A bar in Dunedin had an entry charge one evening when a band was playing.
Four thousand people paid to get in but the bar served only 900 drinks.
This could mean most people were sober.
It’s more likely a sign of how and where they’re drinking – before they got to the bar and probably at home or another private venue rather than at another pub.
It’s called pre-loading.
People do it because it’s cheaper but it doesn’t reflect well on our culture that many do it to excess and feel they can’t enjoy themselves without the assistance of alcohol.
Homepaddock 
It’s most likely because the punters couldn’t fight their way to the bar in all that crush.
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It makes sense. If you’re a bit strapped (like most of the going-out population in Dunedin is), then you get the best bang for your buck.
Why pay $7.50 a Heineken ($45 a six-pack) when you can have the same amount at home for $12*?
Especially when the “service” provided is definitely not worth $30.
Instead of being all nanny-state about drinking, we should be doing three things:
1. Introducing a rigorous education programme in schools about drinking and the harm it can cause.
2. Creating policy which encourages drinking in bars (regulated, controlled environments) rather than at home.
3. Encouraging the older population to actually set an example for once for the younger generations in how they drink. After all, who do you think they learn how to drink from? Probably from seeing Dad or Uncle Jim get shit-faced at Christmas.
*Being very, very generous as to the amount drunk here. Realistically, you’re probably looking at more like at least a dozen, meaning you pay $90 in a bar or $25 at home.
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Hell, if I drank a dozen stubbies in one hit, I’d fall over.
And if FOUR BLOODY THOUSAND people paid to get in and got in, then is it a bar or the local cattle yards?
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perhaps it was a christian band
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Four thousand people paid to get in but the bar served only 900 drinks.
A lot of venues are finding this, because the people going there are consuming E, not booze.
Many such venues have twigged to this and now charge for water, which E-consumers need in large volumes because of what the drug does to their systems/brains.
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Andrei and Adolf – they weren’t all in the bar at once.
James – price definitely makes a difference.
Mort – not sure if they served loaves and fishes too.
Johnsonmike – pre-loading in alcohol isn’t good but E is worse.
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Adi – a dozen is child’s play for most Dunedin citizens I know (unfortunately?). It’s only 8 games of Beer Pong after all (the Otago University beer Pong Society Tournaments have, up until recently, involved the winner competing in a minimum of 19 games, 1.5 beers per game.).
For some of the younger ones, it is literally child’s play.
You gotta both admire and despise our drinking culture at times.
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