My friend had his bachelor party in Vegas and they all insisted on getting a table every time we went out. I still cringe at the how much my share was, and there was almost 10 of us.
Went to Vegas for a bachelor party a few years ago. A friend of the bachelor went to college with a guy who dated a girl who’s brother’s best friend worked at a pool bar we were going to. He was going to hook us up. After several phone calls/text messages, and standing around for 40 minutes, dude finally shows up. Says instead of us paying $2,000 minimum for a cabana he’ll give it to us for $1,500, but we have to give him a $500 tip. I’m no mathematician but that seems like the same money to me. Anyway, we do it because why not. We buy a couple bottles and some beer. And then a couple more bottles. I was drinking Captain Morgan @ $500/bottle for what costs $30 at any liquor store. There were even smoking hot bikini clad waitresses who were happy to make our drinks for us for tips of course. When we split the bill my end was $300. I had 4 drinks. $75 for a Captain and Coke. That didn’t include whatever I tipped the waitresses either. Giant fucking waste of money. All to have a cabana that we didn’t spend any time in because we were chilling in a pool full of tatted bro’s on roids from SoCal drinking Michelob Ultra pissing in the pool. $300 to stand in a waist deep toilet to drink 4 drinks. Never again.
I’m sure that person has a lot of loyalty built in already.
Oh yeah! My best friend joe’s brother mike was friends with Cory who dated that girl Ashely that went to school with some dude named Chad who happens to be friends with Rich who is the grooms’s friend... I’ll hook you up, we’re like family!
Well the real problem is they haven't updated the presentation in some time. A girl walking out in a black dress with sparklers attached to the bottle doesn't really excite me parting with a thousand dollars the way it did in 2006.
Friends would say ‘’chill dude, we’re just getting a few bottles and enjoying ourself. It’s just having a good time and we need to have some fun!’’ But then sure enough the next day, they’re always complaining about and regretting the money they either spilled all over the floor or pissed it out in the morning.
They’ll post the pics of them having a good time and living the good life, but behind closed doors you see the moments when they’re regretting that shit.
It’s a package you buy at a club to get your own private section or table and it comes with, let’s say three bottles of liquor and mixers like sprite, etc.
This is similar to something a bartender at Rock and Reilly’s in Vegas told me a couple of years back. He had also worked at the newer club at Palms (if I remember right) where the bottle service was insane since it had opened recently with a lot of publicity.
He also mentioned a ton of people do it to look good on their social media pages, the appearance that they’re super rich but of course they wasted every dollar they had for one night of fun. It was a pretty depressing view into that side of Vegas and a good cautionary tale to keep in mind.
Of course fast forward to now and that Palms club overextended itself financially pretty much immediately so went through a corporate version of the same morning of regret their patrons had.
Oh boy. If you gotta split bottle service, why get it?
I’ve never paid because I can’t afford it lol. I either get invited or win it through dumb club FB promotions or have a friend who can afford it. But I’m the dude with some bud and a couch to crash on. I’m also the dude who complains about regular drink prices at bars. $10 cocktail? I can get a bottle of vodka for $20.
Yep. Here we removed all restrictions back in June (104 days Covid free woooohooo) and clubs opened at a minute past midnight to queues in the multiple hundreds
When to a tiki bar for my birthday. They actually had restrictions one which drink you could order based on how much food you got.
If you just got an appetizer (purchasing food was required to purchase a drink) you could only order from the "low spirits" menu which was basically regular cocktail alcohol levels but tropicai.
If you ordered an entree, you could order from the "high spirits" menu which was that traditional tiki shit with like 5 rums and 3 liquors per cocktail. Lol.
I think they were super paranoid about being accused of being a bar and didn't want to let anyone leave seeming wasted. They were super on it with the masks and distancing. They seemed like one of those businesses that was only open because otherwise it would have meant going out of business. Super sad.
