Yeah, seems like there's a need for more bars instead of a complicated solution to a simple problem.

I wouldn't agree with that. Opening a bar is easy, but there is always a lot of empty bars. You need to make a popular, cool bar with a nice atmosphere that is on the perfect border of "going out" and "chilling", with a good gender ratio and you have to make it pretty popular. But that doesn't cut the lines in half in the other bars. I'm thinking there might be a solution in having a platform that allows you subscription-style entry into bars. Like pay 50$ a month and you get instant entry + 1 friend into a place. Add another friend for n$ where n is the average price of entry or determined by the hosting bar/club.

complicated how? Is it "easier" to open physical bars with usually thin margins and massive capital investment + branding + staffing up + etc...? When all is said and done, a tech solution might be easier/better.

A tech solution for what actually? The problem is that there are few (good?) bars in the area. The solution for that problem would be to open new bars.

You may disagree but I feel we are in an age of transparency. TripAdvisor, yelp, cargurus, Amazon reviews etc. Consumers want to know as much detail as possible prior to a purchase or visiting a hotel.

My big point is that one of the remaining non transparent industries is nightlife. Bars create fake lines and charge bogus covers.

I just feel like technology could improve this.

And they became profitable because they managed to provide a visibility service for millions of local establishments, not a bunch of crooked bars.