The kids aren't all night

December 31, 2024 12:10 PM

One executive in the entertainment industry said younger people were less inclined to go out raving until 6am as they are more health conscious and less frivolous with money than previous generations. from Who killed the rave? Late-night dancing falls into global decline [Financial Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet (32 comments total)

Frivolous with money? Clubbing and raving were many things, but extraordinarily expensive wasn't one of them. At least not for me - when I went clubbing in my early 20s I was on E and only drinking water and eating oranges.

According to Vosters, the shift away from “bottle service” club culture and a new cross-generational emphasis on healthy living have been two of the main drivers behind the surge of enthusiasm for dance parties that end early.

Bottle service was always a terrible idea, and I highly doubt it was a cornerstone of actual dance club culture. Healthy living I can see, though for the record, in college, I stayed up all night at raves and only consumed those overpriced "super energy drinks" which were basically vitamin C cut with sugar.

My guess is that it is the mainstreaming of dance music and the emphasis on big festivals that is killing clubs, as well as a more intense work schedule for pretty much everyone. And, you know, COVID.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:25 PM on December 31 [13 favorites]

Ask not for whom the beat "ooonch-ooonches"; it "ooonch-oonches" for thee
posted by Kitteh at 12:59 PM on December 31 [17 favorites]

this is why the blade reboot got put on hiatus, somehow
posted by dismas at 1:18 PM on December 31 [6 favorites]

Dancing until dawn was and is almost always less expensive than getting a couple of drinks at a bar. As for bottle service or VIP tables? Well, that was never a "rave."
posted by 1adam12 at 1:23 PM on December 31 [13 favorites]

Maybe the kids have to work at the crack of dawn these days?
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:25 PM on December 31 [7 favorites]

Previously on metafilter: When You Can't Go Clubbing Anymore And Have To Dance With Oaks

It has also been noticed by club owners and authors of screensavers: SF is just a sleepy seaside town now
posted by autopilot at 1:38 PM on December 31 [5 favorites]

I don't know about you all, but I don't really go to the Financial Times for my rave journalism.
posted by knile at 1:39 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]

I get all my reporting on rave culture from the Financial Times, and all my news about the global economy from flyers with alien heads and barely-veiled drug references.
posted by box at 1:39 PM on December 31 [17 favorites]

all things must pass.

Obviously covid has had an impact. I also wonder about the sheer deadliness of some of the powders circulating over the past few years. It's thus far been primarily a North American thing, I think, but illegal substances always seem to find their way across borders eventually.
posted by philip-random at 1:42 PM on December 31 [1 favorite]

Maybe COVID is a factor, or fentanyl, but also just raw demographic trends: the US hit peak 24 year old in 2023, and it's just gonna be declining for at least the next two decades if not longer. It's already a concern among college administrators.
posted by pwnguin at 2:14 PM on December 31 [3 favorites]

The demographic shift is interesting! I also think kids are just not very alright. Life kinda sucks for young people right now and in general we're at a nadir of IRL social activity.
posted by latkes at 2:19 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]

Let’s not forget that the rent is too damn high and people have less than less discretionary income to spend on shit like going out, as well as less time because people are spending the time that would’ve been for a leisure onworking their second job.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:43 PM on December 31 [13 favorites]

Im very invested in this but never trust these kinds of articles (especially in the Financial Times!). My bet is on:
1. COVID made everywhere sleepier :/
2. The rent is too damn high for venues. Raves and late night dances never made money cuz the dancers bring their own adulterants, but you could find a warehouse or a disused space and make it happen
3. The rent is too damn high for punters. More jobs needed, more hours, work weekends, up early for that email job etc etc. All night works great when you’re 23 and have a cafe job and can make rent, much harder when you’re hustling two or more jobs..
4. Internet culture keeps us all tapped in but sleepy. The all night room full of strangers and friends doesn’t hit like it used to
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:54 PM on December 31 [15 favorites]

Honestly I think it’s just phones. The phrase “dance like no one is watching” exists for a reason.
posted by raccoon409 at 4:24 PM on December 31 [11 favorites]

Three of my children are attending an EDM festival down in LA tonight.

I hope they don't trip balls.

I mean, yeah, I would have when I was their age, but...

Weird to talk to your child about taking psychedelics. But, I did, he did, etc. Not sure I am ready for my youngest, (19) to do the same...

Name 10 things that aren't Skrillex...
posted by Windopaene at 6:21 PM on December 31 [2 favorites]

Wonder
posted by awfurby at 7:05 PM on December 31 [1 favorite]

I've always kinda hated clubs, so meh good riddance. I eventually found hacker events and regional burner festivals, of which music festivals are a shitty mass market knockoff, but even music festivals are much much better than clubs.

Around phones, raccoon409, check out this quote from Teens are having less sexual intercourse, but are they really having less sex?

