Why Does Your Bar Suck?

Probably because it's pretty cool actually.

There are a number of posts up right now from pretty smart people concerning the perverse effects of regulation on the nightlife scene in a number of cities (specifically: London, New York and Washington).

The question basically is why are there so few good, quiet neighborhood bars in DC vs. New York and in New York vs. London? The answer seems to be that because regulations make it so difficult to open new ones, any bar with any charm at all is immediately overwhelmed by thirsty patrons.

We'll lead in with Mathew Yglesias who seems to have started the whole kerflaufle:

Basically the East Village really “wants” to be full of nightlife establishments just like Qiaotou, China wants button factories. Restricting the creation of new button factories in Qiatou will help incumbent button makers (and alleviate neighborhood concerns about factory smoot) but it’s hard to call a bar scene into existence that way. Similarly, making it hard to open a new bar in the East Village isn’t going to create a button factory. It’s going to create an underutilized space. That means somewhat more unemployment in the city, somewhat less tax revenue in the city, and thus at the margin higher tax rates and fewer social services for everyone.

At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle talks about why bars (or any businesses selling the same product), tend to cluster in the same areas:

I've always been fascinated by the way businesses cluster, even retail stores. You tend to get multiple clothing shops, home improvement stores, and so forth in a relatively small area, especially when there's high population density--New York City has an entire area that's just chock full of lamp shops.

If you just did a quick intuitive gut check, you would not necessarily assume this would be the case. Why would a lamp shop want to be located next to a whole lot of competition? Wouldn't it be better to be the only lamp shop in the area?

No, because clustering allows them to specialize. Sure, you'll lose some customers because they can just go next door when you don't have a lamp they want. But you'll also gain customers from other stores. Having a big cluster means that when folks in the know want a lamp, they'll head to your district; with such high traffic, the spillover effects more than make up for the disadvantages of not having a captive audience.

As with lamps, so with bars.

And finally, the author at Democracy in America looks to culture rather than regulation as part of the problem:

But what strikes me overwhelmingly about the difference between bars/pubs in London, New York and Washington is that these three cities have completely different nightlife cultures. Those cultures are irreducible to the regulatory environment or to economic behaviour. The regulatory environment in London doesn't do much to explain why, when you walk through Southwark on a winter's evening at 6:30pm with the thermometer tipping 0 degrees centigrade, you see crowds of men and women in long dark coats standing on the sidewalk sipping pints of bitter. It doesn't explain the fact that up until 1990 there basically wasn't a decent atmospheric bar with good food in Washington, DC, or not one that would be recognised as such by someone from New York or London. It doesn't explain the fact that even though breweries are allowed to own pubs in England, and are prevented from doing so in America, most pubs in London that are bought up by breweries or conglomerates have retained their individual characters and atmospheres, while in America they would almost certainly be swept under by company-wide branding campaigns. It doesn't even explain why bars in Washington have gotten so much better over the past 15 years that when I go back, I barely recognise the place.

Go ahead and read 'em. You'll look smart because you can discuss regulatory backfires the next time you're getting hammered at your local.