[HN Gopher] Who killed the rave?
___________________________________________________________________
Who killed the rave?
Author : this_weekend
Score : 224 points
Date : 2025-01-06 00:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| this_weekend wrote:
| https://archive.is/ul4Ui
| gnabgib wrote:
| Related _Berlin 's beat goes quiet as techno clubs close their
| doors_ (3 points, 2 months ago, no comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42149813
|
| https://archive.is/BdJlM
|
| (Better Watergate photos)
| aaron695 wrote:
| There was also a big thread -
|
| Berlin's famed nightclubs, losing customers, face an uncertain
| future (300 comments) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38151205
|
| 14 years ago - Berlins new techno beat. why international tech
| startups should move to berlin -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729524 (Article is gone
| so not sure if it's a play on techno)
| barrenko wrote:
| The latter didn't age well for sure.
| immibis wrote:
| btw: Watergate (and Renate in a year (and Rummelsburger Bucht
| a few years ago)) are closing because some secretive Russian
| oligarch has decided the way he wants to throw his oligarch
| money around is to buy up left-wing spaces in Berlin and shut
| them down. Not just rave clubs or whatever they're properly
| called - he was also the reason for the tiny little squat
| Liebig 34 getting stormed by over 2000 armed police officer,
| and I don't remember whether he also had the same role with
| another squat, Kopi Wagenplatz, which got shut down in a very
| similar way (the police brought an actual tank to that one).
| He either has the right connections, or he knows exactly how
| to manipulate the legal system. Watergate actually tried to
| buy its own building at a fair market price, but this guy
| outbid it.
|
| I think the owner of Watergate, felt it was a good time to
| retire from that anyway, but that isn't the case for the
| other spaces affected.
|
| This page hasn't been updated in over 6 years but:
| https://padowatch.noblogs.org/
| walterbell wrote:
| Documentary inspired by the Padowatch blog:
| https://archive.org/details/schattenwelten-berlin-miete-
| und-...
| barbafant wrote:
| last article archived here: https://archive.ph/20121024051203
| /http://www.cnbcmagazine.co... Yeah, it's not really about
| techno music or rave scene, though it briefly mentions the
| Berlin nightlife. It is about tech work jobs and startups.
| hmcq6 wrote:
| On the one hand millennials are getting older so it's totally
| reasonable to expect they wouldn't want to party into the early
| AM anymore.
|
| On the other hand real raves don't happen in legal venues. I've
| partied in warehouses, upscale restaurants, artist studios,
| roller skating rinks, movie theaters, hotels, apartments. I threw
| parties on the lightship Nantucket (LV-112), although those were
| day parties. But none of these events would be factored into the
| financial times reporting.
|
| Some of the evidence presented by the article is compelling but
| just don't think they can draw real conclusions about the state
| of nightlife with such a limited perspective.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The article also mentions that earlier ending events made to
| accommodate aging millennials have seen an unexpected and huge
| interest from Gen Z
|
| But yeah, the decline of the nightlife and hospitality sector
| is what this article is about, as the regulated rave experience
| is very mainstream and has been for a long time now
|
| The production value is quite high now and still improving so I
| don't see why the illicit rave experience would be so
| interesting when the facilities would be so lacking in
| comparison. There are lots of electronic dance music events on
| boats, cruiseliners, retired battleships and more.
|
| Music festivals are bigger than ever though, and they are so
| frequent and numerous that you can go as frequently as people
| were going to clubs. I have multiple friend groups where that's
| all they do and it is far more intense than just being out
| passed 3am, although many do officially end their main
| programming at 1am, many don't.
| celticninja wrote:
| We go for the vibe not the facilities
| yieldcrv wrote:
| And more people are satisfied with the vibes at the better
| facilities
| dns_snek wrote:
| Have you ever been to a rave? I've never seen a fight
| break out at a rave, but I've seen plenty in clubs. The
| levels of self-absorbed, inconsiderate, and assholish
| behavior are usually excruciatingly high at clubs, and
| tolerably low at raves.
| quchen wrote:
| I've never seen a fight at a club. At this one big (80k)
| festival in northeast lake region Germany neither. In my
| experience, fighting and aggression are caused mainly by,
| in decreasing order of importance, alcohol, cocaine,
| crammed+overfilled spaces. Then a very long gap before
| bullies and such appear on the list.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Almost like ecstasy and cocaine/alcohol mix have
| different effects on the human brain and body...
| celticninja wrote:
| Those are the people that would not be satisfied with the
| vibe and would actually detract from it, if they didn't
| like the facilities.
|
| But sure you go mass appeal and you get a manufactured
| mass appeal vibe, which on the scale of rave vibes is a 3
| or 4 and the scale is exponential.
|
| If you don't know you don't know but it's worth checking
| it out if you can.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Above & Beyond throw some pretty huge weekenders and the
| vibe in those giant expensive festivals is pretty good.
| Swiffer guy not withstanding.
| jjk166 wrote:
| [Citation Needed]
| neom wrote:
| I agree, I was surprised to read "real raves don't happen
| in legal venues" - first time I've heard that line of
| thinking. Been raving for 20 years and here is what a rave
| means to me: very dancy music, electronic of some type
| (doesn't need to be pure edm), no judgements, kindness,
| love, good energy. I'd argue this is unsurprising given
| where the idea of a rave came from:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Tests
|
| to me, rave is about PLUR:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLUR
| api wrote:
| > I don't see why the illicit rave experience would be so
| interesting when the facilities would be so lacking in
| comparison.
|
| I swear if you strip away legal pot and LGBTQ rights (not
| saying those are bad) we have culturally returned to the
| 1950s. This is a very conservative period with little
| interest in or tolerance for actual outside-the-lines culture
| or experience.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't get that impression here in California
|
| I have noticed that after normalizing anything,
| counterculture areas of California will always have
| something _even more_ unfamiliar trying to get tolerated
| and representation
|
| But I don't see what you're referring to
|
| I think there is a disinterest in illicit raves because the
| market has reached parity and beyond for the experience
| that the market actually enjoyed. If it fails to do that or
| the illegal raves are better again, I think there is still
| interest in that, far bigger than whatever was happening in
| the 90s
| api wrote:
| To me the giveaway is the decline in sexual experience
| among young people. This is like a top line KPI for youth
| culture and socialization since when people have a lot of
| positive social interaction and mutual bonding
| experiences they tend to have sex.
|
| Loads of people have commented on these trends. I'm not
| pointing out anything new, but I do think a lot of people
| don't see it because it's hidden behind a facade of very
| visible socially liberal movements that garner attention
| out of proportion to their numbers. These folks do not
| represent the mean or the median of the culture.
|
| If you are in the Bay Area or LA or really any metro
| California city that isn't a deep suburb your experience
| might be different. These areas have always been more
| liberal than the average and enduringly so. The SF Bay
| was where gay people could go back when there was not
| just a strong taboo but in many cases real persecution.
|
| Edit: with the last election I think the conservative
| zeitgeist is going to finally crest, and probably inspire
| a backlash that will start the pendulum going the other
| way. Things like politics are the lagging end. There's
| also a backlash brewing against social media including
| dating apps, which are one of the drivers for both youth
| alienation and promulgation of reactionary attitudes.
| Right wing cultural fear mongering has excellent memetic
| fitness on social media.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Okay this is an interesting topic but I think you are
| conflating several things.
|
| The decline in sexual experience is occurring in
| California metros too. Its really interesting how the
| behaviors have shifted and surprising to me. But people
| are bonding, social, far less exclusionary, inclusive to
| things they've never heard of - unless you're the wrong
| star sign, ironically, or political party.
|
| I date 20-somethings, it's just different than what I see
| with people I grew up with. I would say chronic anxiety
| and demisexuality are common, the most notable to me, and
| drive a lot of these shifts. But the libidos are there,
| their age-peers don't know what they're doing with really
| offputting habits or aren't as interested either. I just
| cant extrapolate a real exclusionary streak from
| conservative leanings. Your algorithm is just cooked
| right now.
| immibis wrote:
| > unless you're the wrong star sign, ironically, or
| political party.
|
| These things are very different and do not belong in the
| same list, and I've noticed that when people do put them
| together, they're often trying to make the point that
| political party is just another arbitrary inherent
| attribute like race, rather than a serious reflection of
| someone's character. Can you explain why you think they
| belong together?
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Because they are just arbitrary attributes rather than a
| serious reflection of someone's character?
|
| Just because certain media outlets brainwashed you into
| thinking that Republican == Nazi (they all backpedaled
| after the election ended by the way) doesn't mean it's
| true. Go talk to actual people with blue collar jobs.
| You'll find that their character is quite all right
| actually.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I don't think this is entirely true. Most people are
| normal, but if I'm a woman dating a young conservative
| man. That conservative has a non-zero chance to actually
| believe shit like "your body, my choice." Probably don't
| want to be dating that guy. It's not a guarantee, but a
| danger signal.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Upvoted you, because opinions should be safe to voice
| even if one disagrees with them. This does appear to be a
| common concern. I also happen to know many families that
| vote Republican where the woman also happens to "wear the
| pants".
| Loudergood wrote:
| Just because certain media outlets brainwashed you into
| thinking that Blue Collar == Republican (they all
| backpedaled after the election ended by the way) doesn't
| mean it's true. Go talk to actual people with blue collar
| jobs. You'll find that their character is quite all right
| actually.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| You don't even believe this yourself, and are just trying
| to come up with a pithy comeback. Sorry, this one fell
| flat. The celebration of the Republican triumph
| definitely does not look like backpedaling. To pretend
| otherwise is to ignore reality.
| immibis wrote:
| Whatever you think political party association is, it's
| not arbitrary. It tells you something about someone's
| character. People choose political parties based on their
| personality type to a significant degree, which is not
| the case for star signs. You don't have to believe that
| the parties are different, but surely you believe that
| people don't choose a party by flipping a coin.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| The Republicans didn't backpedal, Trump is talking about
| liebensraum
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Young people don't have any political power at all, so
| "political party" doesn't say very much about them as a
| person.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Tell that to their former friend the same age, who
| happened to pick the other party.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| When I was young, people had different political opinions
| and would still be friends and party and do things
| together. Only some odd fellows would make a fuzz and try
| to exclude somebody for politics, usually the opposite
| happened.
|
| When we're older, then political affiliation starts
| reflecting more on a persons character. Then we've all
| been through (or should have been through) the different
| situations where politics have a real world impact on our
| lives that we can understand and relate to.
| immibis wrote:
| When you were young, political differences were more
| likely about how much tax rich people should pay. Now,
| political differences are more like who should go in the
| gas chambers. You can respectfully disagree with people
| who think the tax rate should be 20% instead of 30%. You
| cannot respectfully disagree with people who think you
| belong in a gas chamber.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| those are the notable examples of how people are
| exclusionary, as it says. That is the common attribute.
| It wasn't as deep as you made it, this time.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You say people are bonding in a less exclusionary manner,
| but that doesnt mean they aren't bonding less as well.
|
| The chronic anxiety you mention, as well as the pervasive
| loneliness and depression I observe, seems to indicate a
| lack of healthy and supportive social bonds.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Good point. The subset of 20-something year old women I
| date are social and have lots of anxieties, but it
| doesn't really inhibit their ability to have a support
| system.
|
| I can see that there are plenty of other people who would
| have more difficult doing this by nature of not
| attracting positive attention and interest by default.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I suspect the conservative backlash is being driven by
| economics, and this driver will only get stronger,
| perhaps much stronger.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the giveaway is the decline in sexual experience among
| young people_
|
| Do we have statistics on sex from the age of opium? (Gen
| Z is the first smartphone-with-unregulated-social
| generation.)
| yardie wrote:
| > the decline in sexual experience among young people
|
| Can I push back just a bit. I'm the parent of a teenager
| and we've had the talk. The kids are alright. When I was
| a teen I felt everyone felt pressure to be sexually
| active. While the boys carried the brunt of peer pressure
| it was the girls who had to deal with the actual fallout.
| Todays teens are dealing with a lot right now. And my
| impression is they have a healthier relationship with sex
| then our generation ever did. Girls have agency, and
| outside of the social media chucklefucks it's taboo to be
| serial sexual harasser and be treated with any sort of
| respect.
| watwut wrote:
| Bring back teenage pregnancies, drug addiction and
| overdoses.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Sex happens in private (mostly, and I'm not judging those
| who prefer otherwise) and people lie about it. A lot.
|
| But a more publicly observable and, obviously, very
| adjacent indicator is kissing.
|
| Time was, you'd see a lot of people kissing in public.
| Not just quick ones either. Pretty normal to walk past
| bars and there'd be a couple (or more than one) making
| out by the smoking area. Same in bars beyond a certain
| time of night, same in a lot of city parks. Sometimes
| even on the subway. Teenagers walking home from nights
| out or drinking in the park. (Legal here in the UK and
| not frowned upon like in the US). In the middle of club
| or festival crowds.
|
| And whether you think that's cool or gross, there's
| notably less of it around, and that's been a trend for
| quite some time.
|
| Maybe the 70s through 90s was an anomaly, it would have
| been heavily frowned upon before that, but something
| certainly changed in the mid/late 00s.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Yeah I agree. Internet puritanism, some might call it.
| Turns out the possibility of being recorded all the time
| and having your life upended based on some 15 second clip
| of you makes people conservative and wary of risks
| esperent wrote:
| > The production value is quite high now and still improving
| so I don't see why the illicit rave experience would be so
| interesting when the facilities would be so lacking in
| comparison
|
| A few reasons:
|
| 1. security at official music events are often complete
| arseholes and can totally destroy the vibe. Think of all the
| row rent chip on their shoulder wannabe cops, then place them
| in a field of drunk partying adults with complete power and
| almost zero oversight (+)
|
| 2. Advertising everywhere
|
| 3. Massively overpriced food and drink
|
| (+) While I fully understand that once you've got multiple
| thousands of humans in a field, you do need security, at
| small illegal raves - say a few hundred people - there's no
| need and the vibe without feeling like you're being watched
| is spectacular.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| And I would say the large festival audiences are wholly
| unfamiliar with that, given that the option of the bigger
| elaborate event was always in their face. There was nothing
| they needed to find or be in the know about, and to them,
| the festivals are that same journey.
|
| Regarding expense: not everyone is broke. And many people
| have shifted their budget to exclusively going to music
| festivals. I know lots of people that scoff at the idea of
| going to a nightclub or "going out" at all, but praise and
| prioritize going to music festivals. Even more are on
| payment plans for festival tickets far in advance, they are
| confident they can sell them at a premium if they don't go.
|
| I'm just reporting what I'm seeing and applying market
| dynamics to it.
|
| Given the tension with "wooks" that bum their way to the
| bigger festivals and have little to support themselves or
| any integration into society, I see intentional segregation
| with the current generation of festivals goers that
| supports an intentional interest in paying a premium for
| the exclusion it comes with. Event groups found that pool
| of wealth and demand, and are capitalizing on it to its
| extreme. But this crowd is really not trying to be around
| the other budget conscious crowd at the warehouse and
| barnyard, and there are plenty of good vibes to be had -
| you just choose which festival has the vibe you like. if
| one is too fratty for you, or has too many influencers,
| then you can still go to the "PLUR" one.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > (+) While I fully understand that once you've got
| multiple thousands of humans in a field, you do need
| security, at small illegal raves - say a few hundred people
| - there's no need and the vibe without feeling like you're
| being watched is spectacular.
|
| On the other hand - saying this as a former tech guy for
| illegal raves - even in small raves below 100 people in
| attendance there's so much potential for shit to go
| seriously wrong. Obviously substance consumption related
| issues ranging from ODs over contaminants to mixture effect
| amplifications, that's the most pressing issue, but you
| also have your fair share of travel accidents aka someone
| tripping over tree branches, and you will always have a few
| people (mostly male, but also a few female) who won't
| understand borders in all possible ways if they're not
| sober.
|
| Back then a lot of that dark shit was swept under the rug,
| let us be very clear here. That's the sad price to pay for
| fly-by-night events without proper security, EMS and
| whatnot else that is required for licensed events.
| piva00 wrote:
| > The production value is quite high now and still improving
| so I don't see why the illicit rave experience would be so
| interesting when the facilities would be so lacking in
| comparison. There are lots of electronic dance music events
| on boats, cruiseliners, retired battleships and more.
|
| There will always be people attracted to the underground
| scene where the production value doesn't rank higher than the
| energy on the dancefloor.
|
| It's good to have both options but they are very different
| experiences, the mainstream stuff with high production value
| is a show, it's meant for people who are going to parties to
| see specific artists and their shows.
|
| That experience is quite opposite of what a good underground
| rave is, it's much more raw, less concerned about the
| surface-level showmanship; artists are there to provide a
| journey to the ones on the dancefloor but not to be the main
| star, the main star is supposed to be the party itself.
|
| I really enjoy much more the experience of the underground
| scene, I don't see phones up in the air recording, I don't
| see people staring at a light show/screens with AV, the
| experience of getting lost with a crowd of people, all
| dancing, interacting among each other.
|
| Personally I think it's quite good to have the mainstream
| scene, it filters out quite a lot of people who wouldn't
| belong in an underground rave.
| watwut wrote:
| > The article also mentions that earlier ending events made
| to accommodate aging millennials have seen an unexpected and
| huge interest from Gen Z
|
| I do not find it surprising. When I was younger (college age
| and soon after), I wanted events to start sooner and late
| events oftentimes discouraged me. It sucked even at that age.
| It is one thing to start dancing at 8pm and have endurance
| till the early morning, because you feel like it and have
| nothing to do the next day. And something completely
| different if you have to wait till 1am till the event starts.
| You get tired and dumber the next day, but the amount of
| dancing you got in exchange is just lower.
|
| I was not using stimulants or anything like that and frankly,
| dropping amount of stimulants use among young people would
| explain larger younger crowd at earlier events.
| skerit wrote:
| > The article also mentions that earlier ending events made
| to accommodate aging millennials have seen an unexpected and
| huge interest from Gen Z
|
| As a millennial in Belgium, my parties started no earlier
| than 23:00 and ended at 05:00. But maybe it makes sense that
| this is disappearing? My parents started partying at 19:00
| bkeating wrote:
| It's more alive than ever, I'd say. Just about any weekend in the
| Milwaukee/Chicago area has at least a couple parties. Proper
| underground shit. Not sure what it is, exactly, but it's been
| feeling like a time portal back to the 90's and I love it. Drop
| Bass Network and Chicago Redline will keep you plenty busy.
| LandR wrote:
| Yeah, I'm in the UK and there are still regular late night
| dance / EDM nights in my city.
|
| I was at one a couple of weekends ago, 11pm - 4am.
|
| A good mix of ages too, people clearly in their 20s, 30s, 40s,
| 50s. Everyone having a great time, I would guess at least 70%
| of the people were on something too, (MDMA, Ecstasy etc).
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Fixed venue clubs are definitely dying in the UK. Maybe being
| replaced by more subversive raves at temporary locations due
| to lower overheads.
|
| (Neither really my scene).
