thinking about how people talk about people being on social media too much and wondering why that is crossed with the fact that more and more bars close at 10pm and they were shitty spaces to hang out in even before then, but at least you could talk to people then. I've never been to a bar where the music isn't jacked up so loud it's clipping like it's a bar in a TV show in 2005. AND they close at ten.
if you don't drink or don't want to be around people who do, everything closes at like 8pm.
fuckin. regression to the mean at continental scale.
if you're anywhere anyone could call "somewhat close to the barycenter of your social group" there's no money for guestrooms, let alone own-rooms. So you can't even have more than one person crash unless they're willing to sleep with someone in your house (from prior acquaintance) or n of you are capable of sleeping together if you're otherwise in separate beds. And if you're in a multi-unit building, your walls probably aren't great and people completely lost it about how to handle that during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic so you can't be raucous as often.
anyway. bottom text. i don't have advice. take back the spaces they stole from you, the spaces they strangled like kudzu by keeping rents high in strip malls and storefronts instead of serving the people they were built for and on. the parks they turned into parking lots or just empty lots, the weird hangout spots of the 2000s killed in the cradle by the smartphone and ubiquitous cellular data from most locations within the town square. The bars that were shuttered because no one can afford 8$ PBRs. but the bartenders have to make rent somehow as it rises, and the bar has to pay rent, and the owner's skimming tips.
but now no one can afford 8$ PBRs even if the rent stayed where it was and the bartenders are unemployed and not making rent.
Go hang out in parks. Go hang out in parks loudly. go hang out on the steps of town hall. go hang out with the doorman of the landlord's penthouse. have a pool party up there, window washer PPE isn't that expensive and the elevator probably works without authorization if dispatched from the top floor.