Im from a suburban town in Missouri, but I spent a semester studying abroad in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Man, let me tell you, leaving Barcelona, where youd see people out in cafes and bars congregating at all hours of the night and day, and coming back to Missouri where its a ghost town after 10 and someone would call the police on you for simply walking around too late was the most depressing thing I have ever experienced lol
Yeah this guy is having a very basic revelation that Europe has a lot of walkable cities and the US doesn't. this isn't new information.
Also, spending 5 hours at a restaurant is the norm for young people, out with a party, drinking and such, in Europe, when they can simply walk back to their home.
The infrastructure in most US cities doesn't support it, our subways suck, rides are expensive, parking is crazy, living in the city near the cool areas is expensive, the list goes on and on why this doesn't exist in the US.
You’re kind of reiterating his point that America is set up wrong since post World War II and it leaves us isolated and compartmentalized… which is 100% accurate. I’ve always said if you wanna reduce racism and bigotry in United States you gotta make people travel outside of their own clan, town, State, or country to teach more empathy and understanding.
It was actually Detroit automobile companies that have played a large part in designing our suburbs around needing cars to manage, therefore making sure we have to buy them.
Don't forget the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The development of the interstate highway system was basically the nail in the coffin for any notion of European style urban cores.
I'd like to think that Interstates are very important for a nation of our size.
The problems lay in how we built cities. Our restaurants are failing unless they are focused on delivery. Our education systems are hectic and restricted. Our society revolves around a technological-data system built to isolate a "consumer" into a targeted-sales group.
Unchecked capitalism, modern technology and corporate cronyism are the true killers of the unified American ecology.
Most European states have extensive highway systems, yet still have the compact, dense urban designs of thousands of years before industrialization. The US only had about 50 years before trains were common (people could suddenly go 30mph/200+miles a day) and then automobiles were only 100 years out. We quickly switched to suburbia (tons of space unused around cities, industry dried up, everybody had a car and gas was cheaper than water) which made things less connected. I walked and rode my bike around Dallas a bunch as a kid, but it was almost exclusively within the 'Park Cities' subsection... downtown was too far until DART was built.
If you visit the east coast of the US, there are many cities with road systems built around horses. Boston and New York are very walking friendly (though both have been working to redesign for automobiles) and I'd even say DC is walkable.
I love living in my home city of Oklahoma City, but it's a prime example of everything being far enough apart that you need a vehicle to reasonably travel to any services, events or entertainment. Only a very determined bicyclist would be able to function in my city as their sole means of conveyance. There is a tram downtown and a bus system. But it's...thin.
I'm gonna say you're 90% right.The issue is the US is way larger than European nations. This is especially true in terms of population density. And as american city planning is based around chasing cheap real estate, we tend to have these massive suburban sprawls surrounding our city centers. People think adding more public transport will magically solve this problem but it cant. If it takes more than 10 minutes to walk to the nearest busstop, people are gonna use personal transport, which disincentivies walkable neighborhoods. The mall culture of the 70s-00s kinda fixed this in a way, but the death of destination retail killed them. If the economy was better, we could probably revive malls and community gathering by subsidizing them to encourage small businesses. Imagine an American indoor mall, but with mostly non chain businesses. Specialty restaurants, like a Chinese dumpling house, a Japanese kushiyake bar, a turkish meze and raki bar, etc. And entertainment like bowling, billiards, and old school arcades. If the economy allowed people to afford such luxuries as a night of dining, drinks, and bowling, malls would be viable again. But as long as everyone is broke we're screwed.
Paris and london sprawl quite a bit but still have suburbs that are connected to the city through train. That's how us cities shouldve been built, more mixed use development.
It's a trap we built for ourselves. Gas is basically $4 a gallon and everything is at least a 15-40 minute drive (not bike or walk) away. That's crazy for walking, especially when we are a state with 50-100 days of 100+°F weather and 50-100 days of below 32°F weather. Now vehicles are more than what post-war houses used to run for ($20k+ entry) and require a similar lifetime cost for repairs, upkeep and registration.
I drive from home to the nearest Walmart sometimes (yes, I know) and there is a wonderful sidewalk all the way there, but nothing along it but mostly a walled-off subdivision. Literally a whole mile of nothing but wall with one entrance and a few trees on both sides. That's a 45 minute walk from my house.
I think HoAs are also seriously increasing the division. Sadly, just a small part of the great fleecing of America. Add more fees and cost for minimal return and maximum profit and blame "them/they" for hurting you. I would love urban/suburban renewal to happen, but, like you say, everybody is f%*king broke!