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| MDMA and Ecstasy are the same thing afaik
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I wonder if what's being called ecstacy is something else
| entirely now? I feel so out of the loop.
| b800h wrote:
| I used that word with a young lady who said she was going
| to a rave and she couldn't stop laughing. It was like I'd
| suggested a tea-dance.
| defrost wrote:
| PSA: _Ebeneezer Goode_ by _The Shamen_ was released 32
| years ago in 1992.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Last time I checked, ecstacy is usually how it is called
| when in pill form, with the idea that it is not pure
| MDMA. That is, it may be cut, a combination of drugs or
| something else entirely.
|
| MDMA/molly is usually in crystal/powder form, with the
| idea that it is more pure.
|
| But how drugs are called on the street and what they are
| in reality is constantly changing, there are countless
| myths, and dealers are not exactly a reliable source of
| information regarding what they sell.
|
| In reality, that's essentially the same thing. If you
| look at https://www.drugsdata.org/ you will see that it
| is mostly just MDMA, the form doesn't matter much.
| badkungfu wrote:
| I always thought calling it MDMA denoted more purity vs
| Ecstasy, but I was never a candy kid.
| diggan wrote:
| MDMA being the substance, Ecstacy being the delivery, you
| could simplify it as. Ecstacy always have MDMA in it, but
| typically also other stuff. MDMA is just MDMA, and in
| itself have different purity depending on how it was
| made.
| 15155 wrote:
| "Ecstasy" traditionally contains MDMA - and potentially a
| host of other substances - in pressed tablet form.
|
| MDMA is typically just that one substance in crystalline
| powder form.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#Forms
| hambos22 wrote:
| In papers maybe, but in the streets, Ecstasy is the pill
| form of MDMA and is usually cut with other substances
| (e.g., speed, LSD, etc.). Therefore, when saying "Ecstasy,"
| someone would expect a pill in a funny shape, whereas with
| "MDMA," they would expect powder.
| t-3 wrote:
| I would never expect powder when I said MDMA, I would
| expect crystals or pills. Ecstasy is often _said_ to be
| cut with other substances, but almost never is, because
| most other drugs are more expensive and less potent than
| MDMA. There are often impure batches containing meth or
| other amphetamines, often other "designer drugs" being
| pressed into pills and sold as ecstasy while not being
| MDMA, but rarely intentionally cutting the MDMA with
| other drugs.
|
| Drug pro-tip: anything powder is garbage, crack comes in
| rocks (crack users aren't all that picky though, from
| beeswax to swiss cheese to chalk, from white as snow to
| bright yellow, usually off-white, it comes in a variety
| of appearances and textures and users savor the cut - the
| most favored stuff is usually not the purest), coke comes
| in chunks (white, off-white, even yellowish, good quality
| stuff has a flaky structure and pearlescent shine),
| heroin comes in chunks (from white to tan to black,
| occasionally gooey), weed comes in nuggets (but used to
| come in chunks, maybe still does if reggies/illegal weed
| still exists in your area), meth is long usually clear
| crystals, molly is shorter and more cuboid crystals,
| usually colored (pink, tan/brown, only very rarely
| clear).
| golergka wrote:
| 2CB, MMC3/4, synthetic Psylobin and others are fine in
| powder form
| hambos22 wrote:
| You are right, I used the wrong wording here. I meant
| crystals, not powder. I used the word 'powder'
| unconsciously because when I was raving, I would break
| those crystals into powder form to control the dosage
| better.
|
| Anyway, regarding the difference between ecstasy and
| MDMA, from personal experience, I cannot remember a time
| when the effects were the same. Every time I took a pill,
| the effect was totally different from MDMA. MDMA provided
| a more 'pure' experience, whereas with advertised
| 'ecstasy' pills, I experienced hallucinations, memory
| loss, and a very heavy hangover.
| PhunkyPhil wrote:
| This rings in Minneapolis. The midwest definitely has a solid,
| consistent scene for house/techno/electronic with DJs bouncing
| between Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago for sets.
|
| The demographic is definitely millennial, with maybe ~25% being
| Gen Z.
|
| It's also definitely not... popular. The biggest nights have a
| _way_ smaller turnout than college bars or city clubs. I'm not
| sure how strong the crowd actually was 10-20 years ago, but
| these clubs aren't in the mainstream appeal. Maybe from lack of
| marketing, maybe taste+preference.
| puddnutz wrote:
| Created an HN account just to ask... what are the entry ways
| to know what sets are going on in Minneapolis? The person you
| replied to mentioned Drop Bass Network and Chicago Redline,
| both of which have easily follow-able accounts. Anything like
| that in this area?
| tigefiz wrote:
| I'd recommend Backyard Boombox or House Proud for shows in
| Minneapolis.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Too expensive? I see illegal dance parties in the countryside
| more than ever. And people drive far for them and sleep it off in
| the sun the next day (or so). Big bags of drugs (if you buy in
| bulk, drugs are those things that come with very large discounts)
| and wholesale energydrinks etc. So those are cheap, but I can see
| legal places would have issues maybe? High entry fees, super
| expensive drinks etc.
| dagw wrote:
| Despite the headline, the article makes it clear that it is
| talking about legal nightclubs, primarily in large cities. The
| younger generation just isn't into clubbing every weekend in
| that way, don't want to spend (or even have) that sort of money
| on going out, and the costs of running a club have skyrocketed.
|
| At the same time, according to the article, it seems that
| larger one off events or festivals are still very popular. So
| the kids still want to dance.
|
| _I see illegal dance parties in the countryside more than
| ever_
|
| Who's attending these? Is it mainly the old timers or are they
| attracting a strong following from new generations?
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > Who's attending these? Is it mainly the old timers or are
| they attracting a strong following from new generations?
|
| Mostly 20somethings as far as I have seen; invites are word
| of mouth (aka Whatsapp) and we stumble on them because we
| hike around a lot and then have a chat. This is during the
| day when the partygoers are chilling out usually.
|
| Oldtimers are mostly dancing in local bars to small cover
| bands. Also until the early morning usually and no
| coke/speed, but just beer/spirits.
| diggan wrote:
| > Despite the headline, the article makes it clear that it is
| talking about legal nightclubs, primarily in large cities.
|
| I guess since they used "rave", people assume they use the
| commonly understood definition of the word, not just "dancing
| at a random dance-club in the city", which I don't think many
| would consider "raving".
|
| > Who's attending these? Is it mainly the old timers or are
| they attracting a strong following from new generations?
|
| Here in Spain there is a wide range of folks attending dance
| parties both the ones in/around big cities, and the ones out
| on the country-side. Obviously, the ones out on the country-
| side tend to have a crowd that is more "hippie" for the lack
| of better words, but otherwise I see all types of ranges and
| people from different walks of life. Mostly skew around my
| own age I think though, around 30 or so.
| dagw wrote:
| _I guess since they used "rave", people assume they use the
| commonly understood definition of the word_
|
| yea, this article has unfortunately fallen foul of the
| 'headline doesn't match the article' problem. Seems to be a
| common problem these days when the headline writer is
| judged by how many clicks their headline gets, rather than
| if it's actually relevant to the article.
| immibis wrote:
| It's just the same force that's killing almost everything else
| in sight like a plague of locusts:
|
| the rent
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Early dancing seems to be getting a bit of a boost though?
| Dayfever and Annie Mac's "Before Midnight" events seem to be v
| popular in Ireland and the UK
| b800h wrote:
| For as long as this is a thing, raves won't have widespread
| appeal.
|
| If a rave is somewhere that your parents go, then it's naff.
|
| It's also extremely expensive if it's legal. Everyone is
| brassic.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Yeah because public liability insurance has spiked beyond
| tolerable levels for post-watershed events, and the licensing
| board and constabulary are in lock-step for the granting of
| late licenses to bars and nightclubs to operate past 11.30pm
|
| They use the most spurious justifications regarding newer
| commercial tenants and antisocial behaviour to deny the legacy
| cultural tenets their ability to operate as a late-night
| business from a licensing perspective.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Nothing at all to do with there being a demographic who loves
| to dance, but is no longer willing/able to stay up all night?
|
| (a demographic that includes myself fwiw)
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| In my time night clubs were about hooking up, guess no need for
| that in the age of tinder?
| b800h wrote:
| Not if you're going to a rave-style event. That would be creepy
| and unwanted. At least back in my day (mid-90s).
| latchkey wrote:
| Anyone who reads this and knows, will understand...
| Sandwiches.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Don't know what "rave" is, in normal night clubs not hitting
| on anyone all night would be considered creepy. And dances
| are an essential element helping to ... close the distance.
| Always were, since middle ages.
| quchen wrote:
| The key difference is: do you go there to hook up, or do
| you go there because you like the place, which as a second
| order effect is great common ground to meeting someone?
| gazunklenut wrote:
| What? That's kind of creepy.
|
| Raves are and always have been about dancing. The creeps
| walking around looking for hookups are just that, a bunch of
| weird creeps that annoy people trying to dance.
|
| Edit: To clarify, it's creepy becaucse a lot of people are on
| something and pretty vulnerable, they're there to dance and
| enjoy the music and now some creep is trying to get in their
| pants while they're rolling and drunk
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Men will be men, sadly. Can't even feel safe when sober as a
| charming guy could decide to put roofies in your diet coke.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > Men will be men, sadly.
|
| I don't think that's an appropriate way to frame it.
| omnimus wrote:
| At same time this is pretty disingenuous calling people
| creeps. Yes you don't go to raves to look for hookups but at
| same time its social occasion and you can meet many people
| (in all kinds of states). And stuff wears off. So many people
| end up with new contacts if not straight up going with
| someone home. You know MDMA and sex match pretty well...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Don't find romantic partners at work, that's against
| company policy and you will get fired.
|
| Don't find romantic partners at raves, that's creepy,
| people are there to dance.
|
| Don't find romantic partners at night clubs, that's creepy,
| people are there to dance.
|
| Don't find romantic partners at public places, that's
| creepy, people don't want to be bothered in public.
|
| Don't find romantic partners among friends, now you're
| ruining all the friendships.
|
| Do stay locked up inside and try to find romantic partners
| between advertisements, by swiping on a screen three
| thousand times. That's more efficient and won't risk you
| wasting any productive time that you in fact owe to the
| government, to shareholders and to pensioners. It's
| actually quite outrageous that some young people are trying
| to escape their productivity duties and even risk forming
| long term relationships and having children, which is
| literally taking food out of the mouths of the elderly.
| They need your tax dollar, stop wasting time!
| monitorlizard wrote:
| It's creepy if you have bad vibes. If you can read the room
| and take rejection with a smile I think it's chill
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| This is exactly right. It's only creepy if you're creepy.
|
| There is always someone looking to vibe with a positive-
| energy person they met that night. Sometimes it leads to
| more and sometimes you just dance all night, give a big
| hug, and never see each other again.
| switchbak wrote:
| "night clubs were about hooking up" - they weren't talking
| about raves. Night clubs were a different thing, and hooking
| up was definitely a big part of that. And for selling
| expensive liquor to people, but whatever.
| nlnn wrote:
| It probably depends on the type of club/event.
|
| Back in the day, there were rave/dance type clubs which were
| all about the dancing. They'd typically have focused genres of
| music, well known or regular DJs, etc.
|
| Then there were more generic nightclubs (usually in University
| towns) which were where people went to either get drunk or hook
| up. Those would typically not focus much on music (usually
| playing crowd pleasers, 50s/60s/70s/80s/ tunes etc.), and
| instead bringing people in with cheap drinks offers, foam
| parties, fancy dress nights, etc.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Also, as the comments will show you, we have a very negative
| attitude now towards anyone who wants to hookup with someone
| they just happened to see in person and tried to initiate with
| that person. So if that's the response you'll get, why go out?
| Stay in and play it safe with apps
| taneq wrote:
| I dunno about globally but daylight music festivals killed them
| for me back around 2005. Raves are about staying up all night in
| a dark room with good friends, good EDM, flashy lights,
| suggestive clothing and questionable substances. Take away the
| 'dark room' part and and turf the rest out onto a sports field at
| 11am and it's ruined.
| widdershins wrote:
| In the UK a hybrid is increasingly popular. Start the rave at
| 2pm, end it at midnight, but it's in a dark room so it might as
| well be 4am. Usually in some semi-temporary space (e.g.
| Printworks, now defunct and moved to Drumshed).
|
| I agree this loses some of the spirit of the original rave
| scene, but as an older person now it fits better for me. If the
| original late-night scene is dying it's because the younger
| generation doesn't care very much for this kind of night out.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's 5pm on Sunday No one knows we're dancing
| Outside the sun is blinding No one knows we're dancing
|
| https://genius.com/Everything-but-the-girl-no-one-knows-
| were...
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| Maybe this is a dumb take, but how much of this is just
| demographics? Countries are getting older as birth rates decline,
| so you would expect a decline in things that skew younger in the
| audiences they attract.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Also the people who go to raves aren't helping with this, as
| most of them aren't family focused. They have to get outsiders
| to join their subculture.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I don't think it's a dumb take at all. It makes sense to me,
| especially together with housing unaffordability, which affects
| the disposable income of young people the worst.
| dailykoder wrote:
| Because the author uses Berlin as an example. As a millenial that
| grew up in Berlin, I just think that the hype about, what used to
| be alternative, mainstream clubs is flattening. Especially techno
| and electro clubs. They are just not as great as social media
| wants you think they are.
|
| People who love the music will go their for the music and will
| keep going. Social media folks that go there for the drugs and
| epic party will lose interest, because it's not as epic as they
| think it is.
|
| Apart from that other alternative clubs are just doing fine (I am
| going mostly to drum and bass parties). Even though they got
| less. But I think the club dying there was because of other
| reasons, not the missing audience
| Jorge1o1 wrote:
| I think it's health related, as the article mentions.
|
| >One executive in the entertainment industry said younger people
| were less inclined to go out raving until 6am as they were more
| health conscious and less frivolous with money than previous
| generations
|
| This is the same generation that has 12 step skincare routines,
| eats only organic food, chooses to vape or zyn rather than smoke
| because of secondhand smoke, everyone has an Apple watch on their
| wrist tracking calories, etc.
|
| If anything I'm surprised that binge drinking and going out late
| as survived as long as it has.
|
| And as far as the money comment, this generation is not less
| frivolous there's just less money to go around haha.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I do find these kinds of articles funny. "Why are the younger
| generations not destroying their bodies like we did?" Maybe we
| just don't want to bro.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Maybe we just don't want to bro.
|
| There's nothing wrong with it (quite the opposite), but keep
| in mind that this is not a normal thing. Most generations
| didn't act like this.
| alephnerd wrote:
| But most generations before us also didn't have the same
| awareness about the health risks associated with a lot of
| those acts unlike younger people today.
|
| And the generation after us will probably think we were
| dumb about stuff as well (eg. social media, disinfo,
| Delta9, etc).
| briankelly wrote:
| There's some recency bias to that for sure though - silent
| and greatest generations were not as big on partying like x
| or the boomers. Of course things like smoking were more
| common but the heath risks weren't as well understood.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| > The proportion of club nights running beyond 3am fell in 12 of
| 15 global cities between 2014 and 2024, according to a Financial
| Times analysis of events on listings website Resident Advisor.
|
| Club nights are not raves. Raves are (usually) not posted on RA.
| The underground scene is doing just fine.
| diggan wrote:
| You're right, but on the other hand, are we really expecting
| "Financial Times" get even get "raving" right, or knowing about
| the underground scene?
|
| The article seems to be written for people who reads a
| newspaper with their breakfast, not for people who had yet to
| gone asleep while that person reads their paper.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Raving has been around for 50 years, you'd think a paper
| could describe it correctly if not know the ins and outs of
| the current scene.
| p00dles wrote:
| Well said. I like to imagine some old guy holding the pink FT
| pages in a London cafe, peering over his reading glasses
| while egg drips off of his toast onto his pleated houndstooth
| trousers.
| dagw wrote:
| _some old guy holding the pink FT pages in a London cafe_
|
| Where do you think the people going to those raves in the
| early 90s ended up? As old guys who now have well paid
| corporate jobs in the city and read FT.
|
| That guy could probably bore the crap out of today's youth
| with stories about how raves and music used to "authentic"
| and how everything today is crap.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I neither raved nor got a good job. Looks like I'm the
| schmuck in the middle that worked hard and then didn't
| get rewarded.
| diggan wrote:
| You should have gone for "Work nothing, play a lot"
| instead of the typical one.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Same. Not rich enough to retire early, just rich enough
| that I can't afford to take any risks on anything.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Pete and Bas Stepped Into the Building!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBuTTz1-IQU
| BSDobelix wrote:
| >or knowing about the underground scene?
|
| Well, yes, it's just another kind of "underground scene", you
| know, the ones on private islands.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I'd expect them to not write a piece about something with
| which they have no familiarity and that their target audience
| has no particular interest in.
| dagw wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's mostly about the business of
| running nightclubs and organising music events. Something
| that falls cleanly with the interest of the FT and its
| readers. The headline is just some SEO optimised clickbait
| to get traffic.
|
| Plus, as I mentioned elsewhere. A non-trivial number of
| today's FT readers are the same people that were at those
| original raves in the early 90s.
| specproc wrote:
| The FT is actually entertainingly into this sort of stuff.[0]
|
| Honestly my favourite news outlet these days, despite my
| being well to the left of their editorial staff. I read it
| mostly for their drum and bass coverage.
|
| [^0] See https://www.ft.com/content/7796593c-08ac-485c-afe9-a
| 45ac2c28... or https://www.ft.com/content/084bab07-c5cf-4b25-
| ba7d-769af6b42..., but there's loads.
| petecooper wrote:
| >I read [The Financial Times] mostly for their drum and
| bass coverage.
|
| Brilliant. I love this on 174 different levels.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Agreed, and the same way I love reading this thread on
| HN. :)
| keybored wrote:
| Some people think highly of the FT.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/09f792fc-5548-11e4-89e8-00144fea
| b...
| monadINtop wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty sure the Financial Times editorial board
| would probably enjoy sending me to an internment camp for
| ideological reasons but I find their coverage is great when
| you ignore the slant, which is obvious and tends not to
| obscure the actual reporting like other papers.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| From what I've gathered, nowadays, "raving" refers to all
| legal parties that are posted on RA as well. The biggest
| difference is, younger people associate specific venues/music
| as "rave"s, where mainstream music isn't played, and people
| are more likely to party in the brains. It's just the
| definition has shifted since the 2000s.
|
| I wouldn't discredit FT writers as well, as I'm assuming
| they're writing for a specific audience.
| hparadiz wrote:
| I still consider a legal warehouse party to be a rave.
| Depends on crowd, music, and vibe.
| seydor wrote:
| I would assume their current writers have been to raves
| Mashimo wrote:
| "Rave" now days is somewhat ambiguous. If anyone uses it you
| can't be sure what they mean. It changed in the last 20'ish
| years.
| Kiro wrote:
| Yes, but the decline is real in the underground scene as well.
| monocasa wrote:
| At least near me I've seen a resurgence the last couple
| years.
| 9rx wrote:
| The so-called dead cat bounce is oft seen in a decline.
| jprete wrote:
| I'm not in the club or rave scene - practically the opposite -
| but it astounds me that the FT thought they could draw useful
| conclusions about an underground scene by analyzing publicly-
| posted events on a site named Resident Advisor.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| To be fair, RA is /the/ place to post more organized events.
| Even my local underground spot posts there. (Yes, it's
| underground, ~20 people show up to the small shows)
| Spivak wrote:
| For clubs maybe but EDMTrain is the go-to among all my rave
| friends.
| in-pursuit wrote:
| I assert this without evidence, but I would highly suspect club
| attendance numbers and rave attendance numbers to be strongly
| correlated.
| carlmr wrote:
| Strong negative correlation? Can't attend both events, and
| most people only have the weekend to attend max one event.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| You should come to Miami. Some people start the night at a
| normal club, go to a rave at Factory town, and meet the
| sunrise at Space, all in one night.