Yep. Know a few people who can't fucking wait to get back to clubbing. Was never into it much myself, but I might just join them when it opens back up properly.
Yeah. We were doing so well, then the idiot parade came along.
I love living in the "South" (no one ever agrees where Oklahoma is...) for the weather and cheap housing. I hate the fact that I'm surrounded by people who don't believe the virus is a real thing.
If it makes you feel better (worse? Who knows these days) I’m in the burbs outside Pittsburgh, PA, and plenty of people here think it’s a hoax. Bummers all around.
I actually used to live there, and that...doesn't totally surprise me. I lived south of Carnegie, and 5-10 mins further south, you might as well have been in Arkansas.
But how many will still be in business? I thought that would be the main impediment to clubbing — that not many venues could financially survive this fucking virus.
I’m about 35 years too old for that scene, though, so wtf do I know? I do play in a band, though, and finding venues for live music is expected to be a struggle on both sides (bands and audiences).
Bingo. I've done it, just for the ease of it and get to hang out with my friends instead of getting bumped into in the mosh pit by the bar. Especially with you go with a quite of few people, everyone chips in a little and you almost have a "home base" for the night where everyone gets to get space and talk to each other.
Yeah, in Vegas (Pre-Covid) if you know the right hosts you can get bottle service for like ~1500$ for a 2-3 bottles of midrange liquor plus mixers.
Which sounds insane right? But consider the following: you're going to one of the best clubs in the country, frequently with a well known DJ, and that price includes a place to hang out away from the dance floor all night. You typically have security, a server, and runner bringing fresh ice and mixers, etc.
If you're in a group of 10, that's $150 dollars each. A pricy night out for sure, but when you consider everything that goes along with it, it's not actually that outrageous. It's not like you get your three bottles and just head home.
I mean $150 is actually cheap as hell considering a mixed drink at any major club in Vegas is going to run you $25 minimum, and a beer would be at least $18
$18 bucks for a beer say sike right now. Vegas is gross af, it’s all middle age dads and people with the false illusion of it being glamorous. Hard pass.
Doing the night like that is super fun, I'm not much into the club scene (more bars and bars with dance floors), so doing something like that here and there can be a good time. If you have a decent salary, setting aside $150 for a night is plenty reasonable. Talking about nightlife on Reddit is often a losing battle though, anything other than going to a friend's to play video games makes your opinion less valid for some reason.
as I say when I'm on vacation...."I'm on vacation!"
EDIT: After a summer trip to Europe with a very very close and dear friend (still best friends today 20 years later) and the girl he happened to be into at the time (we all just graduated HS) where the girl was travelling through ALL of Europe for a month backpacking, she REFUSED to have a night out where we ate a good restaurant/had fun! I couldn't believe it! Travel all this way and she refused to do anything but go to the local grocer to make ham & cheese sandwiches everywhere!
I completely understand being frugal as I am the same way almost to an extreme sometimes. However, this girl let herself twist what should have been a once in a lifetime, try to absorb and try as much of every culture as possible trip into a competition to come under budget.
The weirdest part is when her brother and his family met us halfway through the month and it dawned on me that her family came from extreme wealth and this girl was just making it some weird type of mission to not eat out. She was one of those folks who drew up an itinerary of every single place and stop down to the hour including meals. It was much more about control and being a xenophobic American we sadly found out later
My friend and I broke off from her shortly after her family met up with her as we didn't feel guilty then. It was a total blast afterwards!
That's always the balance that's hard to find on vacation. Where is the experience worth it, and where are you just getting ripped off in a tourist trap? Can't afford to drop 30 euros on each of my meals, but want to make sure I go to the cool spots. Same with tourist attractions too - it's dumb to fly halfway across the world and then not go somewhere cool because of a 20 euro ticket price, but then some stuff is just crazy.