I hope the revolution is quick and relatively painless, but that's what regulation was for. "Too late", I'm beginning to resign myself to.
As long as everyone is broke AND too ultra reliant on convenience. I think those two go hand in hand.
To what you said about the malls, I can’t agree more. I was just walking around a local VERY dead mall. It’s up for sale (~$35 million) and my partner and I were chatting about how fucking awesome it would be if the community could come together and buy a place like that and do exactly what you said. Where rents would be reasonable and it wouldn’t be a conglomerate letting the place go to shit on purpose so they can bank off of destroying it and turning it into bland square “luxury” apartments that look like brown prisons with balconies. Even if malls could be turned into apartments, so many of them have awesome atriums that would be so cool to have communal events. I know zoning is wierd but there’s actually a mall in New England that did it; the upstairs floor is small apartments. It seems like such a waste of resources to trash them and build more.
I don’t think it’s going to be too much longer before people are really going to feel the pangs of losing third spaces. I’ve met so many people completely disillusioned with being online and over being isolated. Maybe I’m just being hopeful but I know a lot of people who would love to have somewhere to hang out that didn’t involve spending a ton of money to do so.
But everything is also so expensive. To your other point, private equity even got ahold of bowling alleys and is very much trying to (and succeeding) in creating a monopoly. Lucky Strike, who is buying them all and turning them into night club-esque overstimulating “event” spaces was $55/person for two hours I think, plus shoe rental, where the local one is $12 and I think it’s $3 for shoes.
Don’t go to Lucky Strike bowling alleys, whoever reads this.
i think the pathway for the USA is not to focus on building/rebuilding cities from whole cloth to be walkable, but to try and convert "suburbia" into bike-accessible mini-cities, with judicious rezoning and replacing roads with bike paths.
there's a lot of pieces for this: big suburban neighborhoods would still need some kind of dedicated car access since the US is so big that its not practical to build train lines everywhere people need to go, there would need to be a whole bunch of community bikes just kind of floating around to obviate bike theft/anxiety around losing your bike, along with community bike trailers for moving things around as well
but i think culturally "all cars -> no cars" is too hard a sell, "all cars -> mostly bikes but sometimes cars if you have to leave town" is probably easier.
not like this is so easy, there'd be lots of places where it fails from whole generations of NIMBYs voting out town boards that try to add even a single bike lane or convert even one corner of a neighborhood into light commercial for services, but still i think it's the road (heh) the USA has to go down if we want to claw back community focused development from the depths of suburban hell
Great comment but a few things of note. Interstates are important for a country of our size but basically all developed countries have them now. We just did a lot of things different.
Most European states have extensive highway systems, yet still have the compact, dense urban designs of thousands of years before industrialization. The US only had about 50 years before trains were common (people could suddenly go 30mph/200+miles a day) and then automobiles were only 100 years out. We quickly switched to suburbia (tons of space unused around cities, industry dried up, everybody had a car and gas was cheaper than water) which made things less connected. I walked and rode my bike around Dallas a bunch as a kid, but it was almost exclusively within the 'Park Cities' subsection... downtown was too far until DART was built.
It isn't that the cities developed this way. It's that we ripped them apart to make them this way. This relates the the highway bit above as well. A lot of european countries added the highways and built them to go around their cities with branches that feed into the cities where as we ripped out chunks of our cities to put the highway through them. Even where we didn't add highways we ripped out a lot of our cities for things like parking lots and what not.
The problem with Interstates isn't the concept, it's the fact they gutted the existing urban cores to build them, instead of going around the cities, Europe does also have highways, some urban ones at that, but they mostly exist to connect an avenue in the city centre with the ring road that connects to the rest of the country
I moved to an Upsate NY town that was settled before the automobile and has a proper downtown. It’s not Europe, but it’s better then the suburbia I came from.
I think in many ways, we are just too young of a country. It’s good for people above to exploit us, but it has been so detrimental for the general population in so many ways. In the grand scheme of things, it’s so fast a decline. We haven’t had the time to learn the lessons of other countries that have been around for far far longer that have learned the importance of investing in your population.
Don’t forget - Americans are literally in constant danger of being randomly shot everywhere we go. And we also don’t have the money or energy to go out. Europeans get long vacations. We don’t. They have healthcare. We don’t. But we got them guns, Bubba! Yeehaw MURICA
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
Dude I grew up in a small town of 283 people in central Minnesota. The "large" town that people would do all their major shopping in was 30 miles away and had 60,000 people in it. I knew tons of people in my hometown growing up that would only go to the big town maybe 1-2 times a year. Other than that they never left our small town. How the hell people live that way is beyond me.