| dagw wrote:
| How many of the people doing that are locals doing it as
| a regular thing, vs tourists doing it as a one off
| experience? The core argument in the article is that the
| younger generation aren't going to their local clubs
| regularly enough to keep them afloat, preferring going to
| do much fewer and more 'special' events. The places that
| can survive are those that either bring in lots of
| tourists and/or focus larger one off events that can pull
| in a really large crowd.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| As a local, most of it is actual locals, often bringing
| out of town friends, but the core is always locals.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Maybe on a particular night, but on any longer timescale:
| how does one make friends who will tell you about the cool
| underground scene without first meeting them in the
| aboveground club scene? Maybe online stuff plays this
| purpose now but I assume its still mostly the former.
| leetcrew wrote:
| lots of places. the people at the warehouse rave usually
| did something else earlier in the night. maybe you met
| them at a bar or show and asked what they were doing
| later. "what are you doing this weekend" is a normal
| thing to ask anyone you meet in a third place. it's not
| that big of a secret.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Most people have more than one weekend per year.
|
| High volume purchasers in a category are more likely to
| purchase many things across the category.
|
| I don't go to nightclubs ever, odds that I'm going to go to
| a rave are also pretty close to zero.
|
| I have a friend who DJs, even removing the nights he
| performs, he goes to nightclubs infinitely more than I do.
| He also goes to raves more than I do.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Maybe those who go to raves are more likely to go to clubs
| too, but it doesn't mean that a decrease in club attendance
| means a decease in rave attendance. It may simply mean that
| clubs are not the preferred destination for partygoers
| anymore.
|
| To support that, it looks like music festival attendance is
| going up over the years. Music festivals are, I think, closer
| to raves than they are to night clubs, which, by the same
| logic, would suggest an increase in rave attendance.
|
| Also worth mentioning that some of what was called a rave
| before is now a club. There is a difference between occupying
| a decommissioned soviet building after the fall of the Berlin
| Wall and a fancy club on high valued real estate, even though
| it used to be the same place.
| kefabean wrote:
| > To support that, it looks like music festival attendance
| is going up over the years.
|
| This isn't global nor is it specific dance music but at
| least in the UK, festivals are struggling and have declined
| significantly since the beginning of covid - 204 festivals
| have disappeared since 2019: https://www.aiforg.com/blog-
| database/72-uk-festivals-cancell...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Covid definitely shook things up, but clubs didn't do
| well even before covid, while festivals were thriving.
| Now, it is a bit hard to tell as 2024 was just the second
| "normal" year, and it can take many years to grow a
| successful event.
|
| It seems like now, we are indeed seeing less festivals,
| but the remaining ones are becoming bigger and more
| expensive. So, maybe less festivals but higher budgets.
| tensor wrote:
| That doesn't make sense to me. Anecdotally, most people I
| know who love actual raves generally didn't go to clubs, for
| one.
|
| But also more broadly, I've heard from multiple local venues
| that one big change is that EDM crowds don't drink as much.
| This means venues make A LOT less money, and that means fewer
| venues. If I had to guess, another factor is that younger
| crowds don't have the buying power older generations had, so
| if anything they would be MORE likely to go to an "illegal"
| rave with no cover and do some drugs instead of drinking.
|
| Basically, to me, economic forces suggests that the rave
| crowd and club crowd are NOT correlated.
|
| edit: and more anecdotal data for you, I use to go to a lot
| of clubs when I was young (and fewer raves), but now that I'm
| older me and my group tend to either throw our own parties at
| home with our own gear, or go to "listening bar" type venues
| that wouldn't typically be classified as a "club." We're all
| too old to drink high priced shitty beer and deal with lines
| and bouncers. I'd rather be able to have a top sound system,
| order an IPA or cocktail, and maybe even have a seat to
| lounge in!
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Anecdotally, most people I know who love actual raves
| generally didn 't go to clubs, for one._
|
| In a similar vein, most people I know who love watching
| sports do not play the sport they enjoy watching. However,
| like the parent, I suspect that the numbers watching a
| sport strongly correlates with the numbers playing the
| sport. There need not be overlap between the watchers and
| the players for the correlation to stand. Something being
| in the zeitgeist lifts all related boats, it seems. Raves
| and clubs are different expressions of what is essentially
| the same fashion. It seems unlikely that only one
| expression would die off where the general fashion trend
| remains intact.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| > Raves and clubs are different expressions of what is
| essentially the same fashion.
|
| This is a very efficient way to communicate that you
| don't have experience with raves and/or clubs.
| 9rx wrote:
| Efficient communication of lacking said experience would
| be met with details provided by someone with experience,
| not a commentary on efficiency itself. It turns out it is
| highly inefficient.
| maplant wrote:
| I cannot comment on the article - it's paywalled - but I can talk
| about the claim in the headline.
|
| I can tell from my personal experience that I stopped going
| because most club shows start earliest at 10 pm, and even then
| headliner probably goes on at 1, and that's just not sustainable
| for me, especially if I wanted to take a risk and see someone I
| was 50/50 on.
|
| I'm aging, I'm 29, I enjoy the morning a lot more than I used to.
| It's just too exhausting. And if the music isn't perfect, you're
| left bored and exhausted. The venues are also way too crowded,
| drinks are expensive, it's just not as good of a time as in
| smaller underground venues.
|
| I'd rather go to a show during the day, or early evening and HAVE
| and they've been GREAT but house and techno acts are compelled to
| start after midnight, and I will probably never go to one of
| those again.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I'm in my mid 40s and it's the same problem for me. I can push
| myself through an all-nighter if the music is really great, but
| most of the time it isn't, and then it's just tedious waiting
| around for something better to come on when I know I could go
| home and buy a couple dozen new tracks on Bandcamp that are
| exactly to my taste. Sure I wouldn't get to listen to them on a
| banging sound system or stomp my heart out amongst a couple
| hundred like-minded nutters, but if I'm honest half the time
| I'm going wild on the dancefloor these days the rest of the
| crowd is waiting around for a different style of music than the
| one I'm particularly into so it's not an especially communal
| event anyway.
|
| I'm not sure if I have gotten more picky about music than I
| used to be - I certainly remember getting into ridiculous
| arguments over sub-sub-subgenres back in the 90s - but when I
| was younger perhaps I was simply a bit more tolerant of dancing
| to music that wasn't exactly what I liked? Or maybe I was so
| full of energy and excitement about going out in the first
| place that the music wasn't as make-or-break for me back then?
|
| Last year I settled into a routine of going to a small outdoor
| rave once every few months or so, ones with daytime components
| so I could join at dawn. The music played at outdoor parties in
| my area is not exactly my favorite, but at least it's still
| electronic and because it's less exhausting to dance during my
| normal waking hours I don't mind so much.
|
| I definitely miss being so sucked into the vibe that I can't
| pull myself away, but I've just accepted that that's not
| something you can really get everywhere all the time. In
| certain cities, at certain times, when there's a big enough
| local crew whose tastes exactly align with yours, you'll have a
| magical few years, but then the music changes, the people
| change, and it'll be another dry spell. I like to think,
| though, that my dry spells are someone else's peak years. Maybe
| it all balances out in the end?
| randomopining wrote:
| It's probably what you've said. I think perception changes,
| all the different venues and different types of music were
| once exciting. Then your brain forms the patterns and isn't
| as excited by x,y and maybe only z elicits a reaction.
|
| Then you become more and more a morning person, so in the
| evening you aren't even that hyped up and your brain is
| already trying to call it a night.
|
| For me something like standard 4x4 techno has become so
| formulaic that it doesnt interest me as much
| randomopining wrote:
| Yeah it's such a sacrifice. Many of the acts come on at 1am
| earliest, but usually 3am. That's getting home before 6 if
| you're lucky and then the whole next day is wasted.
| misterbishop wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the writers at FT just don't know where the cool
| shit is.
| chuckwfinley wrote:
| https://archive.is/2025.01.01-212538/https://www.ft.com/cont...
|
| Non paywalled link
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| In the two cities either side of me, a large portion of the
| organised events (on the DnB side at least) seem to be going
| daytime with a 10pm or 11pm finish on a weekend.
|
| Great fun.
|
| And there's still nighttime ones (also great fun) and illegal
| ones (which look to also be great fun).
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah, honestly after a while nobody has time or patience to
| stay all night "partying" anymore
|
| The demographic that has that energy are also the ones that
| skip on a cover charge as much as possible and pregame
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'd love to find DnB with 10-11pm finish time. Any tips on
| finding them in the SF bay area?
| bckr wrote:
| You can find pretty much any dance event in the bay at
| 19hz.info
| detourdog wrote:
| Anyone go to cat head's parties in the early 90's. There were
| cat's head spray painted on the sidewalk leading to abandoned
| warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront. The legend was they were
| worlwide. Some friend of mine knew to follow them.
| withinboredom wrote:
| or the pile of solo cups on the corner when you turn, for those
| of us or went to illegal beach bonfire parties in the outer
| banks!
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Outer Banks like of NC? I spent some time down there, and
| didn't think there were enough people for something like that
| to happen.
| withinboredom wrote:
| It used to get a huge influx of Russians (illegally)
| working summer jobs there. I could write a book about one
| of those summers...
| motohagiography wrote:
| call a number on the card, use a phone booth, find the pickup
| point, 1am-2am was the appointed time, get on a schoolbus with
| everyone else, go to a warehouse, nobody knows where, dance
| until sunrise, somehow make it back more alive than you
| started. it must have worked because we were good people,
| there's no other explanation.
| berlinbrowndev wrote:
| I love electronic music. Been listening to it for 30 years.
| Mostly drumbass, dubstep, some house. Groups like subfocus. I
| used to listen to tiesto, bt, etc.
|
| One, I hated the term "raving". I was thought raves were finding
| an abandoned house, playing music and drugs. I just like the
| music and don't need the dance clubs or the drugs.
|
| But with the said, I think the "club" scene has dropped off.
| Expensive drinks. Expensive covers. Who wants that.
|
| Has the music droppped off? I think it kind of merged into more
| mainstream music.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Exactly, the organized events are just too expensive; when I
| think of "someone who goes to raves", they have the means to do
| so every weekend or at least once a month, but who can afford
| that kind of thing nowadays when prices have gone way up while
| income has stagnated?
| milesward wrote:
| amen to BT
| mtalantikite wrote:
| This exactly. I've been to "raves", they were just giant
| parties with $3 beers in an abandoned or semi-legal building
| somewhere in Brooklyn. I was surprised when I started hearing
| people call giant corporate venues with dancing "raves".
|
| I went out to one of those giant clubs in Brooklyn not too long
| ago to see a friend DJ (Brooklyn Mirage). I was on guestlist,
| but the cover would have been $50. I bought a round of drinks
| to say thanks, and for three drinks I paid $75. Plus they made
| me load a credit card on some stupid wristband to even get the
| drinks. What 20-something can afford to do that with any
| regularity? Their rent is already 2-3x what I paid when I moved
| to Brooklyn nearly 20 years ago.
|
| I don't buy the "young kids don't want to go out late anymore".
| They just never encountered scenes that were consistently
| relaxed, fun, and cheap.
| jterrys wrote:
| A lot of entertainment is priced in and the powers that be
| lament that young people aren't falling for it anymore.
|
| You like sports? Well, you need a subscription to see their
| away games, a subscription to see their home games, and a
| separate subscription to see their games in season, and a
| subscription to see their off season. You want to see them in
| person? well.....
|
| You like music? Well, the cost of a ticket to see your
| favorite artist is $80 + $60 in fees. Online purchase fee.
| Printing fee. Seat Reservation fee. etc.
|
| Wanna go out for a few drinks? That'll be $8 for shitty beer
| on tap
|
| Want to go anywhere? Time to reserve your parking spot, or
| pay your parking ticket. Public transport outside NY? lol.
| Can't really get drunk or high now either since you need to
| kinda be sober enough to get back. Or fuck it! Uber and pay
| an extra $50 in surge charge fees!
|
| Want to go to the museum on the weekend while you visit a
| city? Well, too bad, it's very congested so the museum has
| surge charged the price of the ticket to $70 (the Shedd
| Aquarium special in Chicago).
|
| I'm good I think I'll just stay home and jerk off
| quesomaster9000 wrote:
| > I'm good I think I'll just stay home and jerk off
|
| Exactly. There's a fine line between convenience and the
| cost of doing it yourself, like getting a decent smash
| burger or firing half of the devops team.
|
| The most ridiculous thing is having venues trying to
| casually extort you at every possible opportunity, without
| the implicit advantage of a few very subtle but 'approved'
| dealers lurking around while making sure everybody is
| having a safe but very fun time.
|
| It's like an escalator to nowhere
| quotz wrote:
| Brooklyn Mirage is hardly a rave place, just a club. Went
| last year it was pretty terrible. The sound was so quiet I
| could talk with my gf without yelling. There was also a food
| vendor inside the venue for whatever weird reason. Paid $300
| for tickets and 2 drinks. I heard basement is a good place
| but never been. Europe's techno parties and raves are still
| going strong and no food vendors inside ofcourse we are not
| that lame.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Oh for sure, Brooklyn Mirage is the worst. And there are
| definitely great parties still happening all across NYC
| that are reasonable -- I literally just bought tickets a
| few minutes ago to see Dlala Thukzin [1] spin at Silo in
| Brooklyn for $25. Perfectly fine cost to pay the artists.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEFjYQ1Podw
| nhod wrote:
| My understanding is that Brooklyn Mirage was engineered
| specifically to be both loud and at the same time permit a
| conversation with the people next to you, so your
| experience is a feature, not a bug. I think we're all just
| not used to having that level of thoughtful engineering
| with that design criteria, so we just associate "too loud
| to talk" with "good." I found the experience to be
| remarkable.
| emchammer wrote:
| There were clubs in lower Manhattan and Midtown before
| 9/11 that had those kind of sound systems. The kind of
| THD that costs money. Jungly kind of beats were still
| exotic.
| vrosas wrote:
| > What 20-something can afford to do that with any
| regularity?
|
| Practically every 20-something (and just as many 30+
| somethings) I know in NYC DO do this very regularly,
| especially if they already live in wburg/bushwick. If they're
| not there, they're mixing it up at nowadays.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I guess the 20-somethings I know (and knew when I was also
| 20-something) are broke artists and models. They don't have
| $200 to spend on a night out every weekend. Nowadays
| certainly is affordable and there are others of course.
| People make it work.
|
| There were definitely expensive clubs that kids with money
| went to when I was young -- a friend ran sound at The Box
| and that was always wildly priced. But there was no
| shortage of illegal parties in warehouses with cheap drinks
| and no cover on the williamsburg waterfront and out in
| Bushwick in the early 2000s for the weirdos. Even met my
| wife at one.
| vrosas wrote:
| Fair, my circles were a lot more the tech/finance/rich
| parents type. But yeah there's obviously a market for it.
| CPLX wrote:
| Those underground parties still exist for the most part.
| I've aged way out of all this, like you have, but I'm
| aware of their existence through many friends in the
| music scene in NYC. If you're enterprising and skilled at
| navigating Instagram and similar platforms as they rise
| and fall you wouldn't have too much trouble figuring out
| where they are.
| zonotope wrote:
| I think a lot of those illegal warehouse parties died
| with the DeBlasio administration. At least, that's when I
| stopped hearing about them so I am open to the
| possibility that I'm no longer plugged in to the right
| scene.
|
| The DeBlasio administration was the first to add a "night
| mayor", and they made it easier to open legit venues in
| the same neighborhoods that used to host the illegal
| warehouse parties, like that triangle just west of
| Flushing avenue centered around the Morgan L train stop,
| where Elsewhere and The Brooklyn Mirage among a few other
| big, high priced venues are now.
|
| In exchange for making it easier to open more venues and
| have more legal dance parties, they cracked down on the
| illegal parties pretty hard. This had the effect of
| pushing the prices up, changing the scene and crowd, and
| introducing more regulations. Before, you had to be a
| little more plugged in to know when and where the parties
| were because they were "underground" (but only a little).
| You could also reliably dance until 6 or 7am and buy all
| the alcohol you wanted whenever.
|
| Now, these parties are way more mainstream so people who
| are less enthusiastic about dancing show up because it's
| something accessible to do, and everything must legally
| shut down at 4.
|
| I remember being excited that things were going legit
| because I thought it would make the parties that I
| frequented better, but now with the benefit of hindsight
| over the past 8 or so years, I think it's had a negative
| impact on the scene, along with all the other issues
| related to the ubiquity of cell phones and the changing
| gen z tastes.
|
| I still long fondly for Bushwick circa 2012, but it might
| just be more "Back in my day..." nostalgia.
| sbarre wrote:
| I think pervasive (invasive?) social media and the
| "always-potentially-on-camera" reality, paired with
| cancel culture, has also killed a lot of "underground"
| scenes (and counter-culture in general but that's a whole
| other topic).
| thefaux wrote:
| If you haven't read it, you might like Emily Witt's
| recent book Health & Safety. She writes about her
| experiences raving in Brooklyn (and Berlin) from roughly
| 2015 to present day and many of the changes that have
| occurred (as well as dropping in her own personal story
| which may or may not be interesting to you).
| ozzzy1 wrote:
| This so much. As a gen z living in new york city, the first
| question people ask me when I pitch a night out is how much
| it'll cost.
|
| With insane ticket, cover and drink costs. People would
| rather stay in and do something cheaper.
|
| I will say the underground scene is thriving because of this
| though.
| throwaway_95283 wrote:
| I can tell you living in south america that this is true.
| Three drinks esp. caiprinhas even at the expensive places
| would be about $13, $8 or $9 on promo. Cover for the fancy
| place is $17. Bottle service is $34.
|
| Plus the bombed out building post war Berlin industrial feel
| is 1. Real, and 2. free for the promoter and the drinks are
| cheaper there. Yes, that's real barbed wire, and yes, its
| really electrified.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, "back in my time", you could go to parties with then
| relatively famous DJ's (from gigi d'agostino, gabry ponte,
| etc., to our locals like Umek and Sylvain) for the entry fee
| equivalent of then ~2 street kebabs, and "club dj's" (local
| dj, playing other peoples popular music) for a price of ~1
| kebab.
|
| Drinks were a lot cheaper, but for most of us, it was
| drinking store bought drinks outside, then going in and
| having one or two drinks inside.
|
| Now, an event like this, 60eur+ (~15 kebabs) for less known
| DJs, and you can't even sit down at a table/booth, you need
| to reserve those in advance and pay like 300eur (+ tickets..
| but you get a bottle of cheap vodka and like 4 redbulls in
| the price). And it's a night club, a few tables and benches
| were always a must for those who either drank a bit too much
| or took a bit too much of the happy pills.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Enshittification
| evanelias wrote:
| > One, I hated the term "raving"
|
| Completely agreed on the terminology. When I got into the scene
| (late 90s, Philly and Baltimore), everyone legit totally
| avoided saying "rave" or "raving" when talking with other folks
| in the scene. We all just said "party", and it was clear what
| you were talking about based on context (and, for better or
| worse, clothing style). No one said "ravers" either, it was
| always "party kids" instead, at least among the younger end of
| the crowd.
|
| "Party" could interchangeably refer to either a "one-off" event
| or a club weekly/monthly, and similarly made no connotations as
| to whether or not the venue was licensed/above-board.
