Alco-Pops and Designated Drivers

I'm going to have to disagree with this one, The Bar Is NOT a beautiful place.
A hollow empty den whose atmosphere is written on the digital, flat-screen, interactive, bilingual, surround sound Television screens that tower over everyone in corners, the enforced chart music played out at decibels that encourage unfriendly silence or uneducated shouting. Walls adorned with tacky, wacky paintings of giraffes playing Ker-plunk!!! Or tasteless black and white photographs that hint at what once was, sacrificed for the Is.
No longer satisfied with just serving pork scratchings and plain crisps, we know face an onslaught of Deep Fried Camembert dripping with Cranberry Sauce or extravagantly named burgers hiding their simplicity behind syllables. The rush of bar staff delivering elegant mountains of over priced hash interrupting games of Darts and Cribbage.
Drinking options spiral, no longer a case of a pint, it's chilled, extra smooth, with a twist of lemon and a hint of balderdash. More ridiculous names in passing attempts to define a person by a label.
Talk of football and cricket overtaken by the watching of twenty four hour sport networks, the art of conversation condensed into the art of the soundbite between adverts, the cries of "Yeah" "That was great" and "Get them In" passing for the heartbeats of a friendship.
Karaoke, Quiz Nights, Backing Track Singers, Race Nights, the pulse of an attempted community mixing with the ring of the electronic till.
The loneliness of a thriving bar, the lies to impress, the drinking to excess. Fashion and appearance thrust ahead in place of real life.
Of course I may be wrong. But when was the last life changing experience you had in your local?