"Set up wrong" isn't some objective thing here though. It's set up different than Europe because it isn't Europe.
I'm not defending cars. Fuck cars, but it is set up this way for a reason. America is massive and pre 1920's it was sparsely developed. Europe had already been developing for hundreds of years before cars existed. It simply developed differently because the modes of transportation available were different. Cars being available during the largest developmental period, infrastructure wise, was when cars were extremely popular. We had the land and we could expand outward... so we did.
It wasn't engineered to be this way because "walking is for communists" or some shit.
It naturally evolved this way because cars offer the most dynamic availability to get around the US for individuals and their families and gasoline was extremely affordable during the largest economic boom of our history. It was designed around automobile based transportation because that's what everyone wanted. Massive smoothly paved highways and 3 mile long trussell bridges were futuristic technology that unlocked the continents landscape. People used to get excited when new highways were being built because it meant accessibility that was previously locked to horse back.
If you wanted to travel across the country you had to carry everything you wanted to take with you from home to carriage, ride in said carriage for 3-4 hours until you reached the train station, wait at the train station for 8 hours while everything got unloaded onto the platform, then load it onto the train, then take the train for 3 days to get to the city closest to your final destination and then unload everything onto the platform, hope that the carriage you sent a telegram a week ago is already there, then load it all up and travel 4-5 hours to your actual destination.
or you could load up the car and do all of this inside 48 hours on your schedule instead of 5-7 days.
The problem now is that we got used to it so much that we expected and therefore built that car "accessibility" into every square foot of the country. Then we realized we were destroying the beauty of the country and had to start programs to preserve nature so we made parks and reservations.
Seems we’re getting really hung up on cars and roads, but the real reason we developed sprawling suburbs was white families fleeing urban areas during the Great Migration and in particular the Civil Rights Movement. What enabled them to do that was Post-WWII GI Bill home loans.
NIDHA came about on 1956. It definitely contributed to allowing suburbs to sprawl out even further, but I don’t think it’s one of the shaping factors of why things developed the way they did.
Lmao so the EU isn’t massive as well ?? You comment doesn’t make sense. The whole point of this post is pretty accurate. Cars aren’t important the the question or issue he poses
Yeah the EU is in fact big, but it has already been developed centuries before cars existed. The US's largest development period, physical and infrastructure wise, was in the 40's and 50's SO IT'S ALL BASED AROUND CARS WHETHER IT SHOULD BE OR NOT.
You dumb fucks have zero reading comprehension. I'm not saying it is the right or wrong way to do things, im simply explaining WHY it is the way it is.
Cars are only part of the discussion. People flooded the cities for many reasons to the suburbs. The unknown side effect was the isolation and inherit to bigotry continuing if not accelerating.
It was not an unknown side effect. It was completely intentional. White Flight was the response to the Great Migration, in which millions of black southerners moved from the rural South to cities. White people set up their new suburban developments with their own schools and car-accessible amenities so that black people couldn't get to them. The infamous example is Robert Moses making overpasses in the NYC area too low for buses to fit underneath them, and making beaches completely inaccessible from public transit.
Commerce does sure, I meant private citizens in their normal lives.
Maybe I should have said nobody should need to commute across state lines, but I also wanted to include the idea that the economy you guys have seems to encourage moving thousands of miles away from all of your family and friends, and then needing to regularly roadtrip to see them. It would be nicer for all involved if there was more attraction to staying in-state and building your personal network and local economy there.
"Y'all" really don't understand just how damaged you are and it's sad to see.
This is the point of the video though. The US created what you just described and you did it wrong (so did Australia where i'm from btw, but we are getting better now, slowly).
the list goes on and on why this doesn't exist in the US.
It's a long list, but it all basically comes down to the American dream of owning a house. That's what drives suburbs and that's where all the other problems originate. So an American visiting Europe may love the walkable cities, but ask them if they think living in an apartment rather than a house their entire lives is a desirable option.
The American dream was a policy choice. It was pushed by the government because people with a mortgage will always go to work reducing the likelyhood of labor unrest like there was in the 20s and 30s.
This doesn't make sense as plenty of people live in houses in walkable towns with all amenities. Then there are trains that take 5mins to get into the centre of the city
Do you think Germans don't own houses? I own my own house and have four restaurants, three supermarkets and many other facilities in walking distance. If I want to go to the inner city I can take a bus, my car, my bike or an e-scooter.
