Comment by pipes
4 hours ago
Everyone I know with an Espresso machine still goes to coffee shops. Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs. For some reason this does not hold with cinemas. I way prefer the escapism of the cinema to sitting in my house surrounded by my usual ambient domestic Todo list. Sure I have a very good oled, amazing surround sound, but I'd take the cinema every time. But I can't due to kids.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.
> Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs.
It's a pretty frequent complaint that drinks at pubs, bars, and restaurants have become extortionately expensive, to the point that a lot of younger people are drinking less for that reason.
Even outside of pubs and restaurants. Six packs and cases in the grocery store are all hugely inflated. Since I like beer, I got an old freezer and built a kegerator out of it and now buy my beer by the keg. (For now) keg prices are barely reasonable. $10 for a glass of beer at a restaurant?? Fuck right off with that.
I avoid "bars" where the bar tenders only pour beers. I much prefer the higher end places where every drink is hand made in front of you where the quality of the bartender is everything. I recognize the skill and accept that the price of the cocktail will be set accordingly. There are places that make cocktails with the same ice they use for soft drinks from premade cocktails charging the same price. I do not go back to those ever again after I slog down the one drink. Luckily, I'm a freak where I didn't actually start drinking until I was in my 30s so I didn't have to suffer being broke at a bar.
I don't drink alcohol or coffee, so I can't really relate to the others.
I will admit to having good experiences going to the theater with friends and/or family, but I don't really enjoy watching a movie with strangers. Nowadays if I want to watch a movie with friends, I will simply invite them over and we'll watch it together.
More power to you if you like going to a theater, I'm not trying to convince you to stop, just that I don't feel the value-add is worth it to me anymore. Decent TVs have gotten so cheap that I just prefer to watch movies at home.
My ideal movie experience is to go during the day towards the end of a run when there's a fair chance the theatre will either be empty or almost empty.
But I haven't even done that for a while.
If it's going to be crowded - no thanks.
Tangentially, because my gf works in opera I've been to some productions, and real theatre - a real stage, with real people, and real stage effects - can have a presence and magic that cinema can't touch.
So I'd much rather spend money on that now. It's physically less comfortable because of the seats, but as an experience it's so much more hands-on, hand-made, and satisfying, and creatively it leaves so much more space for atmosphere and implication.