| Unlicensed one-offs were referred to as "outlaw", "warehouse
| party", etc. There were also unlicensed venues which threw
| regular weekly/monthly parties and these were absolutely
| amazing, so I'm a bit perplexed by the folks here saying a
| "real" rave is only an unlicensed one-off.
|
| In any case, in my area, as a term "rave" was largely only used
| by news media, law enforcement, and outsiders who completely
| misunderstood what the scene was about. The only major
| exception was internet discussions - web sites like
| ravelinks.com, newsgroups like alt.rave. But even there, "rave"
| in the name just helped people find the sites, and still wasn't
| a term thrown around much in actual discussions.
|
| > Has the music droppped off?
|
| No, it's better than ever in my opinion, especially for non-
| mainstream house-adjacent music. There are a ton of talented
| producers who are seamlessly merging many genres and
| influences... folks are combining classic UK rave synths (well,
| really from Belgian New Beat originally) with Italo-disco, or
| taking trance and adding in happy hardcore elements, etc. Many
| classic samples and sounds, but given a new twist, it's great.
|
| That said, I used to be a major drum and bass head back in the
| day, but largely lost interest in that genre as it became less
| danceable over the years. Not to mention my knees aren't what
| they used to be...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >No one said "ravers" either, it was always "party kids"
| instead, at least among the younger end of the crowd.
|
| Over in Japan the term was _party people_ which slurred into
| _pary people_ and finally _paripi_ which is the term today.
|
| Just some interesting culture from the other side of the
| pond.
| thrawn0r wrote:
| thanks for that piece of trope :)
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Glad you brought up some of the musicians (Tiesto).
|
| Looking back on "Trance" and "House" as genres they seem really
| vapid, vain, and dare I say it, decadent. Reading about the
| "mecca" of these genres, Ibiza, makes me wish I'd never
| listened to this stuff growing up.
| linuxdude314 wrote:
| Virtue signaling your dislike of music because of the
| environment it is played in is asinine.
|
| Do you wish you'd never listened to Mozart? He was a serial
| misogynist after all.
|
| I can understand parents not wanting their children to listen
| to music with explicit lyrics, but for an adult to feel this
| way?
|
| Music is not decadent.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Nitpick, but it's Sub Focus and he is one person
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_Focus
| portaouflop wrote:
| Electronic underground is still well and alive. Sure there is
| lots of mainstream electronica now but if you look a bit you'll
| find tons of new fresh stuff.
|
| Sure you can organise raves in illegal locations but a club can
| still be about the music and can be a more sustainable "home"
| for the music.
|
| Sure it's a lot more expensive but then again everything is -
| the clubs just need to survive somehow.
|
| Tbh I live in Berlin, where rave culture is most alive probably
| quesomaster9000 wrote:
| Some of the best events I've ever been to have been where a
| collective has organized the Nth annual event etc. which has
| taken over an entire location or venue and brought in a
| really diverse but very friendly crowd with them from all
| over the place.
|
| But yes, every other day of the week, it's like a restaurant
| that serves music, the machine must go on, rent gets paid,
| food in bellies etc.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > Has the music droppped off? I think it kind of merged into
| more mainstream music.
|
| There's still plenty of "underground" dance music and events
| going on.
|
| The main stream stuff is just another sub genre of electronic
| music.
| drstewart wrote:
| Maybe the same person who killed the disco
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Are you by chance referring to the time that "...a Chicago DJ
| named Steve Dahl detonated a dumpster filled with disco records
| between White Sox games at Comiskey Park, leading to a riot"?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230922-the-night-angry...
| anotheruser13 wrote:
| At the time, I was a punk working in a great record store in
| the Western suburbs of Chicago (shout out to Johnny B Goode
| Records & Stuff!). I sent a number of promo disco records
| we'd received to Disco Demolition Night. I still laugh about
| how it turned out... Those were the days.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Interesting. My experience in NYC even with folks in the 20s is
| they prefer going out BEFORE it gets super late, with the super
| late nights only happening for shows (where the DJ/main act
| doesn't come on till 1:30 AM).
|
| I've also anecdotally seen more day parties which might be driven
| by demand from the former rave crews who are aging out.
| lelandfe wrote:
| NYC as well. I thought that too and then realized it was just
| who I was surrounded by. You can find some extremely late night
| shows throughout the city that get packed with young people.
| Hop from Paragon to H0L0 to Nowadays and be out from 10pm until
| 10am, grab some pancakes at a diner, and take the train home.
|
| Did that journey recently with a Canadian friend who moved here
| as his welcome party :) On nothing stronger than booze, too!
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| For sure, I think this does however line up with even younger
| folks who aren't going to generic clubs for a late night.
| They would just start earlier, bars/etc. and then end
| earlier. The full night bangers are definitely still very
| viable (and as crowded as you would like them) in NYC
| gotaran wrote:
| I live in NYC as well, and I find the post COVID Berlin-
| esque Bushwick only scene to be terrible. It's filled with
| the most dull repetitive music that AI can replicate with a
| god awful sound system and no atmospherics whatsoever, and
| while I do appreciate the lack of dress code / door policy
| / bouncer aggressiveness, it feels like a brutal slog to
| endure without drugs, and a miserable long ass train ride
| on the L train back to the city.
|
| I miss the pre COVID Vegas style nightclubs in the
| Meatpacking District. Yes, crowded and aggressive bouncers
| who make up the door policy on the spot, but once you're in
| there's mesmerizing lighting and visual effects, top notch
| sound systems, the glitziness of bottle service, and the
| euphoric albeit predictable drops of EDM.
| lelandfe wrote:
| That all predates COVID... circa 2017 you could catch me
| in some Ridgewood DIY with no atmospherics most weekends.
| My favorite nights are the ones where the only light is
| the exit sign and it's me and 15 other people dancing all
| night in an uncrowded dance floor until the sun comes up.
|
| Different strokes!
| randomopining wrote:
| I'm not sure if stuff changed or maybe i'm just older. A
| lot of those parties seemed so mysterious and exciting a
| couple years back for me. Now it seems like the same old
| stuff month in and month out. Most DJs kind of have their
| shtick, and there's also this kind of standard left field
| rave sound that a lot have seemed to adopt. Kind of like
| the Resolute roster.
|
| it's also very hard for me to rationalize staying up
| until the main act comes on at 3-5am, getting home at 6am
| minimum. You waste most or all of the next day.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The main act starting at 1:30 AM while (thinking of the US) a
| lot of people work weekends or even if they don't, their weekly
| schedule is 9-5 and so their sleep schedule is / should be like
| 12-7 is mad, it makes sense that going out matches more with
| that schedule so you don't get cicadean whiplash from doing
| night shifts over the weekend.
|
| That said, in the UK for a good while now a lot of places are
| closed at midnight, on paper to prevent excessive drinking and
| nighttime troubles. In practice people just drink more and
| earlier in the day.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Probably a bunch of factors...
|
| Tier 1 city RE prices have made live entertainment venues harder
| to run profitably.
|
| GenZ studies have found a lower participation in "risky behavior"
| which late night clubbing may or not be considered.
|
| Mobile internet & smartphones seem to be killing all forms of
| live in person interaction.
|
| And finally electronic music of various forms used to be a niche,
| and now it's mainstream. In the 90s/00s my consumption of
| electronic music was mp3 downloads of BBC late night recordings.
| Now pop is electronic, electronic is pop, it's all on the radio,
| it's unavoidable.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| It's shocking how often the answer to "How come X changed?" is
| either the creation of the internet or the cost of real estate.
|
| Surprisingly often, it's both.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| It's interesting how the creation of the internet still
| hasn't caused real estate prices to plummet.
|
| Even two years of covid couldn't do it.
| wpm wrote:
| Supply is artificially limited.
| vidanay wrote:
| Not commercial RE
| graeme wrote:
| Yes it is. There's no zoning law that says "You can only
| build houses here, no apartment, unless you build
| commercial real estate"
|
| Commercial real estate is generally illegal anywhere
| dense housing is also illegal.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Commercial RE too. When you say supply is constrained,
| they don't mean there's no RE available, they mean RE
| isn't available at a lower price. Most cities in the US
| right now have a huge commercial RE vacancy rate, yet if
| you try to lease it, you're not getting rates that a free
| market low demand situation is going to get you.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Supply can't possibly keep up when real estate is used as
| an investment.
|
| As an analogy to the dead internet hypothesis I present
| the dead real estate market hypothesis. Increasingly it's
| just investors buying and selling properties from each
| other.
|
| And it's not just a hypothesis. China built enough homes
| to house its population twice over, yet it's not
| reflected in the prices. All because everyone and their
| grandma is investing in real estate.
| UltraSane wrote:
| It isn't a hypothesis. It is a well known fact. The more
| expensive a property is the more time it will be spent
| vacant because a lot of the very expensive properties are
| just uses as investments.
| apwell23 wrote:
| why doesn't someone introduce a legislation to tax vacant
| second homes at astronomical rates
| throw5959 wrote:
| Do you know who owns most real estate either directly or
| indirectly? Pension funds. And who wants to shake up
| their pension? Nobody. It's the most democratized form of
| asset ownership, literally everybody is going to get
| angry.
|
| And secondly... Are the second vacation homes really the
| problem? I'd guess the problem begins around 3rd or 5th,
| not the second one, which is a fairly common and usually
| also a good thing to have - for both the owner and the
| society.
| hello_moto wrote:
| Second vacation homes (plus Airbnb) become a problem for
| locals of that area. The young ones can't survive there
| and eventually have to rent (or provided as comp package)
| from established businesses (B&B/hotel).
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > And secondly... Are the second vacation homes really
| the problem? I'd guess the problem begins around 3rd or
| 5th, not the second one, which is a fairly common and
| usually also a good thing to have - for both the owner
| and the society.
|
| I'm not sure if you mean owning one primary home and two
| vacation homes, or one primary home and one vacation home
| when you mention a "second vacation home," but either way
| this strikes me as out of touch.
|
| In 2024, US home ownership rate is 65.6%.
| (https://www.bankrate.com/homeownership/home-ownership-
| statis...)
|
| In 2022, 4.6% of housing was comprised of second homes.
| (https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/09/the-nations-stock-of-
| second...)
|
| 4.6% of 65.6% is 3%, meaning _at most_ 3% of Americans
| own a second home (but this doesn 't account for citizens
| that own 3 or more homes, so the actual percentage is
| even lower.)
|
| I don't consider that to be common. I also wonder: why is
| it a good thing for society (or even most homeowners?)
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Do you like all your Capital fleeing to other countries?
| Because that's how you enrich Canada, Switzerland,
| Luxembourg, Lichenstein, etc at the USA's expense.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-
| vacancy...
|
| We already have speculation tax in Canada.
| nico wrote:
| They did this in the UK. A quick lookup says that a home
| that is vacant for over 1 year could be taxed 4x
|
| Additionally, since 2004, there's a law that allows local
| authorities to take over empty homes and sell them, to
| make sure they are used for housing
|
| Not sure what the effects have been of either
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > why doesn't someone introduce a legislation to tax
| vacant second homes at astronomical rates
|
| They tried this in China. People would just get divorced
| so each partner had their own home. It turns out you can
| easily find someone in your family to "buy" a house as
| well.
| bluGill wrote:
| We did that long ago - well the rates are not
| astronomical, but taxes are higher. Some states (probably
| all but I don't know how to look this up) have a
| homestead credit, and they date back to the 1800s.
|
| One thing missing - renters cannot homestead their
| apartment and so the funds that own the apartment have to
| charge more rent to cover taxes on those apartments.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Why? Because politicians aren't generally in the habit of
| introducing legislation that pisses in the face of the
| folks that fund their election campaigns. Oligarchy's a
| bitch.
| freedomben wrote:
| This becomes devastating to people who are trying to sell
| the "second" home in a market where it often takes months
| to get sold.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| Also made possible by the internet and computers in
| general, I'd argue. Without the easy availability of
| prices, sales data, and general number crunching
| capabilities I don't think this would be happening.
| Certainly not at the scale we're seeing.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > enough homes to house its population twice over
|
| This is because a ton of them are in the Chinese
| equivalent of like Boise, Idaho where demand is fairly
| low. People want to live where the high paying jobs are.
| tomrod wrote:
| Bad example, Boise is a hot and desirable market.
|
| Better example: northern Alaska.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Alaska in general. Fairbanks, Anchorage, Ketchikan are
| currently in decline, as is Alaska as a whole.
| luhn wrote:
| I get your point, but that's a terrible example because
| Boise is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the
| country.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Agreed, but one thing to note on the Chinese real estate
| is that a lot of it is apparently "tofu dregs", so a good
| portion of the real estate is just a building waiting to
| fall down that you can crumble with your bare hands (lots
| of YouTube videos on this) and a lot of the supply is
| also in the middle of nowhere. So the supply is kind of
| not as much there as you would normally think. To use an
| analogy, does building a massive housing complex in the
| middle of the Mojave help American home prices come down?
| zamfi wrote:
| > China built enough homes to house its population twice
| over, yet it's not reflected in the prices. All because
| everyone and their grandma is investing in real estate.
|
| Yes, but this is reflected in China's vacancy rate: 22%
| by some estimates.
|
| In the US, home vacancy rates are sub-1%.
|
| Not saying people aren't treating homes as investments,
| but it seems clear we _also_ have a supply issue.
|
| "Real Estate is Investment" should naturally lead to
| _overproduction_ as investment-only properties get built
| to satisfy that demand--as we see in China. In the US, we
| don 't see that.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The methodology is to take a hot city like Shanghai or
| Beijing, and count the number of windows lit up at night
| on a standard 30 story concrete apartment building.
| You'll find something like 25% of the units never light
| up. Now, those are in cities where people want to live,
| it is much worse in lower tier cities and new districts
| without services or jobs of lower tier cities.
|
| Property taxes in the US mean you can't speculate so
| easily on property (you lose ~1% value a year). But they
| have 99 year leases instead, but everyone thinks the
| government will let you renew those with minimal fees.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >"Real Estate is Investment" should naturally lead to
| overproduction as investment-only properties get built to
| satisfy that demand--as we see in China
|
| China had massive home overproduction because the
| goddamned totalitarian government told builders to build
| _or else_. It was not market forces.
|
| How do you suppose we do that in the US? Especially with
| this administration?
|
| In the US, builders don't build 100 starter homes because
| it is more profitable and easier to build a couple
| McMansions and sell them for crazy prices. THOSE are the
| homes that get built as "investments". No builder will
| benefit from producing a large supply of homes, so they
| don't. The market will not self correct.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In China, the local government gets income from leasing
| new construction land for 99 years, hence the incentive
| to build.
|
| In the US, the largest amount of government land is held
| by the Feds and they keep increasing the limits on what
| the land can be used for year after year. Figure out how
| to make new home building key to government finances like
| in China and you will INSTANTLY have the problem solved
| and even have over supply.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Homesteading federal land should be reopened.
|
| Some say there's little demand but that's horse shit.
| People snap up much worse desolate land around me to
| homestead for mucho dinero. Building a house with your
| own hands on public or unowned desolate lands is the most
| essential of basic human fulfilments. The youth cannot
| afford the already built homes nor their construction, so
| they ought to be able to take matters in their own hands.
| ty6853 wrote:
| As someone who has taken raw land with no utilities to a
| full house all with my own engineering and construction
| labor this is only half the story.
|
| To build a starter home I not only had to go to bumfuck
| Egypt with the most libertarian zoning anywhere near jobs
| I can find, i also had to rule out the 9/10 of properties
| with practically irrevocable covenants made by self
| righteous boomers back in the 80s who already built their
| pig farm shithole and don't want their precious livestock
| living near anything but a mansion.
|
| Then I had to find a rare loophole around code compliance
| and inspections so I could DIY it on weekends and not be
| subject to weekday inspections. Most codes want stuff
| like an expensive egress window even though no one living
| in the house is bigger than a much smaller sliding
| window, and it goes on infinitum.
|
| Then I had to find a place they hadn't outlawed water yet
| through a grandfathered well, and finally get buddy
| enough with the power company to actually get them to run
| power without royally fucking me with arbitrary
| requirements. Almost the entire system is designed around
| grandfathered protectionism while kicking the next
| generation in the teeth with entirely different and
| constrained rules voted on by people who who live in
| places that don't even conform to the requirements
| imposed on you, which of course gives them a free
| artificial value boost as well.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| A lot of the time code requirements get changed because
| someone fucked up so hard local government was forced to
| actually clock in and do work. It's also worth keeping in
| mind code isn't a ceiling it's the floor. As in it
| details the most half-assed way to build anything and
| have it still be legal. All of that said I'd love to have
| a word with the folks that have decided 3 acre minimum
| tract sizes locally are a requirement to put in a mobile
| home. Talk about defeating the purpose...
| andrewjl wrote:
| > How do you suppose we do that in the US?
|
| Exempt or lighten planning requirements for affordable
| housing construction. California is going in this
| direction now.
|
| There are other levers like subsidized financing for
| developers building homes targeting a certain price range
| as well as favorable tax treatment of those profits.
|
| A lot of these have would probably have some bipartisan
| support.
| ty6853 wrote:
| This is what they did in my county. If you build a house
| as the actual owner (not as an LLC or for rent or sale)
| and promise not to sell within 1 year there are no
| design, code, inspection or planning requirements.
|
| Lots of people taken advantage of this here. It is a
| pressure release valve available to those who can't
| afford commercial construction or boomers wanting 5x the
| real value they paid for their home. You can build
| whatever you can afford without oversight so long as it's
| only for your family. Most people end up just dragging in
| budget prefab, but you get the odd earth bag house,
| shipping container, one man shop carpenter, or just rich
| people with weird design ideas not allowed elsewhere.
|
| Of course the naysayers have screamed bloody murder about
| everyone dying in a fire, but this has been law for 2
| decades now and none of the apocalyptic prophecies came
| true.
| lostlogin wrote:
| If they built double the houses they need, how is the
| vacancy rate just 22%?
| londons_explore wrote:
| "need" can have a lot of flexibility.
|
| For example in some countries, many students share a
| house. Whereas in other countries, every student will
| have a whole house to themselves.
|
| In some places, children will get their own house at 16.
| In others, children, parents, and grandparents are all
| sharing one house.
| xeromal wrote:
| Because people want to live in particular areas
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This is really the issue. There are plenty of places
| people can live and afford. But everyone wants a
| particular lifestyle and a certain job in their desired
| field and maybe proximity to certain people. That sense
| of entitlement has been rebranded as an affordability
| crisis but it isn't that. It's just entitlement. People
| should instead live within their means and make
| sacrifices. Not everyone gets to live in highly desirable
| places like SF and that's okay.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > In the US, home vacancy rates are sub-1%.
|
| That's homeowner vacancy rate. Rental vacancy rate is
| around 6.9%:
|
| https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html
| Kirby64 wrote:
| A 6.9% rental vacancy rate implies an average vacancy of
| ~3.5 weeks per year. Given the high turnover of many
| rentals, that seems pretty low to me. Turnaround time
| just to do a make ready for a new tenant tends to be a
| week at minimum, sometimes longer for proper overhauls
| (replacing carpet, fixes damage, etc). Sure, not all
| properties turn over every year, but there's also quite a
| few properties that have longer vacancies to counteract
| that.
| monkeycantype wrote:
| I think this paradox makes sense to me when combined with
| the comments above. The best way to maximize return on
| real estate is to influence gov to restrict supply
| SR2Z wrote:
| Whether or not real estate is a good investment depends
| on supply growth. You have the causality backwards.
| dnissley wrote:
| Only if there is unlimited investors
| j1elo wrote:
| Sometimes I dream with a wishful solution like defining
| areas of "great living desirability" (basically the
| cities where seemingly majority of people compete to live
| in), and charge a yearly tax of N% the market value of
| each home (with crazy high N, like 20), for owners who
| have more than M units in that area (with a convervative
| M, like 3 or even 2). ...You'll see how greedy investors
| flee fast, and the remaining buyers are honest people who
| don't want to speculate, but to actually own a home where
| to actually live.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| This is the lesson the board game Monopoly was originally
| intended to teach. The Georgism side of "The Landlord's
| Game" sometimes feels as relevant as ever, and as obvious
| as ever why those rules not packed into the game by
| Hasbro. (They aren't fun and we don't actually want to
| question what real estate ownership should mean.)
| cyberax wrote:
| No, it's not. Supply of housing is not in any way
| limited. Cities are desperately fighting a rearguard
| action against greedy developers plopping multi-story
| monstrosities in former SFH areas. All in the name of
| "affordable housing".
|
| While the supply of house units per capita is at the
| record-high levels.
|
| Reality: housing is cheap, abundant, and high quality.
| Just not near the downtown cores of large cities.
| clmay wrote:
| Maybe Ricardo was onto something.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Montalban?
| adverbly wrote:
| Land value tax baby!
|
| Reference to Ricardo's law of rent:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
| smt88 wrote:
| That's because most people live in cities because they
| prefer it, not because their office was there.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I think the opposite is true. It's easier to find a job
| in a city other than your own with the internet, and big
| cities pay the most
| bobthepanda wrote:
| That ignores that plenty of people are in cities because
| of the amenities that concentration allows. If you want
| niche/specialty restaurants, grocery options,
| entertainment, medical care etc. you will have to be in a
| large metropolitan area
| ghaff wrote:
| You can be in a broader metropolitan area without
| actually living in a city.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That means you have to be in driving distance of a metro
| with several hundred thousand.
|
| That is very different than a Tier 1 city.
| bluGill wrote:
| The opportunities you get in a city of 3million is
| different from 600k is different from 250k. I've lived in
| all of the above over my life. You can find niches in
| each. However the larger the city the more options. The
| smallest city had great Thai food - some family from
| Thailand moved there and opened a restaurant, but there
| was no Vietnamese, the next largest city has both, and
| the 3 million city more options than I was ever able to
| check out. (there are cities > 10 million around with
| even more options).
