Phone-free bars and restaurants on the rise across the U.S. (axios.com)
91 points by Brajeshwar 5 hours ago
crazygringo 33 minutes ago
When I think of places where phones aren't a problem, I think of bars and restaurants.
So why on earth would you even need to make them phone-free...?
People are socializing plenty. I've never walked into a bar or restaurant that's full of people where they're all on their phones. It doesn't even make sense.
wolvoleo 3 hours ago
Hmm I love phone free nightclubs (or rather camera free, they tape off the cameras). Like techno clubs.
Not so much of a fan of this in bars and restaurants, sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc. Or often they change their mind "this place is cool, why don't you come to us instead of us coming to you?". But ok plenty of places to choose from.
jermaustin1 2 hours ago
> sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc.
Do we need to? We are way too communicative now days. Back before everyone had cell phones, you said on Monday to friends and/or co-workers, "Let's get drinks on Friday at 7pm at BarClub" - Everyone put it in their diary, and on Friday at 6:55-7:30, people showed up where they were supposed to.
We now have this anxiety around not being in constant contact with people, when just a couple decades ago, we wouldn't talk to a person for days/weeks at a time, but still manage to get together without (m)any issues.
wussboy 2 hours ago
Humans used to get on ships and sail away, perhaps never to be heard from again. We can absolutely survive several minutes of confusion around eating arrangements. "Text me when you get there." Let's all just calm down and live with a little uncertainty
wolvoleo 2 hours ago
crazygringo 36 minutes ago
Yes, we need to.
If I'm meeting someone for drinks and then an emergency happens, I kind of want to know rather than waiting around for 45 minutes and then giving up.
wolvoleo 2 hours ago
It is what it is. It's how things work now. Anyway I have great respect for places that tape off cameras because it makes others feel safe. Because they know they won't be photographed without consent.
But being on your mobile somewhere is more of a "you do you" thing for me. I'm not always on my phone, when I go out I don't go near it normally but getting a quick message is no problem IMO. For example when plans change. When others are on phones around me I don't find that very annoying, there's much more annoying behaviour.
Personally I hate planning and love chaos so I really like this thing where I see someone online at 2am and they're like "hey why don't you come out to this club". Which happens fairly often.
downut 2 hours ago
In 1989 I wrote and posted a paper letter to a college friend of ours in Northern England, asking, hey, around [June date I forget] we will be in London, want to meetup? A while later I get a reply letter saying sure, how about we meet at Piccadilly Circus on this date at this time. I posted an affirmative reply and there was no further communication. We were in Arizona at the time.
On the agreed-to date and time we were there, and so was she.
If we were talk about paper maps, it would blow people's minds. If we were to get further in the weeds and describe how we traveled around communist Czechoslovakia w/o a map, only a phrasebook entitled "Travelers Czech", well...
Ah I forgot! We, without being specific about the date, knew that other college friends of ours, originally from Czechoslovakia, had told us they were going to be in their home town of Olomouc. We got the barest help in Prague with my wife's bad German on how to get there by train. Arrived, got a room, and called them up. For the next week they showed us around the country and visited family and friends.
Other than lousy waiters in Prague we had a terrific adventure. Different times.
But you sure had to able to demonstrate you had integrity in your agreements and were open to changes of plans.
pimlottc 2 hours ago
megous an hour ago
markus_zhang an hour ago
It's just to create a brand to attract targeted customers. If you really hate phones in restaurants you are going to stick to them. Not an issue for me TBH, it's their free choice. It's kinda difficult to compete in food quality and such, but rather easy to just create a brand. You see this kind of things in politics a lot.
Yeah gonna be downvoted, but whatever.
anonymousiam 3 hours ago
There's a breakfast spot that I visit sometimes, with a sign on the wall that reads; "We do not have 'WiFi' -- Talk to each other -- Pretend it's 1995"
Teever 3 hours ago
I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience and encouraging people to socialize verbally instead of online but the thing is that I like to eat breakfast alone.
It's a meditative process to me. There's nothing better than sitting in a greasy spoon looking out at a rainy day eating bacon and hashbrowns while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Just watching the world and gthe people go by while flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper. That's bliss.
Now that newspapers aren't really a thing anymore I like to read the news on my phone, or a paper about a topic that interests me.
It's good to promote socializing as long as it doesn't come at the expensive at reflective processes.
heeton 2 hours ago
> I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience
If you then expect an exemption because your phone use is different then I challenge that you don’t actually support the experience.
If you want to read news in a phone-free environment: bring a newspaper, a kindle, etc.
bawolff 42 minutes ago
senko 3 hours ago
> It's a meditative process to me. [...] I like to read the news on my phone.
I don't think reading news, especially on the phone, is meditative.
With paper you might pause & reflect while turning a page, with phone even that is lost.