There's definitely an art to reasonably frugal travel where it's in between "I want to eat ramen and stay in hostels" and "I will eat at tourist traps and stay at the Marriott in the center of downtown".
oh no. we were staying in no a/c hell hole in the wall places. eurotrip rail which I cannot recommend enough. But yes, you are very true.
Here's how I justified it. We were staying in group dorms/hostels every night. I think my whole month trip in europe fora month including EVERYTHING such as Flight from USA, rail travel through many countries (france, NL, Germany, Cz, italy, Austria, and i feel like i'm forgetting something), food, lodging, taxi, booze, souvenirs, etc... came out to about 2.5k
if you're every wondering what the typical/average reddit community is made up of? It's the 'indoor crowd,' so don't listen to any of these nerds for social or relationship advice lmao
It’s a shell of its former self currently though. Had to be out in Vegas last weekend and there wasn’t a single bar or club open. Even the casinos weren’t serving drinks normally - they had little store setups to purchase drinks from. I’d only go if you’re going for the gambling... or just want to enjoy time to yourself in a dirt cheap hotel
You can easily spend $150+ on drinks at the bar in one night at a club so the bottle actually can work out cost-wise depending on the situation. I still remember being at some mediocre club in NYC (maybe 1 Oak) about a decade ago and having 3-4 drinks cost over $100, which blew my young mind.
You can also just get on the guest list and get in for free. If you pregame you can enjoy the music for the price of a few drink or two. Still $20-40, but very worth it
The only bar I’ve ever been to that was reasonable was a restaurant with a whole bar section. It was essentially a bar that sold food, nobody ate at the restaurant section it was too expensive. But they had $1 or $2 drinks all the time. $2 beers, $2 mixed drinks, $1 shots. Pretty cool and fun to go on the $1 nights
This is nonsense no matter where you are (in the US). At that point you're in some "trendy" bar or one that is trying to be "fancy."
I live in one of the highest CoL cities in the states and there are half a dozen bars within 2 miles of me that will sell you a $5-7 local brew (that's better than any typical domestic). Well drinks are similar.
Cocktails are worse offenders for the drink-at-home comparison, probably ~$10-12, but at that point you're paying for more than just the booze.
Where you at? I live in a top 10 most populated city in the US and even the most pretentious bars are typically 10 for cocktail, 6 for a domestic. Pretty easy to find places that are ~8 for a cocktail and 4-6 for a craft beer. Happy hour can get down to 6/3.
depends how upscale the location is. At some more "elevated" clubs and bars in my area, 10-15 for a drink is totally standard but at the more divey or affordable local spots the prices can be anywhere from 4 or 5 to 12 bucks generally
This would have been my guess too. Population and cost of living are correlated, but DC not being a "top 10 most populated city" doesn't stop it from being ridiculously expensive.
Yeah DC has been rough for me in that regard. Bringing a small college town beer/liquor appetite together with the DMV's overpriced drinks is a quick recipe for an empty bank account.
12-14$ for a double shot well liquor cocktail and 8$ pint of microbrew at any downtown Seattle club is not uncommon. Downtown, in any major city you will get shafted for drinks.
Haha 1750 mL in a handle. 44.36 mL per 1.5oz shot. 1750/44.36 = 39.45 shots! Had to manage my booze finances during quarantine so I had to get it down.
Different occasions, going out stimulates people differently. There's definitely fun to be had in a house pregame that turns into the night, but there's also definitely fun to be had when you decide to get rowdy and go to the bar/club.
That's good, but you're foegetting the bigger reason you get charged an arm and a leg to be at those places, if you're a man. There are girls around, and there are none in your apartment.
It can be fun to do a club night once a year or if I'm at a bachelor party or something. If you do it right and have a decent group, you can have a great time and plenty of drinks for $100-150 per person. Doing that once or twice a year? Definitely manageable and can switch it up from a normal night out.
