With almost all 20-somethings I meet in California, I tend to assume that they don’t drink alcohol and I’m often right.
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With almost all 20-somethings I meet in California, I tend to assume that they don’t drink alcohol and I’m often right. Alcohol is as cool as tobacco here now. Not at all. No wonder bars are really struggling.
The only people I know here who are really into booze now are elderly millennials and Gen X and Boomers.
(I’m renting a place in Monterey, and everyone is sober)
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I stopped drinking in 2022.
Sometimes I still have the practices of a person who came of age with booze.
I brought some NA beer and other NA drinks to festive things. The NA beer is fine, but otherwise time has really weaned me off the rituals of social alcohol and NA replacements.
It’s hard to find non-alcohol centered places where I live now (in SF). Even though drinking culture is way more intense in Singapore, there were at least plenty of late night outdoor food places where you can sit and drink a Milo or iced lime water while your friends drink beer. No such luck here.
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categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte milo dinosaur!
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@skinnylatte huh, weird... if the trend is as strong as you say, where are our late-night coffeeshops and our non-alcohol-centered local music venues??
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When I’m in Monterey, I like going to the Fieldwork Brewery solely for the reason that they have not just one, but three very good NA beers in diff styles. And they have a outdoor patio with a fire pit. And there aren’t many other places to hang out in Monterey!
But on the whole, I don’t feel compelled to want to center alcohol in my life anymore. I do like the taste of shitty IPAs, the more bitter and bad the better, and the plethora of amazing IPAs (amazing to me, shitty to people who hate them) that are now nonalcoholic, more than scratches that itch for me.
Everything else: tea geekery has fully replaced my former whisky and gin geekery.
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categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸replied to categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸 last edited by
@skinnylatte I miss the 24/7 food availability and the salted plumb drink
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@scott young people also don’t go out anymore!
And as with all our problems, it’s a permitting problem first and foremost.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸 last edited by
@categulario yes me too
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@skinnylatte the live music part, you mean?
(Coffeeshops closing earlier isn't a permitting problem... they don't need a different permit to close at 10pm than 2pm, as far as I know.)
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At Christmas I told a boomer acquaintance ‘did you know the best selling beer at Whole Foods is NA’ and he did not believe me ahahahaha
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Adrianna Tanreplied to scott f last edited by [email protected]
@scott I dunno, the Center didn’t get permits for teas and had to shut down the tea thing
But also kinda feel like SF is dead re late night things anyway
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@skinnylatte oh, was that why they switched to a self-serve model? Hmm. I wonder why they couldn't get permitted as a cafe. But any place legitimately doing business as a cafe could close at a later time without a new permit.
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@scott they don’t have cafe permits. It was a problem with the hot water situation, I think.
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@scott but they also seem too culty to want to do any actual permits lol
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Fire pit in Monterey had me sold.
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@skinnylatte it's too bad. Having a tea room open late was nice.
Generally when I talk to coffeeshop owners they cite staffing as the reason for reduced hours. Ritual on Valencia is open til 6pm, which is relatively late now. The sign says these are "temporary hours"...they used to be open til 7, and I guess still hope to return to that. Sometimes, I go by and find a one-off sign up saying they've closed early at 2 or 4 due to understaffing.
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@Littlebobbytables it’s pretty nice and toasty.
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@skinnylatte anyway, just thinking out loud (you don't have to answer) as to why the zoomer dispreference for alcohol hasn't changed these economics at all.
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@scott going out is hard for lots of age groups! I dunno, something really changed for me as well. I’m much more of a homebody.
I think the owner of Monk’s Kettle said as much in closing his Valencia spot, while attributing it solely to the ‘transcience’ of tech workers in the Mission. Probably partly true, but also just.. going out in general!
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@skinnylatte
When I moved to the Bay from London about 30 years ago, I found it almost impossible to get a proper meal after 9pm. There was plenty of booze and fast food but little else. I seem to remember that, about 12 years ago, there were coffee shops on Valencia open until about 10pm and a few reasonably good places to get food. This seems to have changed more recently.
I now live in WA so I have no idea what's happening in the Bay anymore.
