In safe hands?

A couple of nights during my travels, we went to FP's favourite (and local) pub - a live music joint. It seemed decent enough. When we went down on the Friday night, there was a live band playing. They weren't very good. To be more accurate, the band were OK, the singer could sing, but the guitarist was appalling.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. It was a Friday night, about half-past ten when we rolled in and everyone was enjoying themselves. However, it became apparent quickly that the blokes were a bit, let's say "handsy" and forward. I saw at least three blokes grab women, who they were talking to, by the ass with little or no reaction. Another young-looking guy approached pretty much every woman in the bar under forty, often not taking no for an answer and often requiring intervention from other patrons.

Is this what American bars are like?

If that happened here, all four guys would be kicked out by bouncers, but the staff in general didn't seem perturbed at all.

Also, FP had claimed that come the end of the night, it was impossible not to be approached by women of all ages, especially if your face was a new one. This didn't happen to us that night, to which FP claimed that it happened at different times, "just not weekends" despite that being his original claim. This was something that FP did quite a bit during our week away - contradict himself, which proved to be annoying.