Another fear is the prying eyes of parents, says college student Abby Tow, who wonders if helicopter parenting has played a role in what she calls the "baby-fication of our generation." A senior at the University of Oklahoma, Tow knows students in college whose parents monitor their whereabouts using tracking apps.

"Parents would get push notifications when their students left dorms and returned home to dorms," says Tow, 22, majoring in social work and gender studies.

posted by jeffburdges at 7:29 PM on December 31 [3 favorites]

Oh hey also the drugs are more lethal
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:14 PM on December 31 [4 favorites]

Never a big raver at all, and the few times I went, it always ended up a way to spend more money than I'd like, to hang with too many wasted people. The scene seemed to me pretty intertwined with drug culture. Clubs were there to make you part with your money. The desert raves were also fueled significantly by boredom/lack of other things to do. This was all pre-internet. Rent was too high back then, too, living on ramen and mustard sandwiches was pretty tiresome.

Things certainly feel different now, and people who don't actually love dancing and edm have quite a few other choices at little cost. So, maybe, not such a bad thing?
posted by 2N2222 at 9:22 PM on December 31 [3 favorites]

The good raves where I live are invite only and take an incredible amount of volunteer effort to run. And they're not getting a lot of new blood.
posted by constraint at 11:12 PM on December 31 [3 favorites]

it's still about an hour until New Year's moment where I am. A joyful horde of younger humans just wandered past my window carrying (on their backs, I think, I couldn't quite make it out) a rather powerful sound system. The beats were strong, the music aiming for uplift. A live MC was sorta rapping along, hyping the coming year. It was like a parade, down the block, around the corner out of sight, everybody happy, cheering for the future.

Should I be concerned that they're not indoors, or at least at some properly sanctioned/licensed/secure event?
posted by philip-random at 11:13 PM on December 31 [1 favorite]

Where I live, any event is an excuse for blaring techno. Late night classical gallery opening? Techno. Sunday afternoon community road closure? Techno. City-sponsored outside art event? Techno. Clubs don’t get to be a special liminal space if they offer a more expensive version of what you get at every other event.

Also, kids these days have the complete history of music on their phones. Don’t be surprised if they’re not into the mind-numbingly repetitive beats that their parents were into. Some kids in my city has been busy creating an extremely 80s metal scene, complete with mullets and denim patch jackets, and why wouldn’t they?
posted by The River Ivel at 12:57 AM on January 1 [3 favorites]

The piece seems to ignore a big factor. There's a lack of empty cheap (or free) spaces to use for parties. Speculators are everywhere and eyeing many of the functioning clubs for the inevitable apartment conversions.

Compare Berlin in the 90s with huge amounts of unclaimed space with pieces I've read about the underground rave scene in NY or London recently.

What was once seen as an almost condoned precursor to gentrification has now turned into a highly policed, surveilled frustrating game of cat and mouse with the Police definitely on the side of the landowning classes and no wish to turn a blind eye from the authorities.
posted by treblekicker at 2:40 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]

Frivolous with money? Clubbing and raving were many things, but extraordinarily expensive wasn't one of them. At least not for me - when I went clubbing in my early 20s I was on E and only drinking water and eating oranges.

The main reason I never tried ecstasy was that during this time period, namely the late 90s, when I was presented the opportunity to trip on E, the cost was something like $25 a pill, maybe more. Each time I said, oh I can't afford that much for just one night; $25 of pot would get me through a month. So I'd pass, assuming that I'd get a better deal the next time.

But every time someone had some, the price never seemed to change. So I'd pass, again and again and again. Then I woke up one day years later with enough money but no more party kids around.
posted by zardoz at 3:05 AM on January 1 [3 favorites]

Obviously raves never depended on bottle service, but rave promoters DID depend upon big vacant/underutilized spaces owned by landlords who imposed minimal security and insurance requirements and staff that were paid little or nothing. Not things that exist very much anymore.

Without bottle service/VIP stuff the vast majority of regular nightclubs would be out of business. Few nightclub empresarios make money from lunch/brunch/dinner because they either can't make it work or they don't own that side of the location's business. Staff, insurance, utilities, rent and ASCAP/BMI/SESAC are brutal. Non-VIP customers at best cover your costs (and usually don't) - they hardly drink, and the DJs that will entice people to pay real cover charges are very expensive.
posted by MattD at 1:18 PM on January 1

I don't know why raves declined except for the natural cycle of rise and fall. But I have been to few in the past year. The best one was family oriented. Parents were dancing with their thoroughly ear-protected children. The dancing started at 8pm and 90% of people were gone by midnight. And the crowd was stone-cold sober ( which weirded out this ex-Montrealer). Speaking of family-oriented raves, I also went to a family oriented metal show ( again, all children had thoroughly muffled ears) this past year. It was strangely fun to have my kids yell at me "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me"*. Maybe the cool kids are simply engaged in the eternal drive to escape family-oriented events.