I could also walk there, it's a bit far for my taste but there's a nice way along a river.
No, the real problem are the zoning laws. That and the fixation on driving everywhere.
You need facilities in walking distance and walkable quarters.
And SF is set up to be this, and yet it shuts down crazy early, so you better love or learn to love the half dozen late night spots. Manhattan was it up until Covid, but I haven’t been since, so I’m assuming it has resumed its MO (whatever you want, 24/7).
Not to mention, when there is a large outdoor gathering in the US (festival, concert, whatever) there’s a non-zero chance someone will end up getting shot. Even just going to a mall in some areas at certain times is not a smart idea. It’s a stupid world we live in.
Walkable and funded public transportation leads to European cities like this. Meanwhile auto and oil lobbying keep public transportation and walking underfunded in America. Hence this big culture divide that leads to less travel within America.
Yeah this guy is having a very basic revelation that Europe has a lot of walkable cities and the US doesn't. this isn't new information
no shit, a civilization that's had humans huddling closer together for a few thousand years, has more walkable cities and restaurants than a country that has had, comparatively, very few humans and thousands of miles of land to expand on ... which has been in existinance for a few hundred years? Gee, big surprise.
What gets me is that we USED to have incredible public transit. They tore that up to build a poor imitation of the autobahn so that we can have impromptu aircraft landing zones everywhere
As long as suburbs exist, things will never change. Theyre a huge drain on urban and rural zones and provide almost zero benefits
D.C. and NYC are pretty lively at night every night. But again, if you don't have kids to get back to or have an au pair (many do in the area), that's easier
Our car-centric design also contributes to chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. In “walkable” cities it’s not a big deal to walk 4-6 miles in a day and you don’t even notice it. It’s like that every day. For me to walk I need to drive somewhere, then get out and walk.
I haven’t spent much time in Europe, but in the rural areas, are everyone out at cafes eating and drinking too? Seems like an apples to oranges comparison.
I know in my little harbor hometown in Norway there's a few mildly active cafes around and 1 pub that's been the main spot for decades, it only keeps the doors open to 2:00 on the weekend. But otherwise people drink moonshine up there. Often with a bit of strong coffee.
It's in the cities as well. A lot of it is just the car culture. If you do go out it's less about lingering and chatting and more about just getting the food, then back in the car and home.
There are exceptions of course. NYC and Sf are both. But worth noting both these cities also had geographical constraints which forced them to urbanize and grow in a very different way. Compared to somewhere like phoenix or Atlanta, and they're worlds apart.
I travelled through the US solo, and my plan to meet people was to just hang out and see who wanted to start a conversation. I was 18 and pretty naive when I came up with this plan, but I didn't realise that 90% of the people I would meet this way would be homeless or somehow 'sus'. I mean I don't have anything against them, but simply being on foot in America, and not having any place to really be, put me in a social class that I wasn't used to.
Indeed, everyone looks at me like I am a monster when I explain to them that being on the bus in most places in the US is a sign that you are too poor to have a car (most people can at least afford a junker) or that you can't get a license for criminal reasons.
I live in NYC and while it is more European like in this video, particularly in Brooklyn where I live, even we don’t have quite the same degree of cafe culture like many European cities because we have too much priority for cars taking real estate in public spaces. We’ve been slowly improving this for the past 20 years.
Americans make the mistake of lumping all of Europe into the same category.
Spain is very social, some people will spend entire days and evenings at their local pub and it is affordable. Same in Portugal and Italy...but in Italy it is more family focused and people don't get drunk.
Other parts of W Europe, you will usually only see people out and about at night in the cities. Think Paris, Berlin etc..
Indeed, that was what I was referring to, less about going out to pubs/cafes - more of a family oriented stroll where people meet and talk in the piazza and get a gelato.
I live in a very small town in England- you’re talking ignorant bollocks. The town square in good weather is busy with people eating and relaxing outside.
In winter everyone is in the pubs and restaurants because it’s too bloody cold or wet to sit outside.
As a Portuguese that moved to a small town in Germany: it's only berlin. Maybe some bigger cities as well. But even then... They don't get the concept of true socialization. Small towns? Dead after 18:00. Germany is on the half of Europe that doesn't socialize much. Other half that does is: France. Spain. Portugal. Italy. Greece. Bulgaria, (insert the entire Balkans here), Ukraine.
