Children in bars

Why do parents feel the need to brings their kids to Wisconsin? Dud

my beloved bk neighborhood has been overrun by the mega rich yuppie douchebag set, and the bar on the corner now has these awful people with their kids running around and bothering people...it's called ENTITLED.

most amazing misread thread title ever

Please go elsewhere with your progeny

my beloved bk neighborhood has been overrun by the mega rich yuppie douchebag set, and the bar on the corner now has these awful people with their kids running around and bothering people...it's called ENTITLED.

― Iago Galdston, Friday, April 11, 2014 8:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so what you're saying is you feel ... entitled ... to a bar with no kids in it

does the bar serve food? i think there are laws out here about bringing underage kids into just straight up bars... maybe i'm making that up, i don't know.

bars don't have kids in them, it's right in the name: BAR

calstars do you have kids? i'm guess you don't?

fwiw i don't have a problem with this depending on circumstances. though i have a kid and i have never done it.

My sister and bro in law bring my eldest niece (four years old) to bars whenever policy permits. Last time she sat on my knees and jabbered while I drank my scotch.

This thread is relevant to my interests. I take my baby to bars all the time. If there's a changing table in the bathroom, it's fair game, IMO.

Why do intolerant tools feel the need to go to bars? Dud

It's pretty easy with Ivy. She's 4.5 months old so she just hangs out in the carrier strapped to one of us while we drinky drink drink (usually sleeping). We go during off hours though, usually a Sunday afternoon to a place we know won't be crowded or annoying.

Are you calling me an intolerant tool? lol

XP we're pretty thoughtful about it. Like I'm not wheeling a double wide stroller into the corner slashie at 11:30 on a Friday so I can throw back shots while my neglected infant screams. It's mostly between 1 and 5 in bars that I know are kid-friendly for a couple of beers then back home.

Or what Jeff said, as we share that particular baby.

I only feed my baby alcohol at home.

kinda disgusting to give kids blends if you can afford single malts imo

glenlivet 18 (weeks)

On a long flight I see no issue with blends

when I see a child in a bar, it reminds me to get absolutely wasted. because I may be so lucky to have a child of my own someday. thanks for the reminder.

I should clarify that I meant lucky in a truly positive and earnest sense there.

i am clumsy when i am drunk and could easily step on a child

how else is my toddler gonna see some quality live music

xp i wouldn't be so cocksure about it. children are swift, elusive creatures.

a lot of them are dumb slow unattended sacks too tho

Is this thread about bars or "gastropubs"?

^^^cutting to the heart of the matter

http://www.bizbash.com/content/editorial/StoryPhoto/big/e16978image4.jpg

how did you get a picture of my basement

Your kid sent me this shot after his selfie of his nursing a Balvenie.

this is what you assholes get for banning smoking in bars

adam, beware of the smarm patrol on this thread. remember. you must LOVE kids and WORSHIP everyone who's a parent...they're so special!

I am fine with babbies in bars and anywhere else UNLESS they are crying, in which case I am gonna be irritated if a parent does not remove said child until such crying ceases.

I make exceptions for moving trains, airplanes.

everywhere that has good reasonably priced food by me is a semi-bar at least, so hell yes we bring our infant to bars. this is not even a thing really in MN to be honest, kids in bars go back to the state incorporation as far as i can tell.

but yeah, not into anything that would be just booze plus a pizza oven or anything, although there are hardly any of those around, and the ones that are are pretty shitty whether you have a kid or not.

Bars that won't let me and my son sit at the bar and watch a ballgame = MASSIVE DUD. Fortunately I do in fact live in Wisconsin, where everybody brings their kid to the bar, so this is seldom a problem.

dont get the food distinction

don't bring yr kids where there is food either imo

I miss the old days when parents with children were locked in their homes at 6 PM and we godless hordes of childless adults could rule the streets, like the bad guys in The Crow.

I miss when the parents were the grownups and didn't insist on parading around their spawn as if they split the fucking atom

Society is in the gutter

my previous statement only refers to yuppified brooklyn. please disregard if you are from anywhere else, i'm sure you are very nice

Those identical twins in the stroller parked under the jukebox split the fucking embryo tbf

pls just never talk about brooklyn

I just got home from taking my baby to a bar.

Did you parade your baby around as if you were Ernest Rutherford?

No, but I breastfed her at the table while drinking a beer.

Sounds more difficult than splitting an atom imo

fusing an atom however

I once played John Grant - GMF on the jukebox at a bar. I later saw that there were two children in that bar. Have I sinned?

