Thursday

Today is a short stack, one big story, but an important one. The story is about the decline of the English pub and the local bar and how our ability to meet new people declines as the places we use to meet new people disappear. We need to go to the pub today.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

A story in The Guardian this past weekend is about the decline of the English pub. The story is about a local pub in Hinstock in Shropshire, England, in another centuries-old building with a pub that closed its doors. When you think of an English pub, what do you think of it? Is it a small space with lots of old wood, sometimes warped and faded, with low light and wobbly tables and chairs? I've never been to England, but I've been in plenty of pubs, and my assumption is many of the pubs or local bars in the US are modeled after English pubs. We did a little research, and English pubs have declined over the last twenty years; according to the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), the number of English pubs went from over 60,000 in 2000 to under 40,000 in 2019 (before the pandemic). There are many reasons for the decline, none surprising, but it leads to more questions. What makes a pub special, and will there be a comeback?

In big cities and suburbs there are lots of places you can go to meet up with people, in some small towns and suburbs there are fewer places, and sometimes there is only one restaurant or pub for miles. In a place like this, the pub plays a significant role; it's the town center. In The Guardian story, The Falcon Inn was that place, and the town chose to take over the lease, fix the place up and bring back the town centre. Now, the pub is more than a place to go for a pint; it's a place to meet up, listen to music, have a baby shower, and see people from your neighborhood. This gets to another issue during a decline like this. Think about what a pub looks like in your mind again, and now think about who is in the pub; it's a place where everybody goes, including a person who used to feel comfortable going to a pub by themselves, knowing they would run into a person they knew, or better yet, meet someone they didn't know but would enjoy having a conversation with. When the pubs are in decline, when there is no place to go, or no one wants to go places to meet new people for conversations, the silos grow taller.

Another Brit said that line in a song called Heaven by The Psychedelic Furs. I don’t think Richard Butler was talking about meeting people, but our faces are definitely In the Glass again, but the glass is a phone, not a pint. When was the last time you went to a bar or a restaurant by yourself, met someone you didn't know, and had a conversation? If you are like most of us and find yourself going to a restaurant alone, you eat your meal with your face in your phone. Are we afraid of being alone? Worse, are we afraid of talking to people we don't know? At a concert I recently went to, the lead singer said, "It's hard to hate people you harmonize with." He was talking to a crowd singing the same song, and he's right… but it's hard to harmonize with people if we don't go out and meet new people. 

As the silo grows taller and we let the streams feed us, our ability to expand our discussions gradually disappears. We are all becoming the crazy people we used to see when we would go to the pub back in the day. Today, the rest of us are sitting in a corner talking to ourselves or agreeing with crazy digital people online, refusing to listen to our neighbors, our communities, and other points of view. It might be time for us to get out and go to more pubs; it's time to leave the silos and get off our phones.

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Another reason we need to go back to the pub is laughter; laughter can be advantageous to your health, and your ability to laugh out loud increases when you are with people. Until you get to the pub and people, watch our favorite jokesters, pick out your favorite jokes, and use them on the people you meet there!

There’s a face in the glass and it looks like mine...

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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