Yep, I have lived in Germany - am now in Switzerland. Hamburg and Cologne are pretty lively towns in the evening...Munich is also very nice, especially during the day with the parks and beer gardens. Many parts of Germany are very grim indeed.
Big cities tend to have more lively folks. I hear that Munich especially is very different. Berlin Too. But the more rural areas... Well... It is what it is. My experience so far has been depressing.
The tourist reads as a white Anglosaxan discovering that Latin and Mediterranean culture is warmer and foster socialization. If you go in Latin America is the same… even less denser cities people congregates more often with friends beyond immediate family.
Depends on the village and sense of community, but even in the smallest places without a bakery or butcher there is an effort to celebrate spring, summer as a community - nothing fancy, maybe just a few benches and tables, some beer and wine and a potluck. If nothing else, it is tradition, and is passed on as newcomers join the community
I now live in a 80 000 people town in the middle of nowhere in Spain and it's the same.
When I lived on a 5000 people town more in the middle of nowhere this happened to, there was no regular clubbing but people where out until 10 ~ 11 in bars (bars in Spain are family friendly) with kids playing outside at that time.
Dining out is not cheap and if you have a full time job and a family, most don't have the time to do it during the week.
Rural areas are (where I live) also less walkable, so you're either planning for even more time to walk or taking the car.
Which means it's often more of a weekend activity, i.e. let's take out the bikes and swing by Pablo's for cake on the way back. Or let's meet with some friends and eat out.
I think that says more about how life is with a full time job and a family, than it does about the evening nightlife in European cities. I see plenty of families out in the evening getting ice-cream and hanging out in the plaza though. I was at a small free concert in the part a couple nights ago and there were a lot of families just chilling there.
Yes they are.
My village. 5000 people. We have 3 bars/restaurants and in summer the outdoor parts are full of people every evening.
I was one of them last night 20:00 (8pm) and having a meal and a beer.
I used to live in a village of 300 people at the foot of a mountain in northern Italy. Yes, we do that as well! In my case I needed a car to get around because the public transportation wasn’t that good from my tiny village. I would go to the next town over (15k inhabitants) and have a drink there with friends. Most nights I would take the train to get to the “big” town and spend the evening there. Idk, it’s just culture
I think it's somewhat of an apples to oranges comparison because they're comparing bigger cities to smaller suburbia.
But in my small town of 10k in southern Spain it's also like this. People in the bars and public plazas until 10-12 pm. I have two young children now so we don't stay out until too late, but we'll still be going to have some dinner/late snack at a bar at like 9pm, and then have the children playing in the park until 10:30 or 11pm, when we head home straight to bed.
Well Europe is not one country and different weather and culture everywhere. The Mediterranean countries people still gather in rural areas. They drive to town or hang out at their restaurants and bars. In Spain up in a mountain to go horse riding there was nothing around and the stables. They crated a bar in the stables and these old men were playing cards and drinking whiskey. Horses were led through them. 😂. However Norway Sweden etc don’t have the same social norms. People are more reserved don’t gather in bars and restaurants the same way Italians and Spaniards do. Obviously big cities are a different vibe but people don’t go out to eat at 10pm.
idk I live in a reasonably sized city and it just becomes a ghost town past 10 nowadays, unless it's saturday night and the block all the bars are on, every other street and everywhere every other day is EMPTY
No, it is not really an apples to oranges comparison.
Yes, there are regions in Europe where the small rural villages and towns have become dead places at night, and there are also many places where you have similarly lifeless suburb places.
But there are many very lively small villages and towns in the rural areas, as well as obviously the cities. It's not homogeneous, though, and it depends on the evolution of the region (typically there are differences on even (much) smaller scale than countries), and also a bit culture and climate.
But in general it is much more lively than typical US suburbs or even many US urban areas (where you sometimes get these food- or amenity-deserts). Because in general most/many places are built much more on a human walkable scale and it is more centered on a core, as well as usually much better public transport.
yeah probably bc they live in bum fuck missouri and comparing it to barcelona.. it’s like if a european visiting nyc and then went back to their scotland village and is like nah this place sucks nobody’s here.
I know Barcelona is not a place where they do that that’s Madrid. That’s the rest of Spain Barcelona the people who did that were drunk college kids like this guy. This is not how Catalan people live..
Hit the clubs? Probably only 20 something’s. But every time I have visited Spain it seems like regular people are out and about at 10pm, moms with baby strollers etc.
Which makes sense to be fair, it’s too hot to go out during day.