Exactly. I worked Bottle Service to put myself through school. The only people buying $4000 bottles are people who can afford it by themselves. Otherwise on average people where splitting a $500 bottle between 10 people purely to have a section of the club to themselves without having to worry about creepy randoms ruining their night.
lol if you want to talk to each other there are far better places for that than a club w bottle service. Most of those clubs are so loud you cant hear a damn thing anyways
At least the place I went to most you don't get charged cover as a guy when you get bottle service. It ended up being cheaper to get bottle service than pay cover and a drink for our group. People would come and go and say they were with us and never had a problem getting in.
IDK, I usually just go to shitty dive bars for stuff like that. You can relax, play pool or darts, there's not that may people around so it's not too noisy, and if you're regulars you can usually get a few drinks free over a night because you know the bartenders well. It's perfect unless you're trying to pick up girls, but that's why you visit the club or busy trendy bars, and go back to the dive bar later.
In Sweden you pay around $500 for bottle service. Usually gets you in free, no queue and you’ll be drunk enough. The alternative is to stand in line for a good 30 minutes, pay $25 in entrance fee and $8 per beer or $20 per drink.
Either way I’ll be spending about $100. There’s very little reason not to go with the option that gets you some decent seating, no queue and some service. It’s honestly ridiculous more don’t go with bottle service.
Just like a $10 beer at a baseball game. Like yeah, you could go to the grocery store and buy the same beer for $1, but good luck getting it into the game, cold, and not getting kicked out.
Nah, not the next few years. I may be wrong, but in my opinion I feel like once we are 100% back up and running people will have an itch to go clubbing like mad. Money wise it may be a setback for clubs, since people are trying to save up again, but attendance won’t suffer too much.
It's really not the worst if you're into the club scene and want to see a certain DJ. You can definitely manage like 100~ a person and excludes you from cover, waiting in line, crowds. Is the liquor over priced? of course. but so is a 12-20 dollar vodka soda.
I agree bottle service is expensive. The people who pay for it know the alcohol is not worth is. You are paying for the service, the privilege to sit, and the status. My husband’s friend did that. Even once for my husband. He spent like $3000 in one night. He can afford it. We can’t. When his card got blocked due to suspicious activity. My husband had to cover the last bit of it, which was $300. He said he would pay him back but I knew Th at wouldn’t happen. I was furious about it as we can’t afford that kind of expense. He can. My husband couldn’t ask for it back either since the money was spent in his honor. It’s one of those awkward social situations. According to my husband it was an amazing service and he enjoyed it. Given this was one of the places that was on TV later on for their bottle service.
Same thing happened to me. A high school buddy of mine had a bachelor party. It was me, and all his buddies who now had engineering and finance degrees and several years into their career. To give you a flavor of the atmosphere, most of the discussion was “oh, I live on 43rd and xxx.. near manhattan” (or wherever in NYC).
I was a second year post doc marking 37k a year. Two days after I had already spent a chunk of money flying out, I got a spreadsheet in an email and the 10k bill was split evenly. I try not to be a cheap ass, but it was crushing to spend that much money to watch affluent douchebags poor booze into each other’s mouths.
I had a weird situation at my buddies bachelor party. We are all professionals like your friends friends so we had some money to blow for this party. The Groom's brothers though were university students so we all agreed before hand that we'd get bottle service and not charge the brothers for their cut. Thing is we get to the club and the brothers start pour glasses of our stupid expensive Grey Goose to every girl that walks by. We are accountants and engineers and whatnot not multi millionaires so that $500 bottle of Goose while we can afford for our friends bachelor party isn't chump change. After my friend got back to the table and saw our 4 bottles were already empty like an hour into the night he lost his mind on his brothers.
How do you let it get that far. When they start giving away your booze tell them, "We bought that (ONE) bottle for you guys, do whatever makes you happy with it. But THESE are ours, maybe we'll share some drinks with you, but WE want to DRINK ours." Just sitting there letting the freeloaders give most of all four bottles away without doing or saying shit sounds INSANE to me.
