Can anyone explain what's so fun about sitting at a bar?

So what do you do while bar hopping? What's the appeal to that?

Being with my friends, talking to them, getting drunker as the night goes on...this is what I did last time I went bar hopping. Then at the end we stayed in one restaurant until it closed, got some food, and talked for the rest of the night while we sobered up. I liked it :)

Fair enough. Thank you. :)

But if all those could be done by meeting up at someone's house, why go to a bar? What makes the bar special?

How do you meet new people outside of your circle at your's or another person's house? 
Sometimes being some place that doesn't have any kind of personal connection, some place new, some place that's neutral territory, is needed by some people.  Not everyone is a home body or feels the need to have a personal connection with their surroundings.  I like experiencing new things..food, places, people.  Although I'll admit to you, for me, a bar is the last place I want to be to meet new people. But, for others, it's the first place they think of.  

Aha! That explains it. I think it's that whole meeting new people thing that I can't identify with. Well, it's actually the part before that, about having a circle. That would involve people, and I like people as much as you love the sing-song sound of children's voices as they play. ;)

Harry wrote:

1. The chronic hope of getting laid.
6. see #1.

*slips into the seat next Randy D*   :-D

Oh, it's like that, I see.  So tell me what a nice woman like you is doing in a place like this . . .

Woo hoo!  Looks like I'm about to get lucky!

:)

Lols

I get it when you're at a bar and you're playing pool or darts or doing karaoke. That makes sense to me. I don't understand just sitting there.

My friend is more into the swanky cocktail lounges, where the drinks start at about $8 and go up from there. There are places that I feel more comfortable in that will sell a bottle of cider for $2-3 or a rum and coke for about the same.

This is a menu from one of the places I recently went to:

So, you pay $10-12 and get something that looks like this:

Some of the drinks are bigger. 

But I can't see spending $10-12 for that. This particular bar also sells the equivalent of a "vat" of booze to be shared by two people. I think it's $30-35.

Whats in there the whole bar??? i’m talking about the $35 one

If I remember right, that one is the "Rum Keg." (White Puerto Rican rum, overproof Jamaican rum, passion fruit, pineapple, and lemon.) Again, though, it's designed to be shared.

So you'd just go and sit? I still don't get it. Why there and not your own living room? 

I went there to think---in a calm, quiet, environment conclusive to that activity..  That was forty years ago.  Now I sit in my den and think.

When I retired two years ago, my wife used to walk by while I was in my recliner and ask "Whatcha doin?"   My answer was, "I'm thinking."

She has adapted now to letting me know that she wants to ask me something, so that I can stop thinking and be able to pay attention to her. 

I see. 
Thank you for elaborating. :)

She asked me a few times what I was thinking about.  One answer was "Aristotle's explanation of multiplicity in the order of existence."

After a few more answers like that, she switch from "Whatcha doing?" to "what are you thinking about this time?"

Now when she walks by, she just says "Hi."

wore off. Glad to see you back.