad for profits.
In my dreams I’d be running an unprofitable bar out of my other living room. (I don’t have another living room)
I suspect this is to help people hook up since the less they get to know about each other the better.
Sign language bar?
it’ll go bankrupt quick. people drink less when they can have other stimulation
if the place has a dancefloor, it also has to have shit music in between so you return and buy a drink to pass time
So just drinking with friends at home then?
No… wait! Charging strangers to drink at your home 😏🤑
There’s a town where there’s a trend of people building garage bars:
Make them byob and pay a cover
Drinking in the basement with my friends (the various paraphernalia i use to do drugs).
That’s called a “lounge”.
Loud-ge
