Bars are great for lowering your social inhibitions.
Phones are not.
Ergo, one bar in England has embraced 19th-century technology to get people off their tiny screens and back to some good ol’ booze-fueled face-to-face interaction.
Steve Tyler, the owner of the brand new Gin Tub in Brighton, England but unfortunately not the singer of “Walk This Way,” has made his new pub a cell-phone-free zone.
Tyler constructed his own version of a 19th century Faraday cage — basically lining the walls with tin foil and copper mesh — to prevent any cell signals from entering his pub.
Besides the use of shared tables, it’s his way of encouraging social interaction.
“A lot of people go to bars and don’t even talk to their friends, let alone new people,” he tells Munchies. “I wanted people to interact with each other and not with people who aren’t in the room with them. For me, it’s killing the social side of going out. They’re socializing with people that they’re not with, which they could do at home anyways. But we’re not going to let you.”
While Tyler isn’t jamming signals (which is illegal), his methods fall into a grey area. “The Faraday cage is sitting on the edge of what is legal and what is not,” said David Stupples, a professor of electronic and radio systems at London’s City University.
All this said, the bar isn’t entirely against modern tech. As you can see above, the pub features phones at some tables. “Fancy a chat with another table?” their website asks. “Just give them a call, but house rules mean you have to buy them a drink.”
Fair enough.
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