I was never much of a clubgoer, my nightlife experiences were usually limited to closing out a bar or getting drunk with friends at one of our houses until the wee hours of the morning.
The clubs were too loud and expensive for me, I didn’t see the point in paying premium prices for a cocktail for a girl that wouldn’t give me her phone number and being deafened by a Ke$ha party anthem while hoping I wouldn’t get into a fight with an Arab guy wearing gold chains encircled in his chest hair.
Apparently many people feel the same way because lot of clubs are closing around the country. Largely because of the sky high rents and energy costs coupled with the economic fallout from Covid. But there are many other factors as well.
Covid conditioned a lot of people to prefer being homebodies, this CBS article explains:
A new survey shows the COVID-19 pandemic has caused more people to stay home more often.
The survey of 1,000 homeowners, conducted by the Research for Institute for Cooking and Kitchen Intelligence, showed 64% have a "greater desire" to stay home now than before the pandemic.
This increase in homebody behavior is affecting home remodels, according to the survey, with more homeowners adding wine and coffee centers to their kitchens, outdoor living spaces becoming more popular and more.
Sixty percent of surveyed homeowners said mental well-being was their top priority.
The popularity of dating apps like Tinder has been waning but many young people prefer them to trying to cold open on a girl with a Gucci bag, but there is evidence to suggest that beyond apps and the club scene Gen Z prefers to date people they already know. From the CNN article:
But Gen Z is also forming romantic relationships offline more frequently than other generational cohorts. About 40% of young US adults in relationships say they were close friends or friends with their partner before they became romantically involved, according to the Survey Center on American Life. (The Survey Center for American Life is part of the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative think tank.)
A lot of guys are giving up on dating and find one night stands soul crushing while the #MeToo movement enlightened a lot of girls to the dangers of strange men. Then there’s the fact that Zoomers aren’t drinking nearly as much as previous generations. From the Forbes article:
The “sober curious” lifestyle—which means a person is exploring alcohol abstinence—is growing in popularity among Gen Z and millennials, and the hashtag #sobercurious has over 89,000 videos on TikTok of creators sharing their experience with the movement. Almost 30% of college students in 2018 reported abstaining from alcohol, compared to 20% in 2002, according to a 2020 JAMA Network Open study. Some 62% of adults under the age of 35 say they drink, according to an August 2023 Gallup poll, down from 72% two decades ago. This decline in drinking may have caused a boost in the no- and low-alcohol drink industry, which is expected to grow by 25% between 2022 and 2026, according to data from drinks market analysis firm IWSR. Beer maker Anheuser-Busch said it plans to have alcohol-free or low-alcohol drinks account for 20% of its sales by 2025. Gavin Hattersley, the CEO of Molson Coors—which makes Miller Lite, Coors Lite and Blue Moon—told CNBC the company is investing in nonalcoholic beverages like energy drinks and nonalcoholic beers to keep up with health and wellness trends spearheaded by young adults.
This video sums it up pretty well if you don’t mind two Asian guys with obnoxious YouTuber affectations
I grew up in a small city in the midwest, there wasn’t much of a club scene to speak of but I do remember going with my friends to a upscale bar in the wealthier section of town that featured dancing and marked up drinks. It was a close facsimile to a club environment featuring lots of bleach blonde girls in low cut dresses and guys in tight pants who reeked of cologne.
I remember being paired off with this girl, she was a cute redhead whose name I don’t think I ever learned. I didn’t know her, she had just shown up randomly at my friends place where we’d gathered and pre-gamed before heading to this bar. I don’t know how I got stuck with her but I wound up getting a $7 Budweiser for myself and a $13 Vodka tonic for her and we danced to The Weeknds “Can’t feel my face” (it was 2013) on the club floorsurrounded by other couples in various stages of intoxication.
She danced and I just kind of stood there moving my arms slightly, I drew in closer to her then got a whiff of her body odor and backed off, mood ruined. We finished out the song and I left her to go and have some drinks with my friends in the patio section of the bar.
We were mixing drinks with shots of vodka and I can remember getting pretty fucked up. I remember sipping a blue cocktail from a comically large glass that taste like blue Jolly Ranchers and doing shots of Grey Goose every couple of minutes. I can remember one of us wondering where that redhead girl had gone, I went to go look for her and found her passed out on a seat near the bar entrance.
No matter what I did I could not wake this girl up, other girls sitting near the entrance noticed and I had a moment of panic when I realized it looked like I had slipped this girl some rohypnol and I quickly sobered up. One of the other girls took the phone out of the redheads purse and starting searching the contacts list, they were asking me questions I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know anything about this girl.
I told my friends what had happened and eventually we got a hold of this girls boyfriend who told us this kind of thing happened fairly often with her. He stopped by the club and for a brief moment my intrusive drunk thoughts came back and I thought he might want to fight me for hanging out with his girlfriend who I didn’t even know wasn’t single. He somehow got her to wake up and she staggered out the door with him and I never saw her again.
The rest of the night was a blur but I can remember dancing with and getting a number from a fat girl and almost getting into a fight in the parking lot with another drunk guy, the bouncer had to step in iirc. All in all the night had some highs and lows but it wasn’t an experience I was keen on repeating.
It was funny because this was the first time I’d ever ventured into this kind of environment before save for the time me and a couple friends went to this seedy strip club on the border of Detroit. This was definitely not my scene, I always associated clubs with douchebaggery and false bravado, and I didn’t the like blasting music or flashing lights, as it was a sensory overload for me. I didn’t see the appeal of these kinds of place when I was younger and I still don’t
I was 27 at the time and even then I felt I was too old for that shit, clubbing is a young man’s game but young men these days don’t really go for that sort of thing unless they’re either gay or have a fat bank account. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a club these days, I never really matched the sort of clubgoer aesthetic in my youth and I definitely don’t today. If I wandered into a place like that now I’d be the subject of countless Instagram stories about a bald fat guy who’s only there to creep on 20 year olds but was too broke to buy them Appletinis.
So raise a bottle of O’Douls for the fading relevance of the club, a place to get herpes and do bumps of coke in the bathroom and to get the fillings shaken out of your teeth by reverberating bass. Another passing Gen X and Millennial fad undone by sexual assault allegations and Gen Z tea totalling. Good riddance.