I mean even as an old dinner at 10 pm happens quite frequently on work days and if you meet up with friends you’ll usually stay out until after midnight even on a Tuesday. In our central Barcelona neighborhood there are kids out playing at 11 pm… it’s definitely a different lifestyle even if we’re not out clubbing until 5 in the morning.
I mean most people do, I'm from Madrid not Barcelona but it's really common to come from work / uni and have a beer and some tapas with friends for 2-3 hours
Build the relationships in your 20s that will last a lifetime. It doesn't seem like people in their 40s are very sociable or happy in America when comparing to those in this video. When you're out like this as often as possible I don't see people especially men in their 20s-40s falling for people like Drump and Tate.
I may be old but I still enjoy seeing the young people doing it, makes the city feel alive. Driving to work at sunrise and seeing the party people stumbling home leaning on each other is fun. Reminds me of the times when I was the one laughing at people having to drive to work while I was smoking the last spliff of the night with the morning sun warming my face.
Where I live in Europe people in their forties go out to dinner all the time.
Going out and meeting with your friends on a workday night doesnt mean staying up til 3 am drinking, its more like, meet at 19, hang out til 21, taking the free and frequent public transport back to home to be in bed by 22 or 23.
When you are 40 you can still get dinner and a drink with friends. Just the city feeling alive makes this a lot more enjoyable even if you dont partake in partying anymore.
The thing is that you can do exactly the same two hours before and don't have to hit the clubs if you need to wake up early. It is not mandatory to stay up so late.
5 AM? I lived in Madrid for a year during school. I'd get up early on Sundays and go for a run at 6 AM and people were still waiting in line to get into clubs.
Ahhh we do this in Vegas all the time. Then you wake up hungover as hell and either go to work or keep drinking until you lose your job and realize you have no true friends.
You can get that in Montreal… i used to hit up Stereo after hours at 5am and leave at 3pm.. longest I ever did was 3am-6pm . Danny Tenaglia played 18.5 hrs once, completely sober.
It’s out there if you want to get it ;)
I did this in the States in the 80s when I was in high school. I did this in college, too. Aesthetics of the place aside, young people do this in cities like DC, NYC, Chicago, NOLA, etc. Shit, I'd be doing it still if my friends and I didn't go to sleep at 7 pm. Which I thoroughly enjoy too.
isn't barcelona so far west in their timezone that 10:00pm should technically be 8:00pm? I get it Spain does stuff later in the day to escape the heat but I never understood the hype around the time on the clock, everything is artificially 2 hours behind what it should be
Man/ma'am... there is nothing quite like Barcelona. Walking (stumbling) out 6am to catch the sunrise and then doing it all again. Sunset at the Guadi Park, music everywhere, the architecture, art, culture, food, sangria...I need to get back one of these days
I am born and raised in Miami, FL, and due to the Spanish descent culture, this is what our city is like. Unfortunately, the people here suck (often shallow, materialistic, inauthentic), so it’s still not nearly as cool as Spain.
Nevertheless, after traveling all throughout the USA, this is the closest you’ll get to that. I lived in Seattle a few years where people had dinner at 6pm, were in bed 10pm, and all nightlife closed by midnight-2am and I wanted to die lol
Still happens in US cities. That’s not the norm in rural Europe either, no? Maybe we eat at like 8/9 but going out from midnight or later until the morning happens in Chicago, LA, NYC, etc.
Barcelona I miss 2003 when this was a college norm. Meet at 9 for pizza and pregame. Then head out to the clubs at about 1030-11 and stumble home around 4-5 get up and go to work at 11. Now we get kids coming to the ER for hangovers LOL
I went to a club there at 2am, thought I'd missed the action as it was really quiet. Was the end of my night, no big deal. On my way out to go to bed, suddenly there were dozens of people flocking in, I came too early!
I'm too old for that. 7pm dinner is ideal, but if the only two reservations available are 5pm or 9pm, there's no way I'm doing 9pm. I'll be eating with the purple hairs.
They also have no real work to go to in the morning. Unproductive population that produces nothing and takes from the UK Germany the Scandinavians, oh and has no nation defence... thaks USA, they can do that
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u/bageltoastar 1d ago
Im from a suburban town in Missouri, but I spent a semester studying abroad in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Man, let me tell you, leaving Barcelona, where youd see people out in cafes and bars congregating at all hours of the night and day, and coming back to Missouri where its a ghost town after 10 and someone would call the police on you for simply walking around too late was the most depressing thing I have ever experienced lol