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Yeah big cities provide a one stop mall like experience
| for 'experiences and culture' for people who need that
| curated for them. To me it's the most boring, non-
| organic, empty experience, but I've always preferred non-
| mainstream scenes or to hunt out my own
| entertainment/style/beauty. I can see the draw for people
| that doesn't work for though.
|
| It's funny that cities various 'interesting districts'
| are normally just suburbs that the city absorbed. But
| yeah, suburbs are just awful places without their own
| culture or interest (unless absorbed, then they are a
| distinct interesting district).
| 9rx wrote:
| _> big cities pay the most_
|
| Big cities pay top performers the most, by far, but
| median incomes tend to be quite a bit lower than small
| town/rural areas. If you are a professional sports star
| or F500 CEO, the city is unquestionably the place to be+,
| but for the normal person who will end up in a drab job
| the money often isn't there. Many will accept the low pay
| due to being temporarily embarrassed CEOs, of course.
|
| + Although knowing some of these people, they tend to
| live rurally as well, having the means to be able to live
| in both settings. The rich rarely live in just one place.
| bluGill wrote:
| Pay is lower in small/rural towns for the cheap jobs -
| but your cost of living is also lower. The trick is
| finding the best compromise for your situation - dense
| enough to have the higher pay of a city while not so
| dense that your cost of living is too high.
|
| Where I live in the Suburbs of Des Moines, McDonalds
| starts at $16/hour. There are rural towns not far away
| where they start at $14, and I know rural towns farther
| out where you start at $10 (McDonalds isn't in these
| towns so it isn't a full comparison but that is the
| closest I can give). Where I live apartments can be had
| for under $1000/month so it is feasible for someone
| working at McDonalds to live on that wage. In the more
| rural areas apartments might be $500/month but you are
| making less plus the local grocery stores are more
| expesnive than the Aldi you could walk to from the
| apartment (thus meaning you don't need a car though
| crossing the highways isn't exactly safe).
|
| Of course the real issue is people pick where to live
| based on factors other than cost of living. They care
| where their families live.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Pay is lower in small /rural towns for the cheap jobs_
|
| I expect the median income is often higher in rural areas
| because, while there is little on the high end, there is
| more mid-tier opportunity. In the big city if you don't
| make it into the big leagues, only the dregs are left.
| Cities amplify the extremes. In rural areas, the $30 per
| hour jobs are willing to hire any warm body that shows
| up.
|
| Of course, rural is a difficult categorization as it is a
| catchall for everything that is left. A rural area with a
| strong agricultural sector, for example, is nothing like
| a rural area that is not much more than barren
| wilderness. In the former, there is a lot of money to be
| made, comparatively, while in the latter the McDonalds at
| the highway rest stop may be the only business there is
| for hundreds of miles. We are definitely talking about a
| certain kind of rural here.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think it is almost entirely job driven. Given the
| choice of equal pay, most people would pick a cheap
| suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the price
| of a SF condo.
|
| Of course, variation exists
| renewiltord wrote:
| If this were true, we wouldn't need to enforce the single
| family home through zoning.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The fact that you can build 200 condos on the same acre
| as 1 ranch house does not negate the fact that most
| people would choose the ranchouse over the condo if
| presented a choice between the two.
|
| It is numbers game. Its not about what any single wants
| best, but how many times you can sell people their 2nd
| choice using the same land.
| wrl wrote:
| "most people"? Genuine question - do you have any data to
| back this up?
| dagw wrote:
| While I would much rather have a nice downtown condo in a
| major city over a ranch house in the sticks. I would
| rather have the ranch house in the sticks than a condo in
| the same location as that ranch house.
|
| Some dream of living in a condo in the city, some of a
| rural ranch house. I don't think anybody dreams of a
| rural condo.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The ones that like living out in the country but don't
| want to/can't mow lawns and shovel snow do.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| 'If this were true, we wouldn't need to protect our water
| bodies with EPA laws. Obviously people prefer polluted
| bodies of water, and it's the artificial EPA laws that
| prevent it.'
| pfdietz wrote:
| What this analogy says is that people don't want other
| people living at high density near them. This is
| expected, since those other people are going to be poor
| and often dark skinned. Needless to say "other people are
| pollution, yuck" is not a good argument for zoning.
| ghaff wrote:
| I strongly suspect that had remote work remained a bigger
| trend post-COVID peak, you'd be seeing a lot less core
| urban residential demand (and all that would imply).
| After all, a lot of large US cities were seeing urban
| flight of both residents and companies in the late 1990s.
| When I graduated from grad school--other than NYC finance
| --pretty much none of my classmates went to live in a
| city or worked there. Urban living/working is hardly an
| immutable law of nature.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think you have it backwards, and I think "most" is
| doing a lot of heavy lifting.
|
| Given _equal cost of a home_ , most people would prefer
| to live in a city. Especially if you look globally,
| cities are absolutely trampling suburbs with demand. Yes,
| people in the suburbs often chose that preferentially,
| but there are less people in suburbs.
|
| In America, suburbs are disproportionately popular. I'm
| guessing that has more to do with civics than
| preferences. Most of suburbanites I know in America
| either live near their suburban job, or express some
| fear/distrust of various aspects of city life - and it's
| mostly related to cars and transportation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| costs aren't equal. The price of an acre plot in downtown
| SF is not the same as the suburbs.
|
| My point is that if you remove jobs and pay from the
| current incentives, city demand would decrease
| dramatically.
| marssaxman wrote:
| If you removed the legal protectionism imposed by zoning
| codes, which require the reservation of large tracts of
| land for single-family housing regardless of actual
| market forces, suburb demand would decrease even more
| dramatically.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure I follow your point. What does demand have to
| do with zoning?
|
| I agree that if you remove zoning, many areas of single
| family homes would be built up if they are in and around
| urban cores. That isnt new demand, but existing demand,
| not able to be expressed by current law.
|
| However, my point is that if your [random small town] job
| paid the same as NY or SF, you would see a flux out of
| those cities to the small towns.
|
| WE are describing two different situations.
| marssaxman wrote:
| You appear to be asserting that the demand for suburban-
| style low-density housing is naturally quite high, and
| that many people who live in cities are merely settling
| for less-desirable dense urban housing, as a sacrifice
| they must make for a higher income. I counter that if
| this were the case there would be no need for single-
| family zoning, because people would naturally choose such
| housing whenever possible, and the market would respond.
|
| > you would see a flux out of those cities to the small
| towns
|
| Having actually tried this, hated it, and moved back, I
| am skeptical.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I counter that if this were the case there would be no
| need for single-family zoning, because people would
| naturally choose such housing whenever possible, and the
| market would respond.
|
| This mistakes the price one person can pay for a piece of
| land with the price many people can pay to to use the
| same land. A single family home does rent for more money
| than a condo if they are on the same block in the city.
| majormajor wrote:
| > I counter that if this were the case there would be no
| need for single-family zoning, because people would
| naturally choose such housing whenever possible, and the
| market would respond.
|
| A major reason zoning exists is because with out it you'd
| have developers and investors out-bidding the homeowners
| to redevelop plots of land as they became available.
|
| It's a collective response to the power of $$$ in a free
| market.
|
| Even if all of those condo purchaser who would buy a unit
| in the building that replaced a single home would've
| preferred a single home, they didn't have a direct say in
| that lot being turned into condos. The person with the
| most money did.
|
| And of course, they couldn't have all fit there. But I am
| skeptical of "enough people with money want to live in
| your area now" as being a sufficient justification to say
| that local control has to be eliminated. Why favor the
| future richer potential-resident over the current
| resident? (I would extend this broadly, for incumbency
| protections for renters and owners alike - why is it an
| inherent good for an existing area to get denser forever?
| Why not encourage less centralized development? Why would
| "the people with the most money should get to decide how
| this area is developed?" the best plan?)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I think you've got causality twisted here. People prefer
| having a job, the higher paying the better. High paying
| jobs exist mostly in metro areas, so folks move there for
| work. Preference for the suburbs is just folks exercising
| their perfectly natural tendency to want as much
| space/land/house as they can afford while maintaining
| access to services and proximity to work. I'm quite
| confident the majority of suburbanites would strongly
| prefer living on 20 acres if they could still get to work
| in 20 minutes and the grocery store in 10.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Cities are not just where the jobs are, cities are where
| _everything_ is. You 'd likely have to offer double my
| salary before I'd consider exchanging my life here in the
| heart of it all for the lonely, empty, car-dependent
| barrenness of the suburbs.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's obviously fine if that's your preference. But many
| jobs are _in_ the suburbs and you can access many city
| amenities pretty conveniently without living in the
| wilds.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I guess it depends on your idea of the suburbs. I can
| walk to a major grocery store, coffee shops, restaurants,
| and breweries, but have a quarter acre with fruit trees
| and gardens.
|
| Im happy to trade that for having to spend an hour in
| car/train a few times a year to see a show or museum.
|
| I would take a pay cut to work closer to home.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| Like many in the suburbs have convinced themselves
| they're rural as a result of oil company propaganda
| (rural identity sells big mall crawler trucks), it sounds
| to me like you live in a central, quite urban area that's
| otherwise sparse on local options and have convinced
| yourself it's your extra special private enclave in the
| hills, completely separated from the economic center,
| despite it literally being your economic center.
|
| Ditch the suburbanite identity politics and start
| advocating for the development of shows and museums in
| your local area that you could walk to, instead of taking
| your money away from your economic center at the benefit
| of oil companies (bc let's be real, suburban identity
| sells car dependence and even if you take the train, all
| the cultural momentum from the propaganda shaped your
| life decisions to move there and what's that train run
| on?).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It really depends on how you draw the lines between urban
| and suburban.
|
| For this conversation, we're talking about the cores of
| tier 1 cities where the high paying jobs are most
| abundant. I considers a location suburban if they are
| predominantly single-family homes and if many of them
| commute into the Metro for work.
|
| I'm going to ignore all that identity politics stuff
| because frankly I don't understand what you were trying
| to say there
| ty6853 wrote:
| Nah what living outside the city really buys me is more
| of my preferences of freedom. I have no government
| maintained roads, basically no police, I can build what I
| want without an inspector telling me what to do rather
| than some narrowly constrained window of options set by a
| city planning board. If I want to keep cows to feed my
| family fresh meat I can do so. There is no sound
| ordnance, no regulation on gunfire, you can ride
| dirtbikes all around, your kids can explore without
| encountering hordes of junkies or karen callin CPS for
| childhood independence. My taxes are near zero. I depend
| on myself and my neighbors not through violence of law
| and taxation but through mutual voluntary cooperation.
|
| It's not for everybody but it's not an oil scam either.
| int_19h wrote:
| I find it amusing that so many activists in US believe
| that the sole reason why people like the suburbs over the
| cities is some kind of "propaganda". I'm from a country
| where suburbs are far less common and I grew up in a city
| of 300k and then lived in a megapolis for several years.
| And yes, we did have public transportation etc.
|
| When I moved to US, I chose to live pretty much as far as
| I can from the nearest large city that wouldn't be
| considered straight up "rural" (although we do have a
| bunch of farms around here). And the reason is because I
| don't want to live in what is, in effect, a giant human
| anthill.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Haha, cities are where everything is if you want
| everything and experiences delivered up to you in a one
| stop mall like package and don't have personality enough
| to organically find things.
|
| Personally I find city people the most boring and
| socially/culturally stunted because they think a
| cultivated/curated 'mall like setting of stuff' =
| culture. They also tend to think buying access to
| art/culture because they have money = having artist
| style/culture. The music scenes/art scenes are overly
| (often self) curated pap.
|
| Lots of cities 'diverse' districts are just... suburbs...
| that the cities absorbed.
|
| Even for things like 'exotic' foods I routinely find
| bombed out suburban strip mall restaurants to be superior
| and less 'catered' to American Paletes than places in
| cities that have to be more generic because they serve
| such a large population.
|
| I also have personally found when I have been lonely in
| life, being lonely in the city is the worst kind of
| loneliness.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Jeez, you'd hate it here then :-)
|
| Looking out my window, I can't even see another house. If
| I twist my neck, I can see a neighbor's barn about half a
| mile away, though.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _Given the choice of equal pay, most people would pick
| a cheap suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the
| price of a SF condo._
|
| This already happened during Covid, and no country
| substantially de-urbanized. In fact, urban real estate
| prices skyrocketed.
|
| The only cities where prices stayed flat or went down
| were highly over-priced places that people hated living
| anyway (like the Bay Area).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If we are talking about Tier 1 cities, those are the ones
| that de-urbanized. Interest rates had a huge impact on
| prices, but my understanding is that suburban real-
| estate, especially ones with outdoor attractions
| skyrocketed as much or more.
| elzbardico wrote:
| People prefer cities due to access to stuff, but most
| people also would prefer a 3000 sqft home with a pool.
| During different phases of life, your ability and your
| relative importance given to either of those two poles
| will vary.
|
| As you get older, especially if you are married and have
| kids, usually the trade-off skews strongly towards having
| a big house, and then you will balance the distance side
| of the equation.
|
| Also, not all suburbs are created equal, and this is even
| more true outside the US.
| watwut wrote:
| > most people also would prefer a 3000 sqft home with a
| pool
|
| If someone else does all the maintenance, dusting and
| vacuum cleaning, maybe. Other then that, actual swimming
| pool for doing laps or actual water park with slides is
| kind of better in most cases. There are some people who
| would use that large house or would be using their
| backyard swimming pool often ... but most just dont.
|
| > As you get older, especially if you are married and
| have kids, usually the trade-off skews strongly towards
| having a big house, and then you will balance the
| distance side of the equation.
|
| Someone with kids appreciates not having long drive to
| and from work, those take away from time with kids. And
| someone with kids over 7 years including kids themselves
| appreciates presence ability to do go to sport clubs,
| music clubs, libraries, school or whatever else without
| parent having to drive them each time.
|
| There is some advantage to big house in remote place with
| kids, but it also causes you and the kids to be more
| isolated from everything else.
| bluGill wrote:
| Compromise is the key. You cannot have everything. There
| are times I wish I lived downtown. There are times I
| wished I lived in the mountains. There are times I wish I
| lived on the beach. If you live in the city that enables
| some lifestyles and makes some impossible. If you live on
| a rural area you get a different life, and suburbs again
| different.
|
| I know farmers who think nothing about hunting off their
| back porch - and why not their gun doesn't have the range
| to kill a neighbor so they don't have to worry about
| missing their shot. I know people who shoot guns in the
| suburbs, but they have done extra work to create a safe
| range in their house (and generally only safe for the
| lowest power rounds). The denser your living the less
| viable having a safe space to shoot is.
|
| There are things that are only possible in a dense city.
| You need a lot of people to have enough interest to
| support a symphony orchestra. There are a lot of niche
| stores that can only make it in a dense city because that
| is the only way to get enough people interested in that
| niche to support a store.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Sure, but overlap also exists.
|
| If you live in LA or San Diego, you can live close to the
| beach and go there all the time. Most people there don't,
| but if that's important to you, you can achieve it.
|
| If you live in Vancouver, BC or Seattle, you can ski in
| the winter and hike in mountains outside of cell phone
| reception in the summer AFTER WORK, never mind every
| weekend.
|
| I assume most american cities have gun clubs. If the
| attraction to shooting a gun can be satiated with target
| practice, that can be a decent compromise. (Of course if
| the attraction is feeling like a frontiersman by shooting
| straight off your porch, that's a different thing. I can
| understand it even if I don't share it)
|
| This is not possible with every city and every hobby, but
| that ends up kind of becoming the point. The cities that
| have this overlap become even more in-demand. It's why
| housing is so expensive in places like YVR and SFO.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It has caused the prices to plummet in small towns and
| lowest tier cities. It's big cities that saw the internet
| grow their real estate prices because the Internet made it
| easier to research large cities before moving there
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Even two years of covid couldn't do it.
|
| My jurisdiction gave free money to everyone that lost their
| job/income, with far more liberal eligibility criteria than
| unemployment insurance had, at fixed amounts conveniently
| we'll above the monthly rental costs for most.
|
| Kept the rental market propped up.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| What's interesting is how high interest rates couldn't do
| it.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| The internet facilitates people moving to the big cities in
| various ways.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Companies came together to demand everyone back into work
| at physical locations in part to keep real estate pricing
| high.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm as anti-RTO as anyone, but I've seen this asserted
| over and over but have never seen anyone give evidence in
| favor. As I understand it the claim is something about
| cities giving tax breaks to companies for having offices?
| Or is the idea that CEOs have investments in real estate?
|
| Does anyone have a source that actually shows that this
| was a factor?
| majormajor wrote:
| The internet doesn't change "location location location"
| that much. It doesn't change weather, or scenery, physical
| entertainment options, in-person social opportunities, or
| backyards and amenities.
|
| It's also created big windfalls - due to easy
| distribution/sales for online stuff - for more than enough
| people to drive up prices in many of the most-already-in-
| demand regions.
|
| Ye olde rich person historically has traditionally
| addressed the "there are different pros/cons to the city
| than rurally" dilemma _by having multiple properties_.
