'TV and cheap booze' blamed for landlord quitting
Twenty-seven percent of Lincolnshire's pubs gone since 2009. That's roughly one in four rooms where strangers used to sit too close and argue about nothing. I keep thinking about what those rooms actually did, beyond selling beer. They forced you into proximity with people you didn't choose, and that friction was the whole trick, it generated a low hum of community that nobody had to schedule.
The cheap supermarket booze argument has some teeth, sure, but I'd want to know how much of this is just drinking moving home entirely. TV is an easy villain, but the real competitor might be the living room itself, with its infinite comfort and zero chance of bumping into your neighbour's cousin. I don't think we've got a good model yet for what a town loses when its accidental meeting spots go dark, which makes this less a pub story and more an early warning about social infrastructure. I'd love to see someone map what fills these gaps, book clubs, online groups, nothing at all. My hunch is the nothing at all parts are where the trouble starts.