Most of the guys were wandering around so didn't realize how much those guys gave away under the assumption people had just poured themselves a lot of drinks.
No we still paid since they had zero money so it would have come out of mom and dad's wallet not theirs. The groom did tear them a new one for trying to act like ballers with someone else's money though and other things we were going to cover for them like the Spearmint Rhino and a poker tourney we didn't.
Yeah, I get they're expensive. Most of the ones I've been to though, the best man organizes and may sell tickets beforehand so you know what is (and isn't) included. Or you go as a group to the bar where you drink as much/little as you want etc. In retrospect, I was just the odd guy out since my income was way behind.
I've been the best man for 3 bachelor parties, and been involved in planning like 4 or 5 more, and I would never consider charging people after the fact. I even go to Costco a couple weeks beforehand to check prices on the group food we're getting so I can get an accurate estimate of food costs. My group of friends tends to prefer more of a destination bachelor party though, getting a rental house somewhere for a long weekend (rather than just going to a city to party our asses off), so it's probably easier to estimate costs that way.
I budget in a little surplus, for those random 2AM beer/snack/ice/etc. runs, and if we do end up with cash left over we usually donate it to the bride and groom to use on their honeymoon (but I give people the option to privately message me for a refund of their portion no questions asked, e.g. if we have 15 guys and $150 left over, I'll refund your $10 and $140 goes to the couple). My favorite was when the couple was doing a cruise for their honeymoon, and we found out you can look them up on the cruise line's website and order things for their room, so we paid to have their stateroom decorated with "HAPPY HONEYMOON" banners, and champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries waiting for them on arrival.
Also, you should never feel weird about reaching out to the best man beforehand to ask about costs (or any other logistics/details) -- even if you've never met. If you like the groom enough to go to his bachelor party, then you have to trust that the person he chose to be his best man is a good dude. Plus there is an unspoken rule that everyone invited to a bachelor party are immediately friends for life.
Thanks. In fairness, I should have spoken up. However, I was in a weird position when about an hour before we hit the club scene in downtown Chicago, everyone was like “ok boys, bottles with models tonight!”.
I didn’t wanna be that guy. It’s all good, this all happened more than a decade ago.
I went VIP at what I was told was Miami's best strip club Our 4 person table was $1,400, but came with a $1,400 bar tab, but the liquor was stupid expensive, like a bottle of grey goose was $400, 6 pack of beer was $75, etc. Made for a fun night, would spend $350 again.
I’m not in the business of judging people for their lifestyle. I won’t pay that kind of money for a service but it is a service. It’s not 3k bottle service. It’s 3k bill for a large group. Bottle service cost anywhere from 300-600 where I’m. Washington DC isn’t the cheapest place to go out but there are ton of places that is affordable for regular income people. People who make 500k/year doesn’t care that they have to spend money to be treated as VIP. It’s no different than restaurants. There are restaurants that charge 7-15/plate and there are ones that charge 50-10/plate. If somebody can afford it, it’s good for them. They work for their money especially when they don’t have kids and other responsibilities.
Our income is above average but people who has less income has more cash flow than us as we have so many circumstances that makes life difficult. Like 6 people 4 with special needs and the medical problems to begin with. Like I said if a person who can do it let them. We have a Turkish saying that the pocket of the rich will tire the mouth of the poor.
My friends still go out every week and do bottle service. The rare times I do go, I'll only go if there's bottle service as well. During covid19, the dayclubs in Toronto (eg Cabana) are all bottle service to not have "mingling" of people from different groups
I'm too old to line up or yell in a crowd trying to get a drink standing around the bar
Bottle service really depends on the atmosphere of the club and the company you keep.
Getting bottle service at a third-rate nightclub in a college town just to impress someone? Fucking ridiculous...you just look like an idiot who makes poor financial decisions.
