Is this normal? Are there no options in US bars?

When I was a "regular" in a half dozen places around town, when I walked in one of them I could expect the beer I wanted to be sitting on the table by the time I got there to sit down. Never needed to ask.

Although I don't get out much anymore, my few more recent excursions indicate it's no longer the rule that the servers should know the customers and what they want. Even the people who apparently have no other home are still treated like strangers.

I guess times change everywhere.

Many of the "drinking holes" in the area have a choice of at least a half dozen brands/flavors, and that's been pretty usual almost everywhere I've been in the US. An exception was along the river in Philadelphia where "microbrews" became a fad 30? years ago (long before most places knew what they were) and one place I stopped in advertised 112 different brews. (I tried about half of them - I was walking - but I was a lot younger then, and it was still sort of tricky getting back to the hotel.)

On US TV, they're generally careful about identifying anything by brand because they might have to pay a "royalty" for using the brand name, or negotiate a contract to have the brand pay for the "implied advertising." The fee they get for advertising (subtly?) is only enough to justify it for the few shows that show only one "name" auto in the car chases (and sometimes use something else [unidentifiable?] for the ones that explode). (Sort of like when xOil pays a NASCAR team to have their stickers on everything.)

John