| Which of course only eats into supply more. Is the
| percentage of people able to do that now higher or lower
| than it was when a country home required full-time live-in
| staff?
| ghaff wrote:
| I know people with an urban condo and a country house. At
| one point, I did think about it but decided I didn't want
| the hassle and, anyway, preferred to have my choice of
| cities during a given year. I'm sure there are
| circumstances where a second home makes sense especially
| for people who want to migrate summer/winter or heavily
| use a ski condo.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Many cities effectively ban or heavily restrict new housing
| developments that increase density.
|
| I'm really not surprised real estate prices continue to
| rise when building new units is often an extremely
| expensive, risky process that in some areas can be stopped
| at any time with literally no reason required
| geodel wrote:
| Huh, why is college getting expensive, healthcare getting
| expensive, day care getting expensive, hell even
| streaming services getting expensive, none of these are
| heavily restricted that no development is happening
| there.
|
| And in many cities breakneck construction activity is
| happening still real estate is getting very expensive.
|
| This seems rather simplistic reason to me.
| addicted wrote:
| One can easily see how high real estate prices can
| translate to all those being more expensive.
|
| Colleges pay rent. Colleges pay salaries to people who
| pay rent. All those go up with high real estate prices.
| Further, even if the college owns a land, the money they
| earn on that land has to compete with what a developer
| who is willing to tear it down and put up a residential
| building which now earns higher rent or sale price.
|
| I don't think all the increase comes down to high real
| estate costs but it's clear that high real estate costs
| can easily raise prices downstream across nearly every
| area.
| lolinder wrote:
| I have a strong suspicion that a lot of it is the rise of
| the two income household. In the early years it increased
| household buying power, but as it became the norm many
| services began raising prices because people could
| actually afford to pay them now. So the net result is
| that the increased productivity from nearly doubling the
| workforce turns into higher and higher executive salaries
| while the average middle class household is now roughly
| back where we started, with the added burden of a whole
| second career.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Yeah, and property is a positional good. Its price is a
| function purely of willingness to pay. So if you double
| household income, and perhaps quadruple theoretical
| discretionary income (after food, energy, gas and so on),
| give it 40 years and real-estate inflation eats the damn
| lot.
| sir0010010 wrote:
| The price of every good and service is a function both of
| willingness to pay and supply.
|
| Positional goods cease to be so if you substantially
| increase their supply - this is why Rolex, Gucci, etc are
| constantly worried about knockoffs.
| dottjt wrote:
| The reason is growing inequality. Those are just symptoms
| of it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| All government interference--significantly restricting
| supply and then doling out free money/tax-breaks to pay
| for whats left. As if govt leaders never took an econ 101
| class.
| tehjoker wrote:
| They did take econ 101. They simply know whose interests
| they serve: people who already own property.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I just think people who say this are very funny and
| weird. I took an econ 101 class, but drawing supply
| demand curves to talk about wide ranging governmental
| policy is just a bad methodology.
| cyberax wrote:
| There is no supply restriction. We're close to the
| record-high number of housing units per capita, it's only
| a bit lower than in 2007, and we're likely to surpass it
| by 2026.
| sir0010010 wrote:
| The calculation changes if you only include adults in the
| denominator - there is a lot more adults relative to
| children compared to the past. The solution is to remove
| the very much existent density and other supply
| restrictions - see: https://marginalrevolution.com/margin
| alrevolution/2024/04/th...
|
| and
|
| https://kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/household-size-and-
| the-h... which goes into more detail
| cyberax wrote:
| > The calculation changes
|
| Nope. It becomes slightly further from the record high
| numbers, but still better than at any time before 90-s.
|
| At this point, the misery caucus is just grasping at
| straws. In a couple of years, the housing inventory will
| make even that metric irrelevant, but the price of
| housing will still be going up.
|
| > The solution is to remove the very much existent
| density and other supply restrictions
|
| Nope. The solution is the opposite: preserve the SFH at
| all costs and shut down the misery caucus. Build new
| cities, not new density. Create jobs outside of dense
| hellscapes.
|
| Because the reality is that NOT A SINGLE CITY has lowered
| the housing sale prices by increasing the density of
| existing areas. Not a single one in the US, Europe, or
| Japan.
| rurp wrote:
| Perhaps economic issues at the scale of a modern country
| can be more complicated than would be covered by an econ
| 101 lesson.
| drdec wrote:
| > why is college getting expensive
|
| Because of government subsidies. (If you were willing to
| pay $100k for college and the government will give you
| $50k, now the college can charge $150k. Yes that's
| simplistic but it's the crux.)
|
| > healthcare getting expensive
|
| Healthcare is doubly removed from price feedbacks -
| patients don't pay for doctors, insurance companies do.
| Patients don't even pay for insurance, employers do.
|
| Not too mention that the number of new doctors in the US
| is artificially constrained.
|
| > day care getting expensive
|
| can't help you on this one
|
| > streaming services getting expensive
|
| Streaming services started out undercutting cable prices.
| That's no longer necessary so the price is stabilizing.
| Plus now they are expected to produce their own content.
|
| Expecting everything to have the same root cause is
| unrealistic.
| wisty wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
|
| > In economics, the Baumol effect, also known as Baumol's
| cost disease, first described by William J. Baumol and
| William G. Bowen in the 1960s, is the tendency for wages
| in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in
| labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in
| other jobs that did experience high productivity growth.
|
| Stuff that's made in China gets relatively cheap, so
| stuff that's not made in China gets relatively more
| expensive.
| 9rx wrote:
| That is because the internet is what largely has made real
| estate more valuable.
|
| In pre-internet times, people shared real estate. Bars,
| restaurants, church, etc. Their discretionary income went
| into the fees, offerings, etc. to make these places
| comfortable. With the rise of the internet, people started
| preferring to stay home to use the internet. All that
| discretionary income once spent on fuelling those third
| places is now competing for each own's individual domain,
| thus driving up the price where individuals are found.
|
| Two years of COVID exacerbated things because even those
| who still got out of the house from time to time were
| forced to stay home, so what remaining money was still
| funnelling out to activities outside of the home was
| entirely redirected into individual real estate.
| hug wrote:
| The pin that pokes a hole in this theory is that
| commercial rents, at least in my part of the world in an
| expensive city, have risen faster than residential.
| Presumably this wouldn't be the case if those third
| places were in such rapid decline.
|
| Also, I'm pretty tightly involved in the local bar and
| hospitality scene, and most places are doing just fine --
| not _quite_ pre-COVID levels at a number of places, but
| some are busier than ever.
| neutronicus wrote:
| IMO, the internet and residential real estate are
| complements, not substitutes. The less people leave their
| homes, the more they're inclined to pay for bigger, nicer
| ones.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The internet has actively _boosted_ real-estate prices.
| Real estate prices were suppressed pre-internet because
| transaction costs were high and there was nearly zero
| utility of an unoccupied space.
|
| Airbnb, easy and cheap travel, remote work, property
| management firms, remote surveillance and access control,
| etc. And also declining household sizes (many more people
| living alone) which is seemingly a result of
| internet/social media/mobile devices.
| znpy wrote:
| Covid did that, just not in the way we thought.
|
| The thing is, the managerial class is pushing for a return
| to the office, trying to reinstate the former balance.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| yeah i think the internet is helping speculators to
| increase prices. I think they manipulate prices by using
| their market power to increase prices by asking high price
| for example online for 1/3 of their houses so price
| inflates.
|
| in my opinion is the same with every price augmentation in
| the last 20 years. The Internet helped make fake offers
| that drove price high.
|
| snd yes blablabla the invisible hand of the market...
|
| the invisible hand of the markt is if all speculators work
| for the same goal on a market with scarcity they dont
| compete. See prices of Art. its all fake
| aylmao wrote:
| It did affect housing. I remember the great deals one could
| find when remote work was in full swing, and all that was
| said about vacant office, or smaller cities growing at the
| expense of bigger ones.
|
| It was only two years though. An industry can hold off and
| fight back in that time.
| adverbly wrote:
| It's shocking how often the answer to real estate issues is
| "land value tax would fix this!"
| some_random wrote:
| I'll bite, how would land value tax fix raves not being
| profitable enough to afford their venues? It seems to me
| like it make things worse.
| owisd wrote:
| The theory is that (a) the tax would be paid by the
| property owner and not the venue (it is assumed rent
| follows an econ 102 inelastic supply model) and (b)
| property would be less attractive as a store of wealth so
| prices would drop.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Seems like that would _guarantee_ that only the most
| profitable uses of a given property would be contemplated
| by the owner.
| permo-w wrote:
| exactly, so those people who own an old empty warehouse,
| a large basement, or whatever, now have a huge incentive
| to find uses for them. or they have to sell them which
| pushes prices down for everything
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| But what good does it do to push prices down, if even
| more money has to be paid in taxes for as long as they
| own the property?
| permo-w wrote:
| lower value, lower tax. lower value, lower rent.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Sorry, but a "land value tax" is one of the worst political
| propositions I've ever heard. This is a great way to
| further erode the middle class, ensure that owning is
| always prohibitively out-of-reach for anyone born after
| 1980, and to promote corporate consolidation of land by
| BlackRock and other corporations.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| I assume the parent comment proposes land value tax as a
| replacement for existing property tax schemes. In other
| words, instead of taxing the value of the land + whatever
| is built on it (current system in most parts of the
| world), you only tax based on the value of the land,
| regardless of what is built. Such a system would
| incentivize using the land as efficiently as possible, as
| that part is not taxed.
|
| If you have prime real estate in the center of a city but
| that is undeveloped, currently developing it increases
| your tax. In a land value tax system, that land would
| presumably be taxed higher, but tax would not increase if
| it is developed, therefore incentivizing the owner to
| actually use it.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| So what happens when someone owns land, and then has a
| bunch of neighborhoods and developments pop up around
| them? I know a lot of poorer people who bought their home
| when the area wasn't developed, only for things to spring
| up around them. That would increase their land value,
| sure, but also their tax, and I don't think that's fair.
|
| It feels like a way to force these people out of the
| towns and family homes they've grown up in, in favor of
| some rich guy or corporation. They can be strong-armed
| out by increasing their property value around them past a
| point they can afford the taxes.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| More like "How come the younger generations aren't doing <Fun
| thing>?"
|
| Because they can't afford it.
|
| Also my belief is that people don't do anything anymore
| because nobody gets really bored anymore. Boredom is a
| powerful motivator to make plans, set up clubs, find
| interests, meet people etc.
|
| Now you just swipe through instagram for a few minutes and
| boom, no more boredom.
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't buy it.
|
| Going to a club is cheap, in most you only pay for drinks
| which a bit more expensive than in a pub, but it's not
| breaking the bank.
|
| Here in Italy you can go to a club and spend less than
| 10EURs for the night if you don't have to eat.
|
| I'll say what the issue with clubs are: plenty of people
| never got there to have fun but to meet people and get
| laid. Now dating apps have removed the need for youth to go
| to clubs.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| Obviously we live in different places, but I finished uni
| in Canada not too long ago and going to the club during
| uni was expensive. There was often a cover, if you want
| drinks at the bar, they'll be like 10-15$ each, if you
| drink at home, it's much cheaper. So usually we'd pre and
| then make our way to the club. But often , we'd get a
| little too drunk/high at home or enjoy one another's
| company enough that we never made it to the bar! Or if
| the idea was to meet new people there were often house
| parties where they played music, people were dancing etc
| anyway, they were free, didn't require lining up/id
| checks and often enough we're close enough to where we
| lived that walking home would've been easy.
| SamBam wrote:
| Right, but rave culture used to be the antithesis of
| cover prices and fancy drinks. Rave culture was very much
| the domain of the transient, the semi-homeless, the youth
| that had left their parents houses without much money.
| (Plus some trust-fund kids of course, but they really
| weren't the majority.)
|
| So "can't afford it" isn't an explanation for the decline
| in rave culture, even if it might be a reason kids don't
| go out to clubs today.
| listenallyall wrote:
| > rave culture used to be the antithesis of cover prices
| and fancy drinks...the domain of the transient, the semi-
| homeless, the youth that had left their parents houses
| without much money
|
| And before that, it was grunge rock. But now, check out
| the prices for Pearl Jam tickets!
| veunes wrote:
| Boredom might've been underrated all along.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _It 's shocking how often the answer to "How come X
| changed?" is either the creation of the internet or the cost
| of real estate._
|
| Why is it shocking? The Internet is the current Big Thing
| that's upending everything the way previous Big Things (steam
| engine, movable type, etc) did. And real estate prices are
| one of the central coordination mechanisms for arranging
| things in the physical world.
| brabel wrote:
| When my mom was teen, she says the way they had the most fun
| was to go to dancing parties in people's houses and sometimes
| in some special venue for younger people. That was in the
| 60's. As I grew up in the 80's we had nothing like that, we
| just went to night clubs or some street full of
| bars/restaurants. Dancing was mostly a thing you did by
| yourself, like in most night clubs still these days, not like
| she describes, with "their faces touching" :D.
|
| It seems to me that every single generation changed and there
| needs not be an external reason for that other than young
| people wanting to do things the way they see fit, which
| normally is anything different from what their parents see as
| ideal.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Imho, the internet / mobile apps have drastically atrophied
| younger generations' face-to-face social interaction
| skills.
|
| And specifically their appetite for the risk/discomfort
| that goes along with living in realtime physical moments
| with other people.
|
| Human beings are awkward as hell, but that's what laughter
| and tolerance are the bridges for.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Every instinct I have agrees with you.
|
| Yet I can't help but wonder if people also said the same
| about the telephone (which enabled socialization without
| colocation) and television (Which enabled entertainment
| as a passive indirect consumption)
|
| I realize of course that the internet, and mobile (and
| eventually VR/AR) is Yet Another Step Further.
|
| But...like every step does it not also come with benefits
| for some at the expense of others?
|
| For example, I simply can't believe that true extraverts
| are simply going to be resigned to giving up all these
| physical moments - they will continue to seek out and
| create and participate in-person spaces.
|
| To me, the problem is less about the way that we do or do
| not socialize, and rather the monumentally addictive
| nature of online and app spaces, and the fact that the
| companies in charge of them have no other motivation at
| his point it seems than to just push it all to the limit.
|
| Our feeble caveman brains cannot handle the dopamine
| roulette that is the TikTok/Instagram/Twitter feed. We
| have no immunity to it, so the only solution is
| artificial restrictions like screentime. Then again,
| we've had to reckon with that with plentiful calories too
| as we trended towards universal obesity and have STARTED
| to turn it around (but not succeeded yet). And that took
| decades.
|
| Every generation struggled with something. Our
| grandparents were choked by smog. Our parents had
| polluted waterways and lead in everything. We are
| engulfed in microplastics and addictive technology. Our
| children will wreckon with the effects of climate change.
|
| Through all this, humanity continues to grow, invent new
| technology, and raise both the floor for existence and
| the ceiling for prosperity.
|
| The worst thing we can do now is to give up on the next
| generation or on the future of humanity. Optimism is our
| obligation and responsibility.
| holtkam2 wrote:
| Thank you for this post! I get too pessimistic sometimes
| but this helped me see things from a different
| perspective today. Kudos.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > and television (Which enabled entertainment as a
| passive indirect consumption)
|
| Absolutely. There were periods of time in history when
| there was significant opposition to television. Hence the
| coining of terms like "boob tube", "idiot box", "idiot's
| lantern", "cultural wasteland", etc. You can see a bit
| more of some of that (although not with a primarily
| historical focus) here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_aspects_of_televisio
| n#N...
|
| EDIT:
|
| For yet more on this topic:
|
| https://behavioralscientist.org/history-panic-
| entertainment-...
|
| https://20thcenturyhistorysongbook.com/song-book/the-
| fifties...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elim
| ina...
| troutwine wrote:
| Also:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
| zetalyrae wrote:
| And they were right. Television created nothing of value.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It broke movie studios as gatekeepers for mass
| distribution.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Agreed. Nihilism and fatalism are both cowardly.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| They are integral to capitalism, because those are the
| essential outcomes of almost all game theory.
|
| Because the principle of capitalism that shall not be
| said d is that the value of a human life is zero
|
| ... The second unspoken principle of capitalism is that
| the environment is worth zero
|
| Finally, the third is that the human race is worth zero
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _if people also said the same about the telephone [...]
| and television_
|
| I'd say they were probably right. Pre-solo-consumptive
| technology, people on average were better socialized.
|
| It's inherent in the nature of improved consumptive and
| interactive experiences to smooth off the pain points.
|
| Unfortunately many of those same pain points are also
| intrinsic to realworld, realtime interaction. And doing
| them more proficiently is a skill that one can learn and
| improve (or not).
| Earw0rm wrote:
| And alcohol.
| znpy wrote:
| > And specifically their appetite for the risk/discomfort
| that goes along with living in realtime physical moments
| with other people.
|
| The risk/discomfort lasted just that night. Nowadays
| everyone is posting everything everywhere. No wonder
| youngsters don't want to risk it.
|
| This is a form of social cooling in my opinion.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| When Facebook first took off, I had an inkling radical
| transparency was going to be a societal outcome.
|
| With everyone posting everything, and everyone's digital
| history recorded (if anyone cares to archive or dig it
| up), everyone would have skeletons in their closet.
|
| I was hoping that would make society more tolerant and
| willing to accept faults in people.
|
| In actuality, it just seems to have produced an industry
| of digital cleaners that the wealthy can afford, while
| everyone else gets fucked.
|
| But then, that's why I limit my posting on social media
| outside of HN.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This seems like way too complex an explanation when a
| much simpler alternative is possible.
|
| Most people are simply not that virtuous, because by
| definition the vast majority of the population has to
| have mediocre virtues or be in that ballpark range.
|
| So 'radical transparency' reveals as much negative as
| positive, on average.
| sitharus wrote:
| There's an unspoken phrase here, it's "in the way I think
| it should be done".
|
| Just because the younger generation are doing things
| differently it doesn't make them wrong, in my generation
| it was sending text messages that was wrong because we
| weren't talking on the phone. Before that it was talking
| on the phone rather than going to people's houses.
|
| I'll also add what my psychologist told me.
|
| Social skills aren't innate in humans, we have to be
| taught them. Smaller family sizes and greater distances
| from extended family mean these aren't taught by older
| siblings/cousins/etc like the used to and parents aren't
| filling the gap, which means standards of social
| interaction are changing much more rapidly.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Boomers basically pulled up the social ladder of fun when
| it wasn't convenient to them anymore.
|
| Technology combined with oligarchy is really leading to a
| demographic and social disaster. I think the iron placenta
| and designer babies are the only things that will prevent
| population collapse. Well, age extension will probably kick
| in too.
|
| It's a race between us killing the worlds biosphere and us
| fading away to nothingness right now. I think there's
| plenty of population momentum to kill off the planet
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Since people keep trying to draw the connection, I'll try my
| hand.
|
| The Internet is the most recent technology that is enabled a
| small number of individuals to become vastly wealthy
| alongside, of course, a certain lax style of government. As
| wealth inequality increases, more of the money in the economy
| becomes tied up in wealthy people's investments and savings,
| which inflates asset prices.
| dnissley wrote:
| This is the housing theory of everything
| UltraSane wrote:
| Seems like rent is so high in big cities that so many
| businesses are no longer possible.
|
| I think one solution to lower rent is a rule that for every
| month a rental property is vacant its book value declines by 10
| times the rent.
| post-it wrote:
| > I think one solution to lower rent is a rule that for every
| month a rental property is vacant its book value declines by
| 10 times the rent.