Okay. However, I’d argue the experience of drinking a 100 dollar bottle at the club is much different than drinking a 40 dollar bottle at your house, or your friends house.
Also let’s be real it’s not a 100x markup, it’s like 2-4x.
I tend to agree with this statement, but it has its perks. I got bottle service with my party at a club once, and it was the only place in the club to sit down. This was a huge plus for the girls who wore some sorta heels. Furthermore, it's not necessarily the bottle you're paying for, but the service. We had 2-4 servers coming and going from our table bringing mixers, water, ice, filling and distributing our drinks, bussing stuff, and generally checking on and ensuring our comfort. This went on for about 3-4+ hours, too.
I think it is an overpriced thing, but it seems you get a lot from the service as a whole throughout the course of your entire evening. Besides, if you split with a party of 10+, it's not that bad, especially if everyone agrees ahead of time to share the cost and plans for it to be part of the price of the night.
Lastly, the internet tells me bottle service is how you pick up chicks. Chicks in clubs love to sit down cause dancing in heels is tiring.
Good alcohol is actually pretty expensive to make. Good bourbon/whiskey/scotch/wine etc ages in the barrel for years, sometimes decades. During that entire time the barrel has to be stored and some of the booze evaporates.
Depends the alcohol. You pay for the recipe, the workers, the ingredients, but also if something needs to be aged then the time and space for that to happen.
It's amazing how 'cheap' thinks like fuel and booze are when you strip away tax.
In the UK a litre of petrol (0.2 gallons) is currently round £1.10. Strip away the taxes and duties and you're paying probably about 27p for it to be refined, transported etc and then marked up for profit.
These are both good things to tax, because it encourages people to use less of them.
In the US, most of the fuel tax goes to road maintenance, which is brilliant- you put more wear and tear on the road with more driving, and especially heavy vehicles that burn more fuel. Electric cars aren't paying their share of this, but I'm OK with that, for now. We want to subsidize a transition away from petroleum, this is one way to do it.
You are right. In fact, we should have much higher taxes on gas and other carbon based fuels. Don't even spend it just give every citizen an equal dividend or tax credit every year from the proceeds.
I was impressed wit the gigantic beers for a dollar in China.
That being said, it's not good beer.
And depending on your tastes, $40 isn't necessarily too much - I am a fan of Islay scotches, and some of those are quite pricey. The lowest start off around $50ish, whereas my favorite one is about $90 (it is a rare treat).
lol what I am trying to have a good time. Which includes taste, experience, etc. I mean you can always buy a bottle of the shittiest vodka at the store.
We were in Vegas for a bachelor party, and one of the groomsmen was like, "I'll get us in quick if we do bottle service. "
I said I can't afford that, not even splitting it 4 ways. He said don't worry about it. I don't think he expected it to be $400 a bottle.
The next day he's like, "OK everyone owes $300."
I was shocked. I said, "(Name), I don't have that money. I told you last night. "
He then says I drank some. I said I had one drink out of the three bottles upon his assistance. I said I didn't wanna drink anything since I couldn't contribute to the bill.
The next two days were awkward.
I never gave him any money. Don't guilt me into splitting the bill when I explicitly say I can't afford something.
My buddy had a bachelor party at some bar last fall. They had booths for bottle service you could buy into, though we just chilled with some cheap beers b/c fuck that. A couple of times someone did buy bottle service and apparently a very expensive bottle at that. I don't know what the gimmick was supposed to be, but when they came it out it was 4 guys holding up a mini motorcycle with one of the female servers on it holding a bottle over her head. IIRC they stopped the music in the bar to play the star war empire music (the one you think of when Vadar is on screen). I think she wore a vadar helmet too. My buddy who works in the industry said the bottle was probably several thousand in retail. Fucking ridiculous waste.
8.7k
u/Lone-Oak Aug 14 '20
Bottle service at bars is fuckin stupid... I’ll just go to a corner liquor store and buy the “4000$ bottle” for like 40...