Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:38 on 2024-02-14 Permalink Reply  

• Blork 13:37 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  A side note: NY Times just ran an article on how GenZ people have given up on late nights and partying. The piece talks about how the big thing among GenZers is getting 9 hours of sleep every night and usually being in bed by 9:30PM, even on weekends. Plus they hardly drink at all. (Anecdotes about going to see live music after work, but literally from 5:30 to 8:30 then home and to bed. Stories about being invited to a dinner party at 8:30 on a Saturday and thinking “OMG that’s so late!” Etc. etc.)

  Obviously GenZ is not a monolith, and who knows how much a survey of a selection of young urban New Yorkers and a bunch of TikTokers represents a generation at large, but I find this talk of 24 partying in Montreal to be a bit out of step with current trends.

• Kate 13:57 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  They’re facing a harsher and less amenable world than boomers did, or even Gen X. A lot of them will be working 2 jobs to make ends meet, or working while studying to improve their situations. Staying out all night partying will not be so appealing.

• DeWolf 13:59 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  I think you’re confusing a piece in the NYT with a piece in the Daily Mail, Blork. The NYT story was about 40-somethings who still want to go out dancing but don’t want to stay up late. The Daily Mail piece was about early-to-bed GenZ kids:

  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13040585/generation-z-sleep-schedule-early-nine-hours.html

  In which case I’d caution that… it’s the Daily Mail. It’s based on a handful of random anecdotes. When I was in university, there was a large percentage of people who went to bed very early and didn’t really go out partying, but there weren’t any breathless news articles describing it as a generational trend.

  In any case, there’s clearly enough demand for late-night partying, given that after-hours are still a thing and many bars are still open until 3am. Nobody is forcing any business to stay open late if they don’t want to be, and nobody is being forced to go out. Why shouldn’t regulation be flexible in that regard, instead of imposing a completely arbitrary closing time? Where does the 3am last call even come from, anyway?

• Blork 14:55 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  @DeWolf, no it wasn’t that. But indeed it wasn’t the NY Times, it was the Wall Street Journal (I read ’em all, folks). https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/early-sleep-bedtime-6ecd1d67

  “The hottest new bedtime for 20-somethings is 9PM”

  Oddly, the same person is profiled in both the WSJ and DM pieces, even though the articles have different bylines.

• MarcG 15:22 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  New York Post has an article as well and interviews the same person. I would guess that she’s some sort of sleep influencer with a podcast and a book coming out.

• Blork 15:28 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  OMG. “Sleep influencer.” The photo of her (same photo in both WSJ and DM, provided by her) definitely have that “Hi! I’m an influencer!” vibe, which makes me want to never see or hear from her again. (Same reaction for all “influencers!” I see.) We are doomed.

• steph 15:48 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  In this economy, they simply can’t afford to go out.

• walkerp 19:32 on 2024-02-14 Permalink

  Oh please, young people will party no matter what. The economy will adjust.

• CE 11:10 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  It’s anecdotal but I’ve met a disproportionate number of people in their 20s who are, frankly, boring. They don’t really do anything. One exception was a guy (early 20s) I worked with for a little while who is really into live music. He told me he almost always goes to shows by himself because he can’t get his friends out of the house and when he gets there, he feels like the youngest person in the building. I’ve noticed this too when I go out, everyone seems to be around my age (mid 30s).

  I also feel like the loss of unofficial party spaces have taken their toll. I remember many nights in the 2000s and early 2010s where late at night, we’d go to a semi-occupied commercial building in places like Griffintown or Villeray and party all night. Drinks (and drugs) were cheap and you could even bring your own which helped save a lot of money. Almost every single one of those buildings I remember going to have been converted into condos or office buildings, or torn down. You’d walk on Jean-Talon near the underpass to Parc-Ex late at night and there would be lots of young people around. Now, it’s empty.

• CE 12:13 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  And yes, I’m well aware that people who grew up in the 80s and 90s thought my generation was boring because we spent too much time chatting on the internet and downloading movies. Probably as boring as people who grew up in the 60s and 70s thought those people were for spending too much time watching their cable TV and VCRs, and so on and so on.

• Joey 14:10 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  A take I appreciated – when ‘we’ were young adults (~2000), home high-speed internet was spotty and game consoles weren’t quite so ubiquitous. If you wanted to play video games with your friends, you all went to one person’s house and hung out, taking turns or just watching. Now everybody’s got high-speed internet and gaming systems so there’s no need to share a physical space. The technology has improved to a point where we are constantly ‘connected’ to our peers (or family, or co-workers) without any obligation to be actually share geographical space with them. The mass adoption of VR or spatial computing headsets seems, from this lens, inevitable.

• Kate 17:23 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  CE, I’m not of a defined generation – post boomer, but not quite Gen X. I remember working with people older than me who made fun of me because I hadn’t done any of the hippie things – never hitchhiked, never dropped acid. Clearly my generation was too bourgeois.

  I don’t envy today’s kids. What I remember with pleasure was being able to live in the city without constant worry about the cost of living – it’s amazing the difference that made. People could afford reasonable places to live, and artists and musicians could afford places to work, too. It created a bohemian vibe that gave the city its reputation as a creative hotbed. Feels like a distant memory now.

• Ian 19:25 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  Funny thing about being a young person in the 80s and 90s here in Montreal, nobody I knew had any money. Sure there were the fabled rich kids but most of us had really sketchy under the table jobs. The lucky ones worked for tips. Sure rent was cheap but if you’re only making 50 bucks cash under the table per shift it has to be. I remember lineups for dishwasher jobs.

  And yet somehow sex, drugs, and beats you could move to were there for the having.

  I teach CEGEP so I see al lot of 18-22 year olds. The kids today have a different vibe in part becasue they can keep in touch online and have lots of online stuff they like to do socially, but I assure you, even for them, sex, drugs, and beats you can move to are there for the having. And they take as much advantage of their availability as we did “back in the day”.

  Their tattoos & piercings are a lot better than ours were in the 80s though.

• Blork 20:11 on 2024-02-15 Permalink

  @Kate: but you ARE of a defined generation: Generation Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

• Kate 19:16 on 2024-02-16 Permalink

  I hadn’t run into that, Blork. Thanks.