|
| Wouldn't that just lower its property tax, thereby making it
| more profitable for owners to leave venues unrented (compared
| to the status quo)?
| UltraSane wrote:
| Right now commercial real estate owners are incentivized to
| never lower rent even if a property is vacant for a long
| time because the book value of the property is tied to its
| rental rate even if it is vacant.
| gosub100 wrote:
| My fantasy solution is that ALL businesses near expensive
| areas must pay a minimum wage high enough to rent a place (or
| a room) there.
|
| If the barista must be paid $109k to afford to live there,
| then let Starbucks jack the price of a plain black coffee to
| $17 for a small. Fewer people will be willing to pay this,
| Starbucks will go out of business and virtually nothing will
| fill its place. Suddenly these multimillion dollar homes will
| be in barren wastelands and, gee, maybe they won't be worth
| so much anymore. A softer solution is to pay the low wage
| workers from the time they leave the front door, if the wages
| are insufficient to live nearby.
| UltraSane wrote:
| I've had the same idea. 1 week of after tax wages must be
| enough to pay 1 month's rent within x miles on a y sq ft
| apartment.
|
| And people should be paid for commuting. Unpaid commutes to
| work are a huge hidden subsidy for businesses. They use tax
| funded roads to allow workers to live farther away in
| cheaper locations and don't have to compensate them for the
| time needed to get to their jobs.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Exactly, let the business owners argue with the landlords
| instead of the tenants. This existing system just forces
| the dirty work on the weakest and most vulnerable person
| in the chain: the employee/tenant. Let the two powerful
| stakeholders battle it out.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Not sure I understand - is your goal to live in a barren
| wasteland? Because you can do that today, very cheaply.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Sort of. In the US if you don't have running water and
| power soon enough the teacher or some 'concerned citizen'
| will rat you to CPS and get your kids taken or at least
| badly hassled. As soon as you connect to water or power
| the grips of regulation force you into an expensive
| treadmill.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| My guess is: the pandemic and online dating.
| CalChris wrote:
| The pandemic killed off a lot of social structures. The
| casual carpool going from various East Bay locations to
| downtown San Francisco is gone. The reward for the driver
| picking people up (express lane, lower toll) is the same. The
| people are largely the same. But the institution didn't
| magically restart after COVID.
| post-it wrote:
| > Tier 1 city RE prices have made live entertainment venues
| harder to run profitably.
|
| Which, in turn, makes events that _do_ happen more expensive,
| decreasing turnout. If there 's a Friday night event for CA$15
| with CA$5 drinks, I'm much more likely to go than if it costs
| CA$50 with CA$15 drinks.
| dehrmann wrote:
| And that makes the city less desirable, so fewer people live
| there, and RE prices find an equilibrium.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| No, it makes it more desirable for older people who don't
| want raves down the block, and who also have more money,
| increasing the RE prices. The average age goes up, the
| number of interesting energetic people goes down, and the
| city becomes a cultural desert with high RE prices. Yes,
| that's an equilibrium, but Adam Smith's invisible hand just
| gave you a shitty city and undercut cultural innovation.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| not when the majority of real estate is being bought by
| investors just looking for a place to throw money
| regardless of price. That's the main issue in Canada and in
| tier 1 cities in the US. The people owning the RE don't
| live there
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Tier 1 city RE prices have made live entertainment venues
| harder to run profitably.
|
| Abandoned warehouses and other commercial building you could
| host a rave were once plenty in NYC. No more. Hell when I was a
| kid there were three abandoned factory buildings in my
| neighborhood we'd break into and become our "club house" in
| grade school. You just had to watch for squatters and neighbors
| calling the cops. Now you're lucky if there are even lots
| around - most have been built on already.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The craziest thing happened this NYE. I live in the country,
| more or less Bay Area, at the end of a long (2-3mi) dead end
| road. My neighbor's house is empty and posted for sale.
| Someone broke in and threw a rave there. The party was
| advertised online and they were selling tickets:
|
| https://monosnap.com/direct/YxtOr5VARRXTAIr2Ej9ae5KCjAjRfn
|
| The owners (who live across the street) confronted them
| immediately. Bouncers dressed in "security" shirts forced
| them away. It took 1.5 hours for the sheriffs to show up.
|
| The whole neighborhood is traumatized.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Sounds like a house party. Though I guess it could be a
| rave as well, just a small one. Better than squatters I
| guess.
| harvodex wrote:
| Exactly. All the places I went to 30 years ago for a rave are
| now nice areas.
|
| Someone would call the cops for the amount of noise now
| before the party even started.
|
| Then factor in fentanyl.
|
| Maybe most of all though, in the mid 90s electronic music was
| a new thing in the US.
|
| The first rave I went to , I really didn't even know what I
| was going to. The reason I stopped going was the novelty had
| completely worn off. Amazing times but the falloff was rather
| steep.
| grahamj wrote:
| I would add that ravers grew up. Kids don't want to do what
| their parents did.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I was going to say "when I was a kid, raves happened out in the
| woods where there is no real estate cost", but then I realized
| the lack of socializing or risky behaviours pretty much
| eliminates this form of partying today, haha. It's also
| impossible for kids living in most population centres. I guess
| it was just a weird rural-kid thing here in Western Canada.
|
| I wasn't a raver but I went to a couple, and wow, what a time.
| There's nothing quite like the smell of a diesel generator and
| the sound of earth-shaking bass surrounded by dancing zombies
| inventing dance moves on each beat, deep in a pacific north
| west forest. I had a few of friends who were into that scene.
| drowntoge wrote:
| Gen[?]Z here, and that does sound like the best party ever.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| These parties existed in England in the late 2000s. I went to
| a few, and they usually resembled a zombie apocalypse.
|
| No idea what the UK rave scene is like these days.
| schlch wrote:
| These kind of parties are still happening. At least in Europe
| this is still a thing.
|
| I'm in my thirties and have been involved with these kind of
| parties for at least ten years.
|
| A general trend that I have been observing for years though
| is what usually is being referred to as ,,TikTok Guys". This
| involves guys and girls in their early twenties wearing
| fetish outfits and doing lots of drugs.
|
| I don't care about people coming in fetish outfits to our
| parties but I don't want some young guy overdose on one our
| parties. In practice this means that we have been much more
| careful about who knows when and where a party is happening.
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| I actually think those are not the main factors. What really
| happened was for the first time in history, there was
| competition on how you could talk and "hang" with friends.
| Mobile phones and then social media made it so people would go
| out, then check their phones, socials and not even be present
| there and then ultimately the next time theyd opt-to to stay
| home and do what they were gonna do at the club at home.
|
| This seems like mostly a case of competition for activity than
| anything.
| randomopining wrote:
| This is it. The phone scrolling has become so addicting that
| people just go on their phones. And audio quality. You can
| enjoy the music sometimes at better quality in your own home
| and scrolling all the same.
| hinkley wrote:
| Narcotics and alcohol use is also down in this generation, and
| I wonder if that's the risky behavior aspect vs marijuana
| legalization. I'd like to see a study that broke down by state
| to see if there's any correlation there.
|
| The forbidden fruit is sweetest. If you can go get THC gummies
| whenever then you don't need to grab whatever is available
| right now.
|
| But I think too that Covid is a huge problem. Rave age now is
| people who were at a delicate phase of interpersonal
| development five years ago. And just hanging out in crowded
| places is now risky behavior.
|
| Living in a world freshly built to cater specifically to them
| did strange things to Baby Boomer's heads. COVID is going to do
| something equally bad to GenZ (and A) in more or less the
| opposite direction and I worry what it will be.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| the best raves these days have great anti-phone measures: -
| stickers on cameras - you can't even take your phone out of
| your pocket on the dance floor
|
| Some places I visited in Berlin even required checking in your
| phone at coat check. These were the best-organized coat checks
| I'd seen in my life.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I think we could say that covid killed a lot of these
| activities (some were already in decline, but covid delivered
| the final blow). GenZ just happened to be coming of age during
| the pandemic years and thus prefers to stay home as they see
| that as normative. Millennials are past the rave stage as
| they're getting into their 40s.
| ghaff wrote:
| I hesitate to write a lot of things off to COVID because, if
| you look at some presentations/papers from early on in the
| pandemic, a lot of things probably changed less than the
| "experts" thought they would. That said, I also see various
| things that were on a downward trajectory or cruising on
| momentum being given a downward shove by COVID.
| Animats wrote:
| A friend who used to run big late-night parties in San
| Francisco said the big change started after the 2008
| recession. Many of the twentysomethings who were laid off
| left town, and the ones who remained were working longer
| hours.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I was on the scene in the Bay Area in the 2000s. I went
| to warehouse parties and secret raves that required
| calling a number to find out where to get picked up to
| keep the location secret. It was vibrant and a lot of
| fun.
|
| There were at least two sites that I knew of for keeping
| track of parties (bayraves.com was one, I don't recall
| the other). The scene was dying at the same time that I
| was aging out, but I sure miss it.
|
| When I lived in the Midwest, the scene died when ecstasy
| became a known quantity in mainstream news media. The
| last rave that I went to (there) was loaded with a
| million cops. An org that offered free testing for purity
| / adulterants was told they'd be arrested for testing any
| pills. What a backward and unhelpful position to take
| when people may be at risk of an OD. Ecstasy was still
| generally clean at the time. I'd be afraid to take an
| unknown pill today, what with fentanyl and the like.
| leptons wrote:
| My wife, who has been a raver since the 90's, is
| currently out collecting free Narcan doses to deliver to
| people throwing raves in Southern California. Party
| organizers need to really step up and have Narcan on
| hand, but most don't.
| Neywiny wrote:
| As a Gen Z who was a shut in long before COVID, I disagree. I
| knew plenty of people who loved going out before, during, and
| after lockdown. I'd guess only a fraction of people who liked
| going out before found the joy of staying home. But likewise
| I'm sure there were some who found it miserable at home and
| after lockdown vowed to be more outgoing.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _In the 90s /00s my consumption of electronic music was mp3
| downloads of BBC late night recordings._
|
| 'This. is. Radio. One. Essential... Essential...'
| steveBK123 wrote:
| That's right
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| chills
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| none of these seem to resonate based on what I see anecdotally
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm a millennial (38) who never participated in the "risky
| behaviour" that is raving, clubbing, hooking up, etc.
|
| What I _do_ do though is travel for swing dance events [1],
| which often involves live music, bluesy late night parties,
| etc. I also have friends who do similar for salsa dancing and
| board game / anime / nerd conventions. So I wonder if part of
| this is that "staying up late doing fun thing with semi-
| strangers" has expanded to more domains than freestyle dancing
| to electronic music?
|
| [1]: eg https://dclx.org/ https://www.instagram.com/bal_moment/
| https://www.balweek.com/about
| bradlys wrote:
| Swing dance is down overall compared to ten+ years ago in NA.
| There are way less events. The events don't go as late
| either. It used to be that almost every event would go to
| 5am. The crowd at these events is much older now too. It used
| to be primarily under 30 and now it's well over 30.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Losing all the campus clubs for two years really impacted
| things, and I think there was also a big loss in mid-sized
| events, but hopefully things do still continue to recover.
| Certainly there is still loads of enthusiasm, especially in
| the Balboa world, where the flow aesthetics and high skill
| ceiling really appeal to obsessive types.
| technotarek wrote:
| RE prices were zero in my rave days :
| https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-hawtin
| brabel wrote:
| Exactly. People used to organize stuff in the middle of some
| forest and miraculously hundreds of people showed up.
| racl101 wrote:
| > And finally electronic music of various forms used to be a
| niche, and now it's mainstream.
|
| I think this is definitely the biggest reason.
|
| The average YouTube video probably has serious electronic music
| going for it.
|
| Back in the '80s and '90s you felt rebellious listening to that
| stuff. Now it's so common it borders on proverbial.
|
| I'd probably go to a public venue that plays 90s and 2000s
| electronic music but for me it would be the equivalent of my
| boomer mom going to a Fleetwood Mac concert in the '90s. Just
| more nostalgia than a desire to relive the rave days. There's
| no way I could dance the way I used to in the '90s. There would
| need to be seating there for my old Xennial butt.
| lemax wrote:
| There is still a vast web of international niche electronic
| music scenes and artists, and elements of electronic music as
| well as the instruments used to produce it have been used in
| popular music for many decades (Donna Summer, 80s new wave
| bands, Madonna, etc).
| veunes wrote:
| It's wild to think how much smartphones and social media have
| changed things...
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Late night raves might be in the decline but day raves are
| increasing in popularity.
|
| I think the biggest factor for the decline of night raves is
| just that people are more health conscious and night raves
| takes a lot of toll on the body.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Online dating.
|
| I guarantee that only about one in five male clubbers were
| truly "only there for the music". Maybe fewer than that.
|
| Women went along with it because, well, what was the
| alternative, and the contemporary culture encouraged it.
|
| Online dating has its problems, certainly, but the risks people
| took in the 70s, 80s, 90s were kind of insane by today's
| standards. And also the amount of unwanted attention women had
| to put up with. Sure, some of the attention was wanted, but
| surely not most of it.
| stefankorun wrote:
| The risks are called living your life - there is a inherent
| risk with traveling, hiking, wandering around as a kid, and
| almost any activity outside of staring at a screen.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| I said by today's standards.. women going home with some
| random guy without anyone even having a phone number for
| them. No mobiles, no net, no nothing.
|
| And in most cases that worked out fine, but today people
| would think it insane to even suggest that.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The enormous amount of fear that has been injected into
| society, seemingly permanently, disguised as "safety"
| (i.e. framing a negative as a positive) is one of, or
| perhaps THE, the most detrimental factors to the health
| of that society, and is actively harming the development
| of people growing up within it.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| That's for a few reasons.
|
| 999 good or OK outcomes and 1 bad one can still be
| overall pretty damn bad, when scaled up to the level of a
| society. It becomes a Something Must Be Done scenario
| pretty quick.
|
| And I suspect in this specific case, the ratio of bad
| experiences.. maybe not terrible, but just bad.. was a
| lot higher than 1 in 1000.
|
| I mean, the flip side of that is, going home with a
| stranger in a big city is pretty much a total historical
| anomaly before the 60s sexual revolution (because of
| smaller communities as well as more conservative sexual
| attitudes), maybe some of it is just the pendulum
| swinging back.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Life is much safer now so mundane relative risks look
| much worse. When illness or famine lurks a every corner,
| no one is questioning a kid venturing 3 miles on his bike
| to buy mom a pack of smokes and buy himself some Cracker
| Jacks. Now you're considered Satan if you allow that and
| some prosecutor will ramble about predators and
| kidnapping at your trial.
| snek_case wrote:
| Having been to raves, another issue you run into if you go
| there to meet people is that the kind of people who will hook
| up at raves probably don't want anything serious. It's a
| super hedonistic environment. If you want more than a one
| night stand any other form of dating is better.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Yes - sitting at home and looking for companionship on an
| app is better than leaving the house, interacting with
| other people, dancing, laughing, singing, making lifelong
| memories ::eyeroll::
| kbr- wrote:
| Poor women, dressing up to get attention and then getting
| attention.
| leptons wrote:
| >I guarantee that only about one in five male clubbers were
| truly "only there for the music". Maybe fewer than that.
|
| Clubs aren't really raves though. Yes, most single people
| going to clubs are looking to hook up - all a "club" really
| is, is a bar with a DJ. A real rave typically doesn't even
| sell alcohol. But I'd wager that most single people going to
| actual raves (in warehouses or outdoors) are either too high
| to even think about hooking up, or really are there for the
| music and to dance - at least through the 1990's and early
| 2000s. I'm in the latter group, I'm a guy who went to raves
| (in warehouses and outdoors) for the music, as did everyone
| else I knew. Nobody was _trying to hook up_ , it was
| definitely about getting our dance on.
| rurp wrote:
| > Mobile internet & smartphones seem to be killing all forms of
| live in person interaction.
|
| Right, most types of social gatherings have decreased over the
| past 15 years. Events that haven't fallen off are the
| noteworthy ones.
| leptons wrote:
| The quality of today's electronic music has gone way down too,
| it's just not really appealing at all. My wife who was very
| much a raver in the 90's calls the new music "alarm clock
| sounds" - something designed to annoy instead of make you
| dance. It's just so abrasive and lacking any funkiness or
| danceability at all. It's no wonder kids these days are turning
| towards other forms of entertainment. My niece who is her early
| 20s is into Pearl Jam. At least their music has some kind of
| soul to it.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > GenZ studies have found a lower participation in "risky
| behavior" which late night clubbing may or not be considered.
|
| I think they just do different risk-taking behavior. Sports
| betting seems way more prevalent, and Gamblers Anonymous is
| reporting way more younger people attending meetings.
| kstrauser wrote:
| One big change is that they got better and much more organized. I
| go to an annual event with a few hundred of my friends and
| family. We rent a lodge in a national forest, set up an enormous
| sound system, and dance for 3 days around some very confused
| deer. There are food trucks and coffee bars and dozens of
| portapotties scattered around, plus daytime poolside sets while
| we swim around and listen to 100dB house.
|
| We grayvers still like to have fun, just more comfortably. We
| have work next week, you know.
| FiberBundle wrote:
| A yeah the deer are just confused, no need to worry. Keep
| partying!
| pimeys wrote:
| We did that same thing for ten years in a row. Especially fun
| when some catastrophe happens, like a lightning strike to the
| house when everybody's in the garden, breaking all fuses, water
| pump etc. Remember we had probably three years without some
| crazy accident. Nobody got killed though, so all good.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, good ol' type 2 fun, where afterward someone can sell
| "ride the lightning" tshirts as a fundraiser.
| polairscience wrote:
| Where's my invite?
| latchkey wrote:
| > One big change is that they got better and much more
| organized.
|
| If I'm thinking of the same groups you're mentioning, they were
| already super organized. Mostly because they've been going for
| decades now.
| kstrauser wrote:
| If you're thinking of groups, plural, then you probably know
| the ones I mean. And yeah, I wear the 20th anniversary tank
| top to the gym.
| grahamj wrote:
| lol @ grayvers
|
| I left it all behind years ago but your event sounds awesome.
| Glad some people still keep the vibe alive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Honestly, you won't find me on the dance floor. I'll be
| meandering around listening to the music I love at seismic
| sound levels, looking at the art exhibits people set up, and
| chilling with my friends. I just want to soak up the vibes
| and love everyone and the world for a few days, not dance
| myself to exhaustion.
| leptons wrote:
| Are you me? lol. I'm in SoCal though, and we still do our
| own family-style desert parties and we sometimes go to
| bigger desert parties (Moontribe still going strong), and
| sometimes go to the mountains in the central valley too.
| Slinky (which was near Fresno) was so much fun until it
| ended recently after 21 years :( My friend group doesn't
| have anything in the mountains quite like Slinky to replace
| it, but it sounds like you keep your invite list small, and
| for good reasons I know.
|
| My wife still dances all-out, and she goes every weekend to
| see Doc or Farina or DJ Dan or whoever is in town. She
| can't live without getting sweaty from dancing, and I
| admire her for it especially as we're getting older - I'm
| in my 50s now, my knees are not what they used to be.
|
| Have you seen the recently released documentary about
| Wicked Soundsystem? I'm guessing you're probably familiar
| with those guys. We saw it in a theater in LA and then went
| to the after party, it brought back so many memories.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| California is a last bastion of sorts socially, because
| los Angeles is an extrovert magnet.
|
| Ironically to the north, an opposite social civilization
| has attracted all the introverted people.
|
| Entertainment must extrovert to gain eyeballs, but it
| uses the technology of the introverts to do so.
|
| But underlying this ironic alliance is a force that cares
| not for the social polarity, it simply will
| nihilistically predate on both spheres to produce the
| maximal profit while eating away at the fabric of a
| functioning society.
|
| The matrix really is the endgame goal: pods plugged into
| a VR machine. The matrix struggled with plausible
| explanations for why the machines kept humans in that
| state, and the endgame of capitalism likewise has no
| solution how the world would function at the end of its
| road.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| In Oakland we still have plenty of renegades!
| kstrauser wrote:
| Hey, neighbor. You sure do, and I'm happier for it!
| nipponese wrote:
| can i get on the list?
| karlgkk wrote:
| Foopee and 19hz
|
| Start going to shows and look for fliers
|
| Also check out spaz parties.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Where do you live?