*This a lyric of 'Killing in the name of' by Rage against the Machine, not a metal-induced rebellion against parental authority, yet.
posted by SnowRottie at 1:23 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]

Then I woke up one day years later with enough money but no more party kids around.

oh come on zardoz, this has clearly been cribbed from Aesop's The Magpie Who Waited Too Long to Do Ecstasy
posted by ginger.beef at 3:01 PM on January 1 [7 favorites]

So, raves are getting more and more healthy and daylight and family-oriented, but I also keep hearing about gyms getting more loud and meat-market and scene-pilled. Surely this is a hidden opportunity? If they don’t happen at the same time it could double the income for a rented space.

Good air filters, good cleaning crews, set dressing that can switch back and forth as much as possible.

Next year: polka!
posted by clew at 4:41 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]

Is the answer The Dangerous Cult of DJ Worship?
posted by mikelieman at 5:11 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]

I was a rave promoter for 10 years, from the late-90s to the late-2000s, in Montreal. There were two things that contributed most to to the decline of the scene, and my decision to leave it:

Loss of venues. When I started throwing parties we could find warehouses and out-of-the-way locations fairly easily. Then, they started to disappear, primarily because of gentrification swallowing up not just older industrial buildings, but also ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS that had once been the realm of artists renting out their studios so they could themselves make rent, art collectives building local scenes, or just unused spaces open to being repurposed for all manner of gatherings.

This was combined with a dramatic reshaping of several key neighborhoods to accomodate new highway infrastruture. Just as so many venues I used to rent are now restaurants and fancy condo buildings, several others were flattened by the wrecking ball and buried under concrete and asphalt for roads or supporting infrastructure.

A city determined to destroy its arts scene in favor of residential development. This is different than the gentrification I described above, in that it continues today in zones that were long hubs of night life but which have seen bylaws weaponized by citizens who want to live near the action, but don't want to hear it.

Simply put, anti-noise laws are destroying much of Montreal's modern cultureal scene. This was just starting to be a problem when I was promoting, but because we could find remote venues it was less of an issue. Today, long-established cultural venues, theaters, and event spaces are being shut down because someone has moved in next door and doesn't want to hear bass, or really anything, through the wall. The city's response to these problems has been lackluster and often arrives far too late, and the city council has dragged its feet on protecting cultural landmarks from angry residents determined to live in absolute silence in the heart of the city's nightlife center.

Montreal went from a city where rents were cheap and artists were plentiful, because they could work min wage jobs and still live well while pursuing their art. Those apartments are gone now, the venues have followed them, and the city's cultural scene has been entirely hollowed out. It's tragic, but at this point, it's irreversible.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:13 AM on January 2 [5 favorites]

Jordantwodelta, small world, I may have been to one of your events!

Yeah that old Montreal is gone, and I miss it too. I wouldn’t really be out at a party all night these days, but I wished cheap, quirky, spontaneous and cool Montreal still existed, not for me but for those who come afterwards.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 2:59 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]

Then, they started to disappear, primarily because of gentrification swallowing up not just older industrial buildings, but also ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS that had once been the realm of artists renting out their studios so they could themselves make rent, art collectives building local scenes, or just unused spaces open to being repurposed for all manner of gatherings.

There was an pretty great post on Blue Sky talking about how it used to be artists/musicians could get by in big cities by working the kinds of jobs where it was enough to pay rent/go out with friends for cheap beers/see bands in DIY venues and STILL create art. But then as you have wisely noted, gentrification happened. People outside city centers wanted in on the big city but they wanted to bring suburban mores with them. They did. And it's why so many great venues for art and music have disappeared. Rents shot up and you couldn't live like that anymore.

Speaking for myself, and only myself, Atlanta from 1999-2009 (my years of residence) was so fun. Sure, gentrification was happening but it seemed to still allow at the time for artsy weirdos, hipster nerds, and cool bands in interesting venues. (RIP Eardrum, Echo Lounge, 513.) I worked as a barista for that time period and sure I was broke at least 50% of the time, but your network of friends always helped out and you did the same. When I returned to Atlanta to visit my friends, nearly all of them fled to the fringes of the city because they had been priced out of living in the once funky neighbourhoods. And the tech money rolled in, Memorial Drive is unrecognizable, and it doesn't feel like it used to. Hey, I get that time marches on, but the kind of people who moved in want things Just a Certain Way.

I have no love for suburbanites who move into city cores because they want a urban life, but it turns what they want is Urban Lite. No homeless, no funkiness, and most definitely NO NOISE from music/art.
posted by Kitteh at 6:30 AM on January 3 [1 favorite]