Vancouver pub/bar owners are cheap "barstards"

I could talk about current geo-politics, in light of the G-8 conference and the London bombings and the new cold war brewing between America, China and the rest of the world, but what really burns my ass today is that I pay up to $7-8 for a beer in a local pub and I would have to go to a Belgian speciality restaurant to avoid the waiter just plunking the bottle, sans cap down in front of me.

As anyone who has been to Europe knows, every beer deserves its own glass.

Not just it's own fresh, clean glass every time you drink another, but a glass specially designed for that beer, shaped to bring out the maximum potential of the brew. Not the same old sturdy, cone shaped 3-ounces-short-of-a-real-pint glass that is the mainstay of the local pub industry. Not for 8 bucks a pint.

Despite all their pretenses of serving fine beers in good surroundings, the actual presentation of what they serve bites. There are finer glasses out there: for instance, Alexander Keith's *can* come in a nice, bow-shaped glass, but rarely does. The only reason for that is that they are afraid of breaking it before they've used it to sell a million slightly short "pints" of beer in sturdy, squat, thick glasses or even better, the bottle it came in, which is pretty much disposable and doesn't require any extra effort. Vancouver pub patrons need to rise up against this cheapness, rather than have the owners pass along any improvements, whcih should be standard practice, to the consumer.