American Bar scene

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Is it socially acceptable to go to a bar stag to meet girls? I don't have any male friends who go to bars who are willing to associate with me anymore and I'm pretty sure if I met new guy-friends and asked them to go to a bar with me they would think I was hitting on them. So can I go to a bar alone? can I be sucessful at meeting girls without a wing-man to fall back on?

I go to the bar out here alone a lot while my husband is deployed. I generally go to a local brewery where there's good beer so that I can get out of the house, have a nice microbrew, and read a good book. If I want to talk to anyone, I can put the book down and go for it, otherwise I can just enjoy reading. I just went the other night and there were definitely other folks there solo (though admittedly I didn't talk to any of them), so I'd say it's socially acceptable for sure

this might be odd but did you observe / could you describe the way the less creepy looking ones behaved? I'm thinking of changing how I spend my leisure time to include going to bars so I have more chances to meet people and I would like to go with an idea of accepted social norms for bachelors in that setting. I've only been to a bar once and that was with a group of 12.

I've done this most every weekend for about the last two years or so (more out of alcoholism than anything else). In that time I've had a grand total of one girl talk to me, but when I offered to buy her a drink she said she had a boyfriend. So no, it really doesn't work. I've literally never seen any other guy go stag to a bar and successfully hit on girls.

Girls hardly ever go to bars alone for a variety of good reasons, so having a wingman is pretty much essential. Otherwise, you're forced to engage everyone at the table in conversation. And let's be honest, that wouldn't end well for an NT guy, much less any of us.

I spent 5 years as a bartender.

If you're going to a bar to meet people, I'd recommend trying to identify people there that aren't regulars - people out with a group of friends, or out celebrating a birthday or something. Non "bar people." Otherwise going to bars to meet people is a great way to meet dysfunctional alcoholics who's lives are so boring or miserable that they spend every night hanging out at the bar instead of doing something/anything more productive & only heading to the bar once in a while.

It's better to go to a club or bar where people tend to go out to celebrate at vs. a neighbourhood pub that's full of regular alcoholics, IMO. Maybe try going to one that has live music, especially if it's a bigger show.. that way the chances of there being people out for just a decent night out are much higher than there being a room full of regulars. Also, then you at least have one thing in common to start a conversation over: taste in music.

I've never participated in the "bar scene" at all, because its founded on a lie. I want a woman who will love me for who I really am, not what she thinks she can turn me into.

well currently I have absolutely 0 available single women in my life and so I have to find some somewhere, bars are where they go to find single men.

Yikes, folks. I go out a brewery a few times per month (which is a lot for me) and settle in to drink my beer, but I'm not a dysfunctional alcoholic-- that's a pretty harsh statement and a broad, inaccurate, and sweeping generalization to make about people. I like the brewery atmosphere because it's mellow, but I still feel like I'm having "me time" by being out of the house, which is a must when you're home all day with a toddler. It's a sanity preservation thing. I'm just a little taken aback by the negative assumptions about "bar people". Maybe it depends whether you go to a seedy bar or a nice one or something?

Admittedly, I never went to a bar specifically to meet someone romantically (I met my husband at a Christian rock concert), but I don't judge folks who do either. There are a lot of good people who frequent bars because it's a place to have a drink or two and be able to choose how social you want to be.

Honestly, whenever I go, I'm generally focused on my pint of beer and my book. The only people I generally talk to are the bartender and the bar owner lol. I'm not exactly a social butterfly, so I don't really take in everyone else around me. I don't remember anyone coming off as "creepy" to me, though I don't go to a seedy bar-- the place that I go is a local brewery, so it has a cozy atmosphere. I went a few times with my husband when we've visited my mom in the past and we loved it, because it had a really good Colorado microbrewery vibe.

What kind of bar are you looking at going to? I'd probably choose somewhere nice and not too...erm...not too overrun by drunk college kids or crazy antics. If the music is so loud that you can't talk or there are three times as many people as stools, that wouldn't be a place I'd go.

Edit: I wanted to add that if you aren't wanting to go to a bar because you want to go to a bar, but rather you are wanting to go because you want to meet women (I go to a bar because I want to drink a beer outside of my house, not because I want to meet friends or anything), then I would recommend an alternate approach. Do you have any hobbies or interests that you could volunteer in or join a group for? That would be a wait to meet women who have similar interests to you. Keep in mind that if you meet a woman at a bar, she very well may be extremely outgoing or a partier and expect you to fit into that lifestyle. I would try to find a significant other who is a bit more introverted if you don't want to be going out socializing all of the time.

There's a big difference between Applebees joints and actual bars, in my opinion. A real bar is a place you'd never take your boss out to lunch in. Where you can smoke, and the bartender throws you a free beer every once in awhile without a stern reprimand from corporate.

It's not impossible, but it does add a degree of difficulty.

