Comment by j45
1 month ago
It's important to separate the spirit of this from the spirits of it.
Pubs as social gathering places are critical to exist and keep alive.
Drinking neurotoxins that have a lot of destruction and damage, maybe not so much.
In the UK pubs are extremely different as well than the US. This site is for the UK, since it's asking for a postal code, among other signs. The UK also I believe has last call at 11 PM, which helps fuel the binge drinking before 11 PM and the wild public afterwards. In North America, last call for alcohol can be 1-3 AM, and people generally aren't in a rush to fuel up to blast off.
Last call at 11pm stopped being a blanket rule in 2003. The Licensing Act 2003 (England and Wales) abolished strict closing times.
Most pubs now have much longer hours (some even 24/7) although they choose their opening hours based on how busy they are or think they will be. The local councils will take into account local considerations and limit individual pubs as they see fit.
Appreciate the clarification. My awareness was around soccer games.
The UK is just weird about that.
Decades of hooliganism (mostly a thing of the past thankfully) has meant that you can't be in possession of alcohol within view of the pitch in the top 5 tiers in the UK. (And by the 5th tier you're looking at matches that have attendances anywhere down to 400 or so, although some clubs in the 5th tier still manage to attract 10000 fans to home games).
This spills out into the local community around stadiums too. Many pubs really close to the ground will have extra restrictions on matchdays, that's probably what you've experienced. But that's not just the UK, I remember going to a River Plate game in Buenos Aires 20 years ago and being amazed that on match days there was no alcohol served within a mile of the stadium or some such rule.
I've been to Champions League games in the UK sponsored by a variety of alcoholic drink companies and they weren't serving alcohol anywhere in the stadium (well, I guess they still do in the hospitality sections).
Even when the stadiums do serve alcohol they do strange things like stopping serving as the second half kicks off. As someone who wants to watch all of the football I've paid to go see it's a very odd thing getting a pint at half time and drinking it in under 10 minutes in order to be back to the stands in time for the second half to kick off. Us Brits just accept it and deal with it.
Compare that to watching rugby or cricket in the UK where you have no fan segregation and alcohol allowed at the seats.
It's also much more relaxed at the lower tiers of UK football. I've watched a few Dulwich Hamlet games with a friend and they allow to bring your own beers in (may have changed, haven't been for a few years), and sometimes have a "pay what you want" admission price.
Wherever I go in the UK I try and keep a look out for a local game, even if the football is terrible the people watching is often amazing and worth the admission price alone.
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Funny enough I worked with an old timer back in Charleston, SC which historically had no regulated last call. During his drinking years they passed a law requiring an 0200 closing time which, as he put it, was a terrible idea because it put all the drunks out on the street at the same time causing joint chaos. In his view having no official close meant folks naturally filtered out over time as they were sated. Seems any hard stop causes trouble?
Sometimes you have to try stuff to find out the unintended consequences. Not everything can be analysed/foreseen/predicted.
Hopefully they were able to see the negative effect, realise the mistake and reverse the decision.
Stopping serving at one hour didn’t have to mean closing at the same time.
How do you imagine this playing out? People don't get the alcohol they want anymore -> no more orders -> No more business -> Not worth it for the owner
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11PM is pretty standard but it varies quite a lot. Some places can be open much later, it depends on what the local council will license.