My family are all musicians.
We are getting cancelled right and left because pubs and sports bars are not getting the traffic they used to get.
Maybe when the smoke clears on this NFL debacle, they will rip out the wide-screen plasma TVs, install a decent sized stage and a good PA system, and make “Pub Nite” a venue for LIVE MUSIC again.
(((I can dream, can’t I?)))
That’s partly because politicians rammed through anti-smoking legislation in many locales (not even allowing separately ventilated smoking rooms). Many places spent a good deal of money on ventilation equipment so that even with a few smokers, the air you were breathing in there was likely that little bit safer than what you would breathe outside on a city street.
The decline of pubs in the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom due in part to politicians and their sledgehammer to a fly approach to bars and pubs and smoking has also likely been a cause of a noted increase in binge drinking and other dangerous related practices.