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posted by CoolHand on Friday September 30 2016, @10:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the starting-the-weekend-with-a-good-drinking-related-story dept.

A cocktail bar owner has installed a Faraday cage in his walls to prevent mobile phone signals entering the building.

Steve Tyler of the Gin Tub, in Hove, East Sussex, is hoping customers will be encouraged to talk to each other rather than looking at their screens.

He has installed metal mesh in the walls and ceiling of the bar which absorbs and redistributes the electromagnetic signals from phones and wireless devices to prevents them entering the interior of the building.

Why you hating on millennials, Bro?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Friday September 30 2016, @10:38PM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Friday September 30 2016, @10:38PM (#408568) Journal

    I would kill to find a bar or restaurant anywhere near us that would allow a conversation with my dinner partner.

    Between room design by acoustical idiots, and the ubiquitous overly loud bad eighties music, it seems to be a fruitless search.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't mind music, and loud music, in the right setting - like a concert or rock bar.

    It's just that I don't want it all of the time, everywhere.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 30 2016, @11:33PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday September 30 2016, @11:33PM (#408585) Homepage

    The music thing really pisses me off as well, especially in restaurants. It's a lot like a laugh track in the sense that it's an organization trying to dictate to you how you should feel using an utterly misguided approach -- such as painting an operating room in cheery colors which only makes the dying more aggravated. If I'm out with somebody I'd rather hear them without all that bullshit noise in my ears.

    No, that music doesn't make me associate a positive mood with your store and all others with its playlist so that I feel an overwhelming urge to buy more of your shit.

    Yes, it makes me want to rip out your PA system with my bare hands, punch your manager, choke the living shit out of the whiny effeminate crypto-Christian artists who produce that crap and their marketers who get it everywhere.

    Makes me yearn for the good ol' days of elevator Muzak. It was cheesy, but at least it was real honest background music, and not annoying.

    Now the latest trend in bars is to allow people to download apps where they can play their own songs on the jukebox. This leads to such idiocy as morons putting on their theme song seconds before they walk in the bar (which loses its novelty after the first fifty-fucking-thousand times they do it, a hamhanded pseudo-leitmotif as cringy as WWE character intros) or using it to strategically cut off a conversation others were enjoying. I'd go for the geezer bars, but it's too easy to startle them. You have to be reeeeaalllll slooooowwwww with them or else they get jumpy and start stuttering.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:57AM (#408604)

      You don't really sound like a person that should be drinking much, if at all. You seem to be carrying a lot of misdirected rage. Did you have an unhappy childhood? Can you remember being dropped on the head when you were a kid?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:17AM (#408709)

        Ethanol-fueled may be an asshole, but his rage is anything but "misdirected". In fact he directs it at a lot of things ... and often.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:52PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:52PM (#408745)

          And every village needs one.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:22AM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:22AM (#408612) Journal

      The Engineering department of about 500 people at my company threw a party recently, and the DJ was pointless and loud (and pointlessly loud) to the point that everyone sat as far from his speakers as possible. Nice going there, extroverted party planners. It's hard enough being the new guy, and it's even harder to talk and make those new connections if you can't hear half of what's said. #epicfail

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:41AM

      by Gaaark (41) on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:41AM (#408643) Journal

      And why don't they play Chinese music in Chinese restaurants anymore?

      Everything but!

      Like driving a sports car while playing "the wheels on the bus". Sort of.....errm .... car analogy, mumble mumble

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:05AM

      by Aiwendil (531) on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:05AM (#408654) Journal

      That jukebox thing seems interesting and could have potential.. imagine if someone set it so that everyone could enter their preferred jukebox volume category* (silent, hushed, normal, loud+, deaf+) and have the thing sample the preferences every five minutes for a new volume-target to aim for with a slow (5min) ramping.

      Just have it poll for wifi/bluetooth to see which devices' requests to consider.

      Then again - I would love too see such a system everywhere.

      * more options would cause excessive spoofing of preferences
      + what seems to be what is used today.

  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Dunbal on Friday September 30 2016, @11:59PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Friday September 30 2016, @11:59PM (#408593)

    Perhaps you need to move up-market a little. I have no trouble talking with my wife at the restaurants I go to. Of course dinner is usually over $150.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:19AM (#408711)

      Dinner for $150?!? That costs more than my date charges.

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Dunbal on Saturday October 01 2016, @11:47AM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Saturday October 01 2016, @11:47AM (#408730)

        I rest my case.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @10:12PM (#408881)

        If you're taking a hooker out to dinner you're doing it wrong...

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:56PM

      by Francis (5544) on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:56PM (#408790)

      If you've got that kind of money, great. But it's beyond fucked up that you have to spend that kind of money to get some peace and quiet while eating out.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday October 01 2016, @05:55PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday October 01 2016, @05:55PM (#408841) Journal

      Depends on where you live. NYC has an extremely competitive restaurant scene. You can get quiet, excellent places for a couple dollars more than McDonald's. Many travellers opt for fast food chains when visiting a new city, thinking it's the cheapest option, but if Soylentils happen to visit NYC I'd urge them to go for real restaurants. They will have a vastly better experience than TGIFriday's and wind up spending about the same. If you're really on a budget, check out Yelp for the food carts. There are some in Midtown and other neighborhoods that regularly form lines.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:21AM (#408611)

    I would kill to find a bar or restaurant anywhere near us that would allow a conversation with my dinner partner.

    You can. It's called going out on Tuesday night instead.

    My fellow misanthropes have gotten use to slinking in the shadows when most spots are dead. Everything is still available, it's just turned down a few degrees. A few dates have been uneasy at the lack of cacophony, which is okay; we probably wouldn't get along that well.

    Others have settled in to intimacy such a setting provides, even if it takes a bit to get use to.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:45AM (#408645)

      > You can. It's called going out on Tuesday night instead.

      We found a quiet restaurant for Friday night (not a bar). Mid-days it's an independent coffee shop in a strip mall with a grill, also homemade soup, salads and sandwiches -- very busy. But on Friday evening the fancy coffee crowd must go elsewhere. Fancier restaurants in the same plaza look jammed. We are often the only customers and we know the staff well enough that they often turn the music off when we come in. Or, they don't mind if I walk around behind the register and turn it down myself.

      Our local friends know that we can be found there for Friday dinner, and they drop in sometimes -- no planning required.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:42AM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:42AM (#408644) Journal

    You get loud music because the same acoustical idiots have every conversation echoing around the room's bare walls and hard ceilings.
    Its a desperate attempt to make it so everybody else isn't listening you and your date.

    With enough business the din of voices will keep most conversations publicly privately, but in an empty house they can be heard everywhere.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:49AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:49AM (#408646)

      Indeed. I can usually here the people a few tables over more clearly than those at my table. Usually because the people I'm with aren't yelling.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday October 01 2016, @09:33AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday October 01 2016, @09:33AM (#408695) Journal

    Dude you think THAT is bad? All the bars and restaurants around here either play 1.- Easy listening crap that makes you feel like you are trapped in an elevator, or worse 2.- 80s and 90s shit kicker music, Achey Breaky Heart kinda shit.

    I would KILL for bad 80s pop music, at least that can be enjoyed for the cheese factor,80s country? Is just painful.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.