I've read Happy Hour can be a decent time to meet people.

Egads, why would you want to go to a bar... alone? The "Lone Wolf" thing can work, if you know how to be artificially superficial and an extrovert / flirt.

But for most mere mortals, and those who don't always pick up on the social cues, it's almost like setting yourself up for disaster.

I'd think that going to an AA or NA meeting would be better. You meet the same kind of people that you would at a bar, and no one is going to look at you weird if you show up alone.

Here's how I do it:

Find a bar I like that has pool tables.

Show up a few times a week and shoot pool, drink a couple of tall drinks and beer.

Become a regular and make friends and acquaintances with the other people either playing pool or hanging around the tables.

Get introduced to other people through them, including single women.

You'll pretty quickly pick up the etiquette of buying drinks and having them bought for you, shooting the breeze with the other people waiting to play, and otherwise becoming part of the scene. What you don't want to do is sit at the bar and stare into a drink, that just looks depressing and draws depressing people. It also doesn't have to be pool, that's just what I happen to play, darts, shuffleboard, trivia, any number of activities are regular events at bars, and any one of them can be your entry point into a social circle.

Again, this is what works for me, YMMV.

As someone who has been to AA meetings, this isn't even remotely close to true.

An aspie walking into a bar must be like a cat walking into a dog pound. The level of anxiety in the aspie would be through the roof and he might show it. He'd probably start stimming to calm himself down. People would accidentally brush up against him which would make him nervous. He may not be able to understand what anyone's saying over the din of the jukebox. Also, getting him into a conversation about sports or unfamiliar topics would be lost on him. He may as well be sitting home alone.

Remember though, Aspies are just as different from each other as they are from NTs, and NTs from other NTs for that matter. What I find perfectly fine might be intolerable for another Aspie, and another Aspie might be comfortable in a situation that would have me close to panic.

It's also been my experience that there's a wide variety of bars out there with varying levels of noise and other stimulation, they're not all loud and packed and full of flashing lights. Just in Seattle there's a bar in a bookstore that's fairly quiet, and a bar in an old typewriter repair store on Capitol Hill that's so low key that they provide board games for the patrons to play while they drink, and those are only the first two to come to mind.

The American bar scene is aspie-hostile for the most part, and it's somewhat dangerous for a young man to come there alone, and it goes double for aspie men. First of all, some guidelines for unwritten rules, some of which are based on laws, as well as social customs.

1. There is no such thing as "shouting" (buying rounds of drinks for everybody, a term from the UK and Australian English), and the word "shout" is strictly a synonym for "yell". It's very uncommon for groups of friends to buy rounds for each other, let alone for strangers in a bar. Many people are hesitant to buy rounds nowadays, due to the bad economy and difficulty keeping track of who bought when. It's far more common to simply pay for your own drinks, except for a romantic couple going out together, and even that's no longer a hard and fast rule.

2. The US drinking age is 21. Penalties for underage drinking are very severe, up to and including loss of the driver license and/or a short jail sentence, depending on how you act, the US state you're in, and the officer you're dealing with. Police like it this way, because it gives them easy arrests. Due to these prohibitionist laws, people drink recklessly when they can first legally drink. Bartenders may react by giving slower service to people who look young (i.e. recently turned 21). I know I always got slow service in bars until I was about 25 or so.

3. It used to be practically a requirement to buy a woman a drink in bar if you want to talk to her, possibly a modern take on taxi dancing, popular in the early 20th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_dancer). Old movies showed scenes of men buying drinks. There were even books on this subject. This started to fade out in early 2000's, and pretty much disappeared by today. The declining trend was driven by women going out just for the free drinks and men picking up on that. It's now strictly up to the man's discretion, and most men opt not to buy the woman a drink, or refuse if she asks, unless she likes him, and even then it's still optional. Newer books advise just that.

4. It's considered foolish but OK for a woman to go to bars/clubs alone, but very creepy for a man to do the same. Why? Just another double-standard we got on our hands. I read accounts on here about guys who almost got assaulted in the club's parking lot, just because they came to that club alone. Older men (30+) get some leeway in breaking this rule, for regular bars, but never for upscale clubs, due to being seen as wanting to get away from their wives, because American marriages are very wife-centric. Young men under 30 are expected to follow the "never come alone" rule to a T (enforced not by bouncers, but by other people in the venue).

5. The only exception to #4 are cruise ships and touristy bars in Caribbean ports. On a cruise, it's considered perfectly fine for a man or a woman to step into a bar/club alone. If someone came on a cruise solo (an acceptable activity in many NTs' eyes), people understand that they'll be visiting the ship's venues and port bars solo too. More likely than not, they'll even have no trouble meeting new people and/or finding people to dance with, provided that they follow social rules and respect boundaries. That was my experience on the cruises I took.