> Just watching the world and the people go by while
Why not do that without looking at the phone?
Teever 3 hours ago
markus_zhang an hour ago
Well if they don't want businesses from phone-carrying people that's perfectly fine with me.
Restaurants are too expensive anyway. A random breakfast in a random diner now costs around 60 CAD (include tax and tip) for two persons nowadays in my city. It is difficult to justify eating out unless I'm financially free.
28304283409234 an hour ago
If I had a bar I'd ban phones and call it The No Bars Bar. Alt: The Bar Without Bars
petcat an hour ago
No need to ban phones, just coat the walls in magnetic paint and install faraday cages on the windows.
You will get "No bars". (and also maybe no customers and a safety code violation?)
drum55 41 minutes ago
Intentionally interfering with 911 would probably be a poor decision.
petcat 34 minutes ago
jmyeet 39 minutes ago
Jamming cell signals is illegal. There are good reasons for this such as people who are on call or people who need to call 911.
The only way around this is to build somewhere that happens to have no cell reception.
raincole an hour ago
To increase table turnover rate for the restaurant.
bawolff an hour ago
Phone free resturants if you're eating alone sounds kind of miserable. Sometimes i want to read something while i wait for my food to come out.
troymc 34 minutes ago
Maybe bring a (printed) book, brochure, flyer, or treatise on the nocturnal behaviours of silkworms?
bawolff 31 minutes ago
Do you commonly carry those around with you? I'm not mistaking a resturant for a library, i just want to kill time until my food comes out.
Is there a reason why someone sitting by themselves reading a book on the e-reader app on their phone is more offensive than someone sitting by themselves reading a dead tree book?
Acrobatic_Road 11 minutes ago
Aboutplants 42 minutes ago
Good news! If your alone there are other options!
bawolff 38 minutes ago
Can you be specific what you mean by that. Are you just saying if you are alone you should go to other resturants?
I mean, sure that is true, but that logic would also apply to a resturant that spits in your food.
quchen 3 hours ago
There are a couple of communities that have almost no phone presence. Certain kinds of music festivals are an example, and it's really quite nice not having to worry about being filmed.
hdbebdhdh an hour ago
I don't get it. If you don't want to use a phone, simply don't use a phone O_o
SilverElfin 3 hours ago
Great. It would be nice to normalize that as a feature. A cafe near me sort of has this by simply not offering WiFi and having a sign about it, and it works - there are people having conversations with their kids and with friends and with strangers there, while all other cafes seem to be mostly people on their phones and iPads (especially kids) and laptops. Also we need a total ban on meta glasses and other similar surveillance devices.
Acrobatic_Road 2 hours ago
Yes! Phones should be treated like smoking.
wussboy 2 hours ago
I like this idea. You can use your phone but you have to go outside to do it.
KellyCriterion an hour ago
++1
gosub100 3 hours ago
You could enforce this by making a farday cage out of the building. I looked into this for an irrational (5G is government poison) family member. I wasn't going to debate how RF works, just buy some points by helping her indulge her fantasy. But actual RF blocking copper mesh material is very expensive. I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
nahkoots an hour ago
Linus Tech Tips made a Faraday cage out of an employee's house using graphite-based EMF-blocking paint. MMS messages with images couldn't be sent from within the house, although text messages and phone calls went through. They didn't do anything to treat the windows, though, so maybe if you combine the paint with some sort of fine wire mesh over the windows you'd get a more comprehensive blocking effect.
At $200/gallon, the cost of the paint would also be a major consideration.
silisili 2 hours ago
You really don't need a full on faraday cage. Signals in the phone frequency range are pretty poor at penetration, especially brick or concrete. I once lived in a house with lath and plaster walls, and I had to leave the office door open to even get wifi in there.
Perhaps some well placed metallic material on or near the windows would suffice?
gruez 2 hours ago
>I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
AFAIK they have to be grounded so it'll be a massive pain to install, even if you can get it printed.
kibwen 2 hours ago
Last I checked there was no consensus on whether or not a Faraday cage needed to be grounded to function properly, which seemed surprising.
avidiax 2 hours ago
madaxe_again 3 hours ago
Just run a jammer - much easier and just as illegal - although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
wikibob 3 hours ago
Faraday cages are passive and not illegal. Jamming is.
gruez 2 hours ago
>although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
Not every radio runs off 2.4G, the frequency that microwaves would affect. Even for wifi there's 5ghz and 6ghz bands. For cellphones there are far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands
gosub100 an hour ago
"just"
cyanydeez 2 hours ago
SImilar, except their belief is part of a illness that's some kind of dementia. It went further into all kinds of radiations, including things that are meaningless, like the 911 frequency.
It degraded slowly over a decade. It's "stabilized" but just a bunch of word salad.