*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.

There is a reason the prime meridian goes through Greenwich and it isn’t because we asked nicely.

You pay a percentage of the hypothetical rent as tax. There is a lower rate if you're a small business, and there are also tax reliefs for various reasons (charity, partial building occupation, etc.)

But pubs have been in trouble for quite some time: https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2025/05/27/numbe...

Pubs have high costs, small margins and customers are extremely price-sensitive. What pubs are generally asking for is more types of relief, because what we tend to see is pubs close, people in the area become more isolated, and the building remains empty for years thereafter. [] Pubs appreciated the post-COVID relief, but tax rates are about to shoot up.

[] fun fact: if the building is vacant, its landlord must pay rates as if it's 100% occupied. Hence this brazen scheme where a man puts a snail farm in every room so you can pay the rates of an agricultural enterprise: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/04/...

But pubs are a weird place to draw the line.

I know a lot of bars in my area also are places to play board games nowadays.

It's just basic communications skills, and honestly decency, to describe what a thing is and who it's for.

Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing? Which this site provides no way of doing. That's the problem. Why choose to be inaccessible like that, when it's so easy to add a couple of works and links?

> or poke around out of curiosity

You mean like by following links that are supplied? Because that's my complaint: there are no links.

Commercial pubs have existed for hundreds of year. But drinking doesn’t have to be commercial. In Berlin where I live there’s a non-profit hacker space that has a bar with at-cost drinks. It’s also perfectly legal to buy a beer and sit in the park. And of course, nothing is better than having friends over for a wine tasting.

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Distilling what I remember about an entire book I read a couple years ago into a HN comment is difficult, but one of the more salient notes from it is this: Adult humans are naturally suspicious of others and slow to trust, particularly those they have no existing points of connection to. In contrast - children have much lower inhibitions in this sense and are much better at this.

Alcohol, in moderation, is one of the most effective tools in humanity's arsenal to more easily socialize with and create trust with total strangers.

The "reduction of inhibitions" we are all aware of in terms of being a risk of making negative choices, also serves to greatly reduce inhibition of the average adult to new interactions and experiences.

It is difficult to achieve this result in adults otherwise, especially in terms of a single activity with low investment required in time, money, facilities, and commitment.

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It is likely that as we transitioned from a society where adult encounters with total strangers were rare (tribal/village) to common (urban) that alcohol played a pretty significant role in creating the social cohesion for it.

It is not at all clear that we have found some successful alternative to this, and we may well find that even with all the documented downsides of it, we're worse off as a society for moving away from it.

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Again, this is my recollection of a book I read a couple years back - don't take this word for word. I will also note that it's not all rosy and has some thoughts on the types of consumption we should probably discourage as well and the general risk/reward of alcohol in society.

Third places need to have some kind of draw, else nobody will show up. "If you build it, they will come" is for the movies. In the real world you need to have a compelling reason to have others come in your door. Space alone is not sufficient to establish a third space.

That draw doesn't necessarily have to be alcohol (or another drug), but it was the thing that many people used to want. Threatening use of a third space by fear of the wrath of a mighty deity only buys you one day out of the week, I'm afraid.

You're quite right that people no longer want alcohol like they used to. Why nurse a hangover when you can get the same dopamine rush scrolling through TikTok at home from the comfort of your couch? This means that many third spaces of yesteryear no longer serve a purpose, and as you call out, have closed as a result.

Which is all well and good, I guess, but some segment of the population still wish that there were third spaces for them to exist in. Trouble is that they've never been able to find anything as compelling as alcohol used to be across large swaths of the population, making a different kind of third space of the same scale a complete no-go. Trying to salvage the remaining alcohol-centric third places is the only path they can see to try and relive that glory.

Of course there are plenty of alcohol-free (or at least not alcohol focused) third spaces that revolve around niche interests, but these are generally not seen as a good fit for those who don't have that particular niche interest. Alcohol was historically so successful as the foundation for a third space because, once upon a time, nearly everyone was interested in it, bringing everyone in the door.

For a generic ".com" domain that isn't American, it's generally a good idea to yes, have a kind of minimal hint that tells you at least which country it's about, and at least a single link you can follow to get the broader context.

I'm following a link to it on HN. When I get there, I have zero context. Visitors to your site can come from anywhere, so it's generally considered a good idea to provide basic context.