Bangalore has been known as 'The Pub City' for quite some time now. The older ones are doing well; new ones are mushrooming all over the town. People choose these pubs based on the kind of music, the ambience, the crowd. These are generally crowded on weekends. The youngsters consider these as 'Cool Hangout Places'. People consider it to be 'Cool', and the 'In-thing' hanging out at these pubs. The only places where youngsters can go to and unwind at the end of their day at Bangalore are these Pubs. In turn, they do get onto the habit / ritual of consuming alcohol, just because they have no other place to go to.      

      Initially Coffee Day (a Bangalore based group) came out with this concept of Cafés, where youngsters can go and spend some time unwinding, or just relaxing. It really felt good to look at the youngsters drink something other than beer. Kudos to Coffee Day for coming out with this concept. The place became popular with the youngsters. This place even had a few computer terminals providing internet access.    

     Bangalore even has a large number of students from other Indian states, and even other countries. These students started spending their non-college timings at these Cafés, in turn surfing the net for their studies and chatting far-and-wide. This served as nice venues for online dating couples meeting in real, and took the dating exercise to newer vistas. A lot of online dating sites have come up around this time, both on a national level as well as a local level. These Cafés served as meeting joints to these youngsters.    

    All good things come to an end…so did the monopoly of Coffee Day. We did have other Cafés opening up around the city. The other major player in this field is BARISTA. The interiors here are more spacious, brighter and trendier. They even have a few games (like scrabble) and a guitar around, which visitors can use to entertain themselves. Overall a neat place!! Last evening we spent some time at the St. Marks Road Branch. That's the 50th branch in the country. Coffee Day also has now started working out a new look and a newer menu, to survive the competition.      

     I hope there are more of these Cafés in the city. It would be great to have these elegant Cafés along the roads like the streets in Venice. The inviting tables in Italy even attract Cover Charges ;-). We still seem to be far off from that. But, I guess the Café Culture is here to stay.     

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