The rise and popularity of the modern day café/bar has been a phenomenal modern day success. To walk around a city centre one can find streets full of café/bars and usually more being built leading one to ask how many can we support? However this does seem at total odds to the English traditional drinking culture - the pub. Pubs have a very homely feeling and can have the feeling of being in somebody's front room. The carpet on the floor the blaring fire, the big substantial chairs and tables, the decorations and ornaments which form an unorganised miss match of colours shapes and styles and of course the pint of beer in ones hand.

The Café/bar is in direct opposition to this it is no longer the domain of the working class but of the well to do, trendy intellectual. From the outside the café/bars usually have a highly glazed façade like a shop window. It is like looking into an expensive clothes shop, there is the feeling that not just anybody can go in there it is for the social elite. Their design and layout perpetuate this image. The interiors are subtly decorated there is not the unorganised mixture of decorations and ornaments of the pub. Great care and attention is given to how the place looks down to the copy of the Guardian laid casually across the table. Some café/bars have artwork displayed for sale on the walls because this place is for the art lover and the person with money to spare.

The café/bar has the continental feel giving the pretence one is in south of France or Spain. To be inside doesn't feel part of England. The glazed facades and the light and simply decorated interiors give the feel of a warm climate. Inside one is on holiday and is having a good time. Wineglasses in the holders above the bar replace the pint glasses. The fridges are full of bottles of all different colours that are purposely lit up to full effect. The Bar is lit up by brightly coloured neon lights. Some of the names also conjure up the same image such as "Biba" and "Beluga" one might not necessarily know what these words mean (if in fact they do have a meaning) but it is as if you are in Ibiza in the middle of summer.

It can have a similar feel to being in a McDonald's restaurant in the sense that you could be anywhere in the world. There will not be pictures of the local football team, the spice girls or other, "ordinary" things on the wall; this place is above that. A lot of the decorations or artworks are not site specific, in fact quite the opposite. The artwork including the tables and chairs are usually very modern fashionable pieces.

However on a night time there will be the young people there ready to drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol. They are not interested in studying and debating the various artworks or reading the Guardian. They would much rather talk about the local football team. It can seem that the people and the place are a total miss match, what are those sorts of people doing in here?

This is however no accident for the consumers of the café/bar culture are the ordinary people and intentionally so. An artificial culture is literally being bought into (for most people know that the same drink can be bought a lot cheaper elsewhere). It is like shopping at Harrods instead of Kwik Save. Pubs are for old the café/bar is for the young and sophisticated. People want to leave life's ordinary realities outside; it is like going into a Cathedral you are taken in by your surroundings, which are all the carefully designed and placed details form. There is no accidentally placed ornament or a miss match of wallpaper coverings; it is aiming for perfection compared to the pub's normality. There is a lot of care and attention in the details the way the bar intersects the counter or the bottles are arranged behind the bar.

There can be a similar comparison as to why people choose to eat at out at a fashionable expensive restaurant instead of at an "ordinary" one. There is one important difference in that the café/bars are more or less for anybody where as the fashionable restaurant is more exclusive. The role of the café/bar could be argued to present the "ordinary" person with the very dream of success. Much in the same way women's magazines picture the perfect women it is a dream we aspire to. The clientele of the café/bar is made to feel more important. A person in such a place is surely an important person, it is not like the ordinariness of the pub. The customer appreciates the time, care and attention that has been put into their surroundings.

The traditional English pint is another victim of the café/bar this is too common, too English, which is what we are trying to avoid. The pint and the stuffy pub is exactly the image we have tried so hard too keep out. The pub, for so long the bastion of English culture and society, is no longer good enough. We want to be away from our daily lives. The pint, partial due to all its advertising can be associated with the working class man and his sports such as rugby and football. This is not appropriate in the café/bar it is not the place where somebody could go and watch the football, it is too sophisticated a place, the shouting and passion associated with watching football would not be appropriate.

The pint has been replaced with the bottled beer. However does this live up to the continental image for are not a lot of the bottled beers English and American. Might it also be that it is too expensive to install a draft system and that bottled beer is cheaper and yet more profitable. Some of the bottled beers are also the same as those available on draft they have just been repackaged.

The Café/bar could be seen as the evolution of the pub. Just as advertisers and companies spend a fortune trying to have an up to date image and steer clear of the dreaded out of date look maybe this is where the café/bar has its origins. The image of the pub has finally been broken away from even the name Café/bar as though it is attaining to the image of the café but has the bonus of having a bar.

The rise of the café/bar has hit the traditional pubs hard. The amounts of pubs in city centres have diminished and the ones that remain can be sparsely populated. Some of the pubs are fitting back against their old and stuffy image. Some have tried changing their names to such as, "The Rat and Parrot" but this is surely not as clever or sophisticated.

Will the rise of the Café/Bar ever end? Are our towns and cities going to be taken over by them and are we going to allow this?