Is there balm in Bethlehem? Dud

smarm and wit? ooh, guys, the locals probably loved having you at their establishment

rural herefordshire is a bit different, there are a couple of dodgy pubs in hereford (and my great grandad was once the landlord of the worst one) but there's not enough people around to justify smokey men-only boozers when only a few hundred people live within walking distance.

The place where I tend bar promotes itself as a family restaurant that happens to have a full bar rather than a watering hole that serves food. One of my regulars is a local tax preparer who talks loudly about her 80-hour workweeks, whose husband is on the road all week as a truck driver and who likes to bring her 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son to the bar to be bored to death while she drinks. She leaves them sitting at the bar to continue to be bored to death while she goes out and smokes. She always goes out to smoke right after she's gotten a very cold drink, so it's closer to room temp by the time she gets to it, which may offend me most of all. Last week she came in with her husband, the 12-year-old boy, and her husband's sister and the sister's babe in arms, not yet two. The baby got its own barstool, so the group took up five of our 11 bar seats. I saw my boss come through the room and take several extra beats assessing the situation; he decided not to say anything. She tips reasonably well.

WmC, this might seem like a strange question, but do you “like” bartending? I like it, but my partner hates that I do it, for whatever reason. I figure— I don’t drink when I’m bartending, I don’t do other drugs, what’s the big deal!? It’s a sticking point.

Anyway, the bar where I work in the summer/fall has been super nice this year.

Not a strange question at all, and in fact my wife and I talked about exactly that this afternoon. I'm usually exhausted when I get home and unload frustrations about the shift — bad tippers who ask for bad drinks, people who wander in ten minutes before closing time wanting a big meal and a long drinking session, etc. When my wife and daughter have come to the restaurant, they see me having fun, turning drink orders around quickly and still managing conversation with bar patrons, performing in my lowkey way. J said, "If I were to go only by the way you talk about the job when you get home, I'd say you were the most miserable person in the world." So I need to work on that and acknowledge the pleasure I get as well as the frustrations. The short answer is yes, I like bartending. (But the job has a thousand moving parts and the parts change from shift to shift as I'm sure you know, and some of the parts are shitty. But occasionally three of the pieces are a perfectly made Sazerac, a customer who practically weeps for joy because I'm the only bartender within 75 miles who knows how to make one, and a 60% tip for being that bartender.)

i haven't tended bar, but back in the day when i worked in books/music stores there was almost a joy during christmas season when you just non-stop knew where everything was/understood what customers meant by 'you know, the red book' or whatever/just kind of flowed through eight hours

(unfortunately there was no payoff. on december 26 you started getting returns from people who have very obviously sliced bread on the cover)

but when you find yourself mastering all the moving parts, the flow is wonderful

btw, how do you handle buybacks?

As a formal policy, they don't exist at my workplace (and I don't think they're much of a thing anywhere in this conservative part of the country where small towns and counties are only recently going wet), but if I miscount the number of rounds a regular had in their favor when they tab out, well, it was a busy night.

(sorry for thread derail, should move to the bartending thread, p.s. we have plenty of kids at the bar)

Honestly I had never heard the term "buybacks" until ilx.

In my experience the verb is/was "housed." As in, "it's on the house." She housed my beer.

They're not "buying it back,:" they're just not charging you for it.

Perhaps I am an outlier, but I don't hear this term in any bar I have ever been in (and I have been in quite a few).

Maybe someday I will tell you about the time I was sitting in a bar in Washington DC and a British woman tried to tip in an English way ("and for yourself?"). Neither person understood the other at all, and I sorta wanted to intervene but decided not to.

My previous knowledge of buybacks was 401(k) forfeitures and restorals lingo so it was nice to learn a less boring use of the word

friends who are bartenders or barflies say 'buybacks', i think those who are neither mostly don't know what it means. but maybe it's also a regional thing?

buybacks are just a bartender who’s like ‘this one’s on me’, with ‘this one’ being maybe a fifth drink. tab’s a little less but you tip a little more

still miss dc’s frank v., who would basically just make up a number at the end of the night and we’d tip him the difference

The pub mentioned in that Guardian link up thread is my local (or one of five or six locals I suppose). They may ban U10s now but back when the kids were that small it was a total dive anyway; the gastropub refurb was fairly recent. Most annoying thing about that place is the insistence on table service.

Deflator and mookie, I have been a waiter and a barfly, mostly Mid-Atlantic. Just never heard it called that.

"This one's on me"? Definitely. "This is on the house"? Absolutely. "They housed my beer"? Many times.

Clearly it is accepted jargon somewhere but "buyback" makes no sense - buying it back would imply that you give me some money and I hand the drink back to you, instead of drinking it. But drinking it is the entire fricking POINT.

Why not just say "on the house," which everyone understands?

