Back in the day, some pubs allegedly opened at 0700. Not that I ever saw them at that time. I saw a fight in one of them, around 11 am. Myself and the other chap at the bar were doing our best to look elsewhere (not only in the sense of not looking at the shoving and pushing, but like we were elsewhere). The only time I thought about a pint at that time in the morning was coming off the overnight train from London, but I couldn’t see if the pub was open from the main road, and I couldn’t be bothered going to investigate.
Last time I transited Hong Kong from the US I had to search for somewhere serving beer in the dawn hours of the morning.
Years earlier, I’d taken my daughter to the dentists in HK, and agreed to meet my wife for dinner in a restaurant in Wanchai. We arrived early, so we stopped for a drink, and the only people there were still there, not there already.
Anyway, as for why people are there before the pub opens…
Back in the day, Diggers did not bother applying for a licence extension, so they would not open till 5 pm, so there would be a crowd waiting for them to open after the football.
When TheBlether came to visit, after an afternoon in the town we stopped in a neighbourhood bar that did not open till 7, so we were sat drumming our fingers on the bar for 5 minutes.
I doubt you wanted anything other than a holier-than-they condemnation of early morning drinkers, but I hope some people found the above either relevant, informative, interesting or nostalgic.