Which is a good idea anyway, since those places have less social pressure to drink.

It's not just the people under 21 (well, 16 here) you can be excluding on an alcohol party. There are also people that don't drink or drink very little.

(To be fair, I only got weird looks and remarks once for not drinking alcohol and that was at a student bar where drinking seemed to be the norm. Normally it isn't too big a deal, but I can imagine some people - especially younger ones - feeling uncomfortable being the only one not drinking alcohol. Even more so when a group just gets a pitcher of beer.)

I doubt most people ever really notice if someone isn't drinking, even at an event where the majority of people are. Or maybe I'm just not very observant.

I usually do drink at these kinds of events, but when I don't I've never felt pressured to (at least not since college). Maybe it's different for people who sometimes drink vs. never drink.

People notice, but only to a small degree. When I was out in SF back in July I didn't intend to drink much at the meetup. I think I had 4 drinks total, all were bought by someone else for me. If I had declined the drinks, or gotten something non-alcoholic instead, I doubt anyone would have made a fuss about it.

Well.. and PJ did shove like $15 in the jukebox and demand I pick songs, and gave us money for the taxi ride home which also paid for a nice pizza back at the hotel.

I don't think the problem is other people noticing as much as thinking they're noticing. You can feel a bit weird if someone goes "beers for everyone?", everyone's agreeing and you're the one that has to go "no thanks, a coke would be nice". Or worse, just order it and put it in front of you. People do tend to assume everyone drinks beer.

(For me, that's not true. I don't mind alcohol, but I can't stand the taste of beer. I can't finish a zip of it, let alone a glass. I do sometimes have to explain that. Since I'm old enough to have a driver's license I sometimes have the nice excuse that I still need to drive. Works a bit better in that it requires less explanation.)

It's possibly because I just got out of college, but it really bothers people when you don't drink. A lot. I didn't drink the entire way through, and I got a lot of comments later on. People weren't very forward about it, but after some prodding, they stopped inviting me out because they felt that I was judging them by not drinking, and therefore I was a buzzkill. I didn't draw any attention to it at all, I had a Coke in my hand the entire night, but it still made people upset.

People are silly.

I totally agree, but at the time the rationale was those places typically weren't "cool." Which is obviously also exclusionary.