‘this one’ being maybe a fifth drink.

ouch

my peak barfly days when I was super in with the bartenders at 3 different joints, it was usually after 2 or at the most 3 when the buyback would kick in. Then heavy pours, free shots, experimental drinks, wild shit would come soon after. I don’t do any of that shit now I just drink at home because at a certain point you just age out of the bar scene unless you are into the daytime dive scene

it was usually after 2 or at the most 3 when the buyback would kick in. Then heavy pours, free shots, experimental drinks, wild shit would come soon after.

^^^

not a barfly myself but if i'm with someone who's a regular, it's after the first drink or at the most 2

cocktail bars, if the bar manager recognizes me, will usually offer a free shot while i'm waiting for my first drink and i seldom order more than 2.

"They housed my beer"? Many times.

Whoa wait -- ime to "house" something is to devour or destroy it. ("Monty housed his roast beef sandwich") and for freebies we use the verb comp ("I comped the drinks on 13 bc that's Angela's friend")

butthouse is like smash something and destroy it, in the style of sitting down hard on a cupcake

― tuppence b. bag (roxymuzak), Sunday, April 19, 2009 2:34 AM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, La Lechera, "comped" is a more elegant verb and yes I have heard that one too.

Still I maintain and contend that "buyback" is alien to me and it also doesn't make any lexical sense. If it is an idiom in your personal world, great; rock on, drinking people.

Buybacks are what they're called in NY and what I've always called them.

And housed definitely means to devour or destroy so if you said someone housed your beer I'd assume you meant they drank it.

Maybe it is regional but I know it from growing up/working in two restaurants my parents owned in NY and then bartending in MA.

Why not just say "on the house," which everyone understands?

To be clear the act is called a buyback but I don't think the term is used in the moment. Then obv you'd say - this is on me or on the house. You would use the term if you were talking about someone doing it like oh that Gary sure gives the regulars a lot of buybacks. Something like that.

But you don't buy it back so why is it called that? The bartender is not buying anything, he/she/they is merely not charging for it. It makes no sense.

Sorry, I will shut up now.

I only heard it after my friends befriended a bartender in Brooklyn circa 1998 or so. It seemed like a very NY concept to me at the time bc I had never spent extended time in a bar as a young adult.

I understood the word from context the first time I saw it but yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. Nobody's ever used it with me. Comps, freebies or on the house, sure.

we need a regional map of these variations

yeah, i’d never heard it til calstars began using it, but most of my serious bar years occurred in Northern California, where “comped” or “on the house” were used.

Llwe need a regional map like coke/pop/soda, yes please

*We

I'd never heard buyback until I lived in NYC and it's still the only place I've heard it. Also, it seems much more hardwired into bar culture there, to the extent that people kind of expect it (although part of the dance is that you can never take it for granted). I've had comped drinks here and there elsewhere, but even for regulars it's not a normal thing in the South in my experience.

Also I have definitely had a buyback on the 5th drink when I had no intention of having a 5th drink. But what are you gonna do, say no?

but even for regulars it's not a normal thing in the South in my experience.

otm

John at the bar is a friend of mine
He buybacks my drinks for free

(See? It makes no sense, and New York ers are gaslighting me. As usual.)

having been forced to think about this:

I bought four drinks from bartender WmC, so he bought me one back

still miss dc’s frank v., who would basically just make up a number at the end of the night and we’d tip him the difference

― mookieproof, Wednesday, August 2, 2023 1:41 AM (nine hours ago)

this makes me fondly remember the days where I'd go to the same place regularly with a group of friends and the bartender was able to save time by not keeping track of my drinks or taking money, making change, etc. every time I ordered a drink. I'd either tell them at the end of the night what the tally was or they'd just say "you had three beers" while looking at me and I'd pay for three beers with a healthy tip

xp 🤯

i think you cracked it, i'm terribly impressed.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/01/i-dont-come-here-to-enjoy-other-peoples-children-should-pubs-and-restaurants-be-kid-free-zones

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Pointless, but very Guardian, piece.

idk what buybacks are, I prefer takebacks, which is where I help myself to a beer I didn't pay for

YMP wait’ll you hear about how Run D.M.C. is using the word “bad” these days

Friday night is like “parents take your screaming offspring to the bar” night

It is. Last night there was a large table and this little kid kept touching our silverware, messing with the folded napkins, playing with glassware while her parents did absolutely nothing to stop her. I asked her FIVE separate times to stop and eventually the cake came out and she was distracted. Free babysitting not part of the job.

Brutal

phones are good actually

I agree — I’d rather deal with a group where half of them are nose deep in their devices than to have to ask someone “please stop touching our things” that many times. More than once.

I'm a parent and it drives me mad when parents ignore the behaviour of their child like this