Cha-ching!

You’re not just paying for the alcohol. You’re paying for service, a place to hang out, and not having to kick drunk people out of your home.

All very valid - my one is paying to not have to clear up or load a dishwasher with a banging fucking headache the next morning.
It's an expensive luxury these days, though.
- Ah yes, dishes too. You also don’t have to deal with piss on the floor, puke, and all the other potential grossness of drunks

A T M O S P H E R E

That’s a wild take. Most people I know don’t go to bars for an efficient alcoholic experience. They go so they can dance and talk with people. Sure its like $7 a beer or $13 a drink, but that pays for clean up you don’t have to do, a place to hang out, and giving people willing to work late money to live. I don’t have any alcohol at home since it’s honestly too cheap and has already caused me problems.

Most people I know don’t go to bars for an efficient alcoholic experience.
To reinforce what you're saying, bartenders I know tend to only have stories about one-off degeneracy that happens over the course of one night. But liquor store cashiers have stories about their regulars destroying their own lives over the course of months or years.
Oh my God such an incredible hassle to toss my empty can in the recycling. Thank God for bars for doing the clean up. God bless 🙏🙏🙏
- Your snark doesn’t really land when you obviously avoided my entire point of bars being a social thing. You wanna stay home and drink cheaper stuff by yourself, go nuts. I’m still gonna go out and make friends and memories.
- Your lonely empty can, yeah.
- did you need tweezers to pick that tiny part of the comment to respond to?

It's one of the few third places left, and one of the only third places open late when people are out of normal 9 to 5 work

Look how they massacred most coffee shops. 99% of them are for grabbing coffee togo, not for sitting down in.

Isn't the definiton of a third place that you can go there and just chill, without having to spend money?
- The definition I always used is just a place separate from home and work
  Given that coffee shops are (were) considered third places the expectations of not needing to spend money isn't really part of the definition I would say.
  
  yea pretty sure 3rd spaces require no cost
  park / library
  don’t think coffee shop counts but maybe the idea is low cost?
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
  Bars and coffee shops are listed as examples here. The definition used doesn't include no cost, because otherwise so many places don't fall under the category
  
  I’m aware and the creator of the term would be opposed but capitalism is good at subsuming all criticism
  
  Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafés, coffeehouses, post offices, and other "third places" are the heart of a community's social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy.[6]
  The creator of the term himself had pubs and cafes listed as examples of a third place.
  He is aware that modern suburbs only offer first and second places with a mandatory car-centric commute between them, and that "public" places have become commercialized to the extent in which one is required to purchase a good or service and is forbidden to "loitering."[8]
  Sure the regulation against loitering obviously takes away the convenience nature of third places, but traditionally these places don't enforce the need to spend money to exist in the space. It's also not prohibitively expensive even if you spend money, i.e. its a place where people can conveniently make plans to hang out at.
  To your point on capitalism, I've already talked about how capitalism are actively destroying cafes as third places. Starbucks as a notorious example has been promoting drive thru so much, taking away actual indoors space, and destroying the social aspect of cafes. Yes capitalism is bad and malicious in this sense, but a place isn't disqualified as a third place just because you can spend money there.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Oldenburg
  Edit: better formatting
  
  you pretty much quote my point, which is why I talk about low cost in my original reply (yes I said no co coat at first because the spirit is prevent comunity barriers)
  if the cost is high enough to be a barrier to entry it’s not rally a 3rd space in spirit even if it is called a name in his list
  which given murica today isn’t American coffee shops in his day
  buy a 12$ late then get the fuck out is not a 3rd space
  
  Your original point was that third places require no cost. If you want to change to low cost, then bars and cafes still fit that category.
  The average person can afford to order a beer or a coffee during their hangout. I've worked at Starbucks before, in a mall. It's an average of 5 to 6 usd for a drink. The cafe my friend works in is the same. An average place is not serving 12 dollar lattes. The outliers here is some crazy customization, like if you ordered a veinte frappe with cold foam and extra pumps of syrup and subbing whole milk for oat, all that jazz, and the cashier decided to actually ring you up for all of it, or if you decided to go to erewhon.
  There is obviously a financial barrier for classifying third places, but that barrier is moreso on the restaurant level in my opinion.
  I could talk end to end about how capitalism and world events has led to the slow destruction of the cafe as a third place, but that doesn't mean a traditional cafe and pub is not one. I'm obviously not going to consider erewhon a third place. I'm not going to consider a bar in a penthouse hotel a third place.
  Here's an example of UC talking about pubs and cafes being a third place. It even talks about the idea of spending money and free third places.
  https://esl.uchicago.edu/2023/11/01/third-places-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-important-to-american-culture/

The bar fits many many more people, some of whom you don't already know!

For watered down shet :<