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm in NorCal near Oakland.
| flocciput wrote:
| How much does it cost (not to organize, but for someone to
| attend)?
| kstrauser wrote:
| There's a wide range, but the specific one I described is
| around $200 for a 3 day weekend.
| guynamedloren wrote:
| I'm confused. You say that you "go to" an annual event, but
| then you describe it at a massive private festival that you're
| self organizing. Which is it?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
| karlgkk wrote:
| As someone who does something similar, it's easily both
| mschuster91 wrote:
| At least here in Germany, NIMBYs and their foot-soldiers aka team
| 1312 is very much to blame, next to gentrification.
|
| Clubs in cities that have existed for decades get yeeted out of
| their rental contracts as there is no renter protection for
| commercial rental contracts - once it expires or gets terminated
| under the provisions of the contract (usually because some
| hipster shithole is willing to pay even more money), that's it.
| Others lose their license because people moving from the
| countryside can't cope with the noise and call the police all the
| time.
|
| Clubs in rural areas almost don't exist anymore because of rural
| flight eliminating a lot of the customer base and what remains
| gets taken off the road by DUI enforcement.
|
| That leaves illegal outdoor raves, and team 1312 has been
| aggressively beating down on these even over a decade ago when I
| was the tech guy for a local rave group. It's not made easier by
| the fact that there will always be some dumbasses dragging their
| minor siblings with them and other people not caring whom they
| sell MDMA and whatnot to, so you'll inevitably get into trouble
| for that as well.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Such an interesting mystery. Who killed the rave? In Berlin
| especially, a very interesting subject.
|
| I don't think we can ever really know. It's complex and
| multifaceted.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| It's probably the same mechanism that relegated the sock hop to a
| rare anachronism.
|
| I don't have a subscription to ft.com.
|
| Is it "tastes change" or a sexier and clickbaitier mound of
| bullshit?
| lelandfe wrote:
| https://archive.is/ul4Ui
|
| Quoting the bits that take stabs at explaining it:
|
| > _[Night-time consultancy co-founder] Leichsenring said venue
| owners were often closing their doors earlier to save on costs,
| as revenue from drink sales tended to drop off in the early
| morning hours._
|
| > _More restrictive licensing rules after Covid-19 have also
| become an issue for clubs and promoters in cities across the
| globe_
|
| > _The increased popularity of daytime events and festivals is
| another factor_
|
| > _One executive in the entertainment industry said younger
| people were less inclined to go out raving until 6am as they
| were more health conscious and less frivolous with money than
| previous generations_
| snakeyjake wrote:
| 1 makes sense, somewhat.
|
| 2 sounds like a bunch of bullshit. WHICH more restrictive
| licensing rules? WHERE were the rules made, everywhere? There
| are no new rules where I live. HOW did these mythical rules
| impact things? WHAT the fuck is this guy talking about?
|
| 3 and 4 are: tastes change. People don't like sock hops
| anymore the same way they don't like raves anymore.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I remember the night when I knew clubbing (perhaps not raves per
| se) died.
|
| Blackbird Ordinary, Miami. July 4th weekend.
|
| Normal clubby kind of night. Then in comes a dude in _bright
| ridiculous_ Uncle Sam gear, sparklers and all, making a spectacle
| of himself. All the phones come out.
|
| Sigh. This is not the point of clubs/bars. You're mostly not
| supposed to be "seen" and certainly not like that.
| quchen wrote:
| Putting stickers onto phones, kicking out violators and
| fostering a culture around that does miracles to that kind of
| behavior. Once a majority enjoyes the moment and is very openly
| pissed off by any kind of filming we go back to being
| ourselves.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't been to a club in a long time, but I am quite confident
| that if there's a hell for me, it's being forced to be in a
| club+rave for eternity.
|
| I've never done any kind of "party drug" [1], and I think that
| party drugs have to be a requirement for me to enjoy something
| like that (at least for someone as awkward as me). Repetitive
| music that's so loud it hurts, not being able to talk to people,
| close contact to strangers of questionable hygiene; it's hard for
| me to even imagine how _anyone_ could enjoy it.
|
| I suspect that there are a lot of people like me who are finally
| being honest with themselves and acknowledging that they don't
| actually enjoy the entire club scene. Obviously if _you_ like it,
| don 't let me take it away from you, but one of the best parts of
| reaching age 30 for me was that no one expects or wants me to go
| to a club with them now.
|
| [1] The only "recreational drugs" I've ever done are alcohol and
| caffeine, and I haven't had alcohol in quite awhile.
| Vampiero wrote:
| Yeah no wonder you don't like raves. You might be the first
| person who went to one without taking drugs. Same for clubs
| tbh. That kind of music is made by people on particular drugs
| and it's meant to be listened to by people on those same drugs.
| And dancing is just a way to shake off the stimulants.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm honestly just a coward; I have no idea what's actually in
| drugs that people buy on the street, and if I get sick, what
| exactly am I going to do? Sue them?
|
| My dad is an outlier who managed to never have any issues
| thankfully, but there is a pretty strong history of addiction
| (mostly alcoholism, but other stuff too) on my dad's side of
| the family, and as such I've always treated drugs pretty
| cautiously.
| jjulius wrote:
| Howdy! I've been huge into electronic music since I was 12
| (currently 38). Literally fell in love with the music for the
| sake of the music. Started going out at 18, didn't try drugs
| until my mid-20's. Enjoy drugs, sometimes I'll take them, but
| most of the time I'm either sober or just a bit stoned. But
| even the weed isn't a requirement for me. I can be out until
| 5AM, loving the whole experience, because the music is what I
| want.
|
| In fact, I've been absolutely cranking this[1] crazy shit on
| repeat for weeks now and have been sober each time! The
| mixing, the flow, and the leftfield-weirdness of the whole
| thing hits my soul juuuuuuust right.
|
| So, we're out there. Much of the people who regularly support
| the scene are also often sober, or don't regularly party
| hard. Check your preconceived notions and blanket
| generalizations at the door, please, and then try coming out
| to a show. We'd be happy to show you how things actually are.
| :)
|
| [1]https://soundcloud.com/dkmntl/azu-tiwaline-at-
| lentekabinet-2...
| tombert wrote:
| I have friends who really like EDM, and as far as I am
| aware 95+% of the time that they're listening to it they're
| stark-raving sober, so I don't think that being stoned is a
| prerequisite for liking it.
|
| That said, I think that a possible explanation for the
| decline in club popularity is that a lot of people _don 't_
| actually like it unless they're on drugs. Not just the
| music, but the whole club scene. It might be an acquired
| taste, entirely possible, but it's not a taste I ever felt
| the need to acquire.
|
| Not quite apples to apples, but similar, about a year ago I
| realized that I actually don't like living in NYC.
| Moreover, I realized that I _never_ really liked it, and I
| had been trying to convince myself that I did for the last
| decade. I don 't like how expensive it is, I don't like
| going to bars, I don't like hipster art stuff, I _do_ like
| the train, but not having a car is still inconvenient, etc.
| There 's a million things that I know a lot of people in
| NYC really like (and more power to them if they do), but I
| do think that if people were more honest with themselves
| there would be a lot fewer people living in this city.
| jjulius wrote:
| Oh, it's definitely not for everyone. I love most of the
| broad spectrum of electronic music (sans the more
| mainstream "EDM" crap, but I digress...), so my wife gets
| exposed to all kinds of weird, repetitive shit. And she
| can't stand most of it, it makes her very anxious and
| over-stimulated. There's one particular kind of
| electronic music, called Deep House, which is heavily
| rooted in Funk, Soul, Disco and Jazz, that she absolutely
| loves to go out and dance to with me. It's got a four-to-
| the-floor kick, but it's got the soul and sound of the
| other genres I listed, just slightly repetitive.
|
| This[1] is a good example of what that kinda music sounds
| like, he's one of my favorite DJs/producers out there. I
| suspect it might still not be for you, and that's totally
| fine! This shit deeeeeeefinitely isn't for everyone. :)
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYS3OUKKGqc
|
| Edit: And as an aside, I'm with ya on NYC. Every time I
| visited, all of my NYC friends would just regale me, and
| themselves, with stories about finding places to live and
| what they have to deal with living there. I don't
| understand it.
| tombert wrote:
| I've kind of inadvertently gone down a rabbit hole for
| different types of electronic music already, because at a
| previous job the guy who was in charge of playing music
| was really big into it, and he played a pretty broad
| spectrum of stuff.
|
| I liked some stuff more than others, but never really
| clicked with any of it.
|
| Just to be clear, not claiming that the stuff I listen to
| is "objectively" better or anything. 90+% of what I
| listen to is garage-punk stuff like NOFX or Misfits,
| which is its own kind of trash. It's just jived better
| for me (doesn't hurt that I was exposed to it much
| younger).
|
| I don't regret moving to NYC, when I did it was probably
| an economically-ok decision; a lot more high-paying tech
| jobs here than in Dallas (where I lived before), and
| there are parts I still like about it, but there were
| definitely other parts that I was lying to myself about
| for a long time.
|
| Though I will admit, I think a good chunk of that is that
| I've just been here too long. I probably should move... I
| just need to convince my employer to let me go full-
| remote.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I have a similar wife it seems.
| Does not like most EDM, but Downtempo, ambient house &
| deep house she loves to dance to. That with a bit of
| Molly can be a ton of fun.
|
| If you have SiriusXM their Chill station plays this type
| of music.
|
| One of my favorite DJs is Nora En Pure.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_En_Pure
|
| It is amusing to me that she was born after I graduated
| high school.
| grahamj wrote:
| I'll recommend Groove Salad from Soma FM (avail through
| TuneIn) for chill too, great station and no ads
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| For what it's worth -
|
| I enjoy electronic music. I enjoy dancing. I absolutely
| hated the club scene every time I went. All the ones I went
| to were in dark and fairly disgusting venues, where people
| spent hours moving back and forth between sitting around
| getting drunk with music blasting so loud you couldn't have
| a conversation, and awkwardly moving around a crowded dance
| for floor. As the other person said, it was hard to see how
| anyone was actually enjoying the situation, particularly
| considering everyone was paying a good deal of money and
| screwing up their sleep schedule for it.
|
| I can get enjoying electronic music and dancing to it, but
| the club scene always seemed immensely unappealing.
| jjulius wrote:
| Yeah, that's the unfortunate part, the spaces are never
| comfortable and certainly unappealing to a lot of people.
|
| For me personally, I've always found it kinda funny how
| much I love those spaces. I generally have a strong
| dislike of crowds, large masses of people, yadda yadda.
| My primary happy places are at home all cozy with my
| family, and out in the mountains backpacking in the
| wilderness far away from a single soul.
|
| But my third happy place is something akin to a
| dilapidated warehouse or building that is being used as
| an unlicensed venue for incredibly loud, repetitive
| music. The room is packed, with just enough room for
| cutting a rug, there's sweat on the walls, it's pitch
| dark save for a single red light over the DJ booth and
| there's not a snowball's chance in hell that you'll be
| able to chat with the person next to you. You're stepping
| in something wet and sticky, who the fuck knows what's on
| your shoes.
|
| Get the music just right and I'll lose myself in that
| crowd and cathartically dance my ass off all night long.
|
| Edit: I think part of it is that I've always found the
| existence of such underground spaces to be super cool. I
| like to experience things like that that are just below
| the surface of "normal society".
| financetechbro wrote:
| I think it's a fair generalization but from my experience and
| my personal friend group I'd say 1/3 of ravers are on some
| serious mix of substances, 1/3 are keeping it more casual
| with some alcohol and cannabis, and the last 1/3 are as sober
| as can be. It really is a wide spectrum of folks who
| participate in raves
| Aphataeros wrote:
| I actually enjoy the music without taking any drugs, but my
| default state is quite hyperactive. The loud bass, the energy
| of the crowd, the people feeling comfortable and enjoying
| themselves makes me feel energized and allows me to relax and
| dance in an enjoyable anonymity. To your point, when I was
| photographing concerts (&clubs/raves) regularly I did quickly
| realize I'm an outlier, and most people and performers were
| in fact consuming copious amounts of drugs... The least
| enjoyable events were those where everybody was escaping
| something - consuming drugs, over-drinking alcohol,
| destroying property - while the best events had a tight-knit
| community, proper security, pop-up drug labs (
| https://drugfoundation.org.nz/articles/checkit-out ) and most
| importantly a mature audience.
| watwut wrote:
| This is downvoted, but as someone who liked actual dancing
| and did not took drugs except alcohol, it is quite on spot.
| Imo, lower use of stimulants among young and young crowd
| choosing events that start sooner are correlated.
|
| And while we are at it, alcohol use will be correlated to
| dancing itself. It helps to loose inhibitions a lot of us
| just would not overcome without it. Same deal.
| quchen wrote:
| You're both wrong about raves not being great sober, and the
| latent prejudice against "drugs". Source, I went to many
| raves sober, and I work in psycare on them (psychiatric
| ambulance of sorts).
|
| For a festival that's proper shit without drugs, try
| Oktoberfest here in Munich.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| >You might be the first person who went to one without taking
| drugs
|
| I also don't line raves, but that makes me dislike them even
| more. So the point of "raves" is to get drugged while doing
| something you don't enjoy? Would you allow your kids to go to
| one?
|
| Fortunately I think you're exaggregating or your experience
| is an outlier and people actually go there to have fun
| listening to loud music (while sometimes, indeed, using
| drugs).
| nprateem wrote:
| I'd happily hit the dance floor sober for years. But now
| it's too loud and I like my sleep :-). I also don't feel
| the music like I used to either, but damn it was good.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Used to do at least a line of coke before raves but with the
| way fent is laced into everything these days, no more
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, that's what terrifies me now especially. As far as I'm
| aware, "cutting" drugs with other drugs is hardly new, but
| the fact that fentanyl can be made so cheaply and easily and
| added to everything means that all this stuff is a hard-pass
| for me now.
|
| Honestly, I'm in my mid-30's, I think that I'm too old to
| "start" doing this stuff. In a lot of cases (and this is
| still something I'm not 100% used to), people look to me as
| the "grown up" in the room, for better or worse.
| edm0nd wrote:
| On the flipside, it's also easily detected using a test kit
| or test strips you can throw into your pocket.
|
| https://endoverdose.net/
|
| >Honestly, I'm in my mid-30's, I think that I'm too old to
| "start" doing this stuff.
|
| Certainly not, you are still young :)
| tombert wrote:
| I mean, let's suppose I had a guarantee that I have the
| purest coke to ever exist, with no adulterants added,
| straight from the factory...it's still _bad_ for me. I
| probably shouldn 't be ingesting it regardless.
|
| I've been reducing my caffeine intake, and I don't drink
| alcohol. I don't even eat sweets anymore. I'm basically a
| square now; too old to do this stuff.
| grahamj wrote:
| Don't do coke. E on the other hand...
|
| Never too late to find out what a flood of serotonin
| feels like.
| tombert wrote:
| It's probably still bad for me. Again, I'm a square. This
| isn't a judgment for people who enjoy it, but I'm too
| boring for that stuff.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > E on the other hand...
|
| Yeah but don't take pressed pills, take M crystals as
| they are the pure form.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's not that bad.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Get some test kits or test strips.
|
| You can get them for free and/or low cost,
| https://endoverdose.net
| technothrasher wrote:
| > people like me who are finally being honest with themselves
| and acknowledging that they don't actually enjoy the entire
| club scene.
|
| What was it that was keeping you from being honest with
| yourself about that? I figured out pretty quickly that the
| whole club/dance/nightlife scene was just not compatible with
| my particular personality and haven't had any trouble simply
| avoiding it.
| tombert wrote:
| In regards to clubs for me personally, nothing, I was honest
| with myself almost immediately after I went the first time
| and have only gone a few times since then, both times making
| it clear to my friends that I really didn't enjoy it at all.
|
| I have some friends who have stopped going, and while they
| won't come out an admit it, I think _they_ were lying to
| themselves about enjoying it. I kind of got the impression
| that nothing about them "changed" to where they don't enjoy
| it anymore, just that they finally realized that they're not
| "missing something", and that they simply don't enjoy it.
|
| Closest personal analog I can think of: It took me about ten
| years to realize that I don't actually enjoy living in NYC,
| and that I _never_ enjoyed it. I had been trying to convince
| myself that it was fun, and I don 't think I ever actually
| liked living here.
|
| ETA:
|
| I forgot to actually state my main point.
|
| I think a lot of people _want_ to like going to clubs,
| because their friends say they like going. I have some
| friends that I think actually enjoy it (though they always
| took a drug before going), and the few times I 've gone I've
| tried my best to keep an open mind.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I always thought the loud music, low lights and cramped
| quarters made it easier for awkward people. You can be totally
| anonymous if you want to. Just join in and feel the music and
| people will love you for it. You don't need to perform or meet
| any kind of expectation.
|
| The thing about the drugs is it only heightens the experience.
| It's like salt on your food. The ingredients still have to be
| good. I found the drugs made it great but that's because I
| loved it anyway. I've never understood people who say "you have
| to be on drugs to enjoy it". The only drug like that is
| alcohol, the drug that numbs you enough to make deeply
| unpleasant situations tolerable.
|
| For me the great thing about 30+ is not having to go to alcohol
| venues and do all the various pre-mating rituals. But I also
| don't go clubbing any more because I go to bed before midnight.
| Still love the music though (trance, as played by Oakenfold and
| Paul van Dyk).
| tombert wrote:
| The only appeal clubs ever really had to me was picking up
| women, which is irrelevant now since I'm married. Since I'm
| nothing terribly special in the looks department [1], and I
| really don't enjoy any kind of dancing, all I ever had going
| for me was being "kind of funny", which didn't really work in
| clubs.
|
| I tend to make jokes when I'm nervous, so the awkwardness
| wasn't really a problem for doing that, but it wouldn't work
| if the jokes are inaudible.
|
| It doesn't help that I have never really felt comfortably
| being physically close to strangers. I'll put up with it on
| the subway, but that's a purely utilitarian thing. I suspect
| alcohol would help with that, but I don't drink anymore (and
| never drank that much).
|
| I certainly don't want to diminish your enjoyment for this,
| I'm just saying that every time I've gone to a club it's the
| worst moment of my life. I absolutely hate everything about
| it.
|
| [1] This isn't meant as self-deprecating or fishing for
| compliments, I'm perfectly happy with my body. I just
| acknowledge that I was probably never going to be a male
| model.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| You must be fun at parties, oh wait
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| It's largely the same issue that every sector is experiencing.
| Everyone is trying for the same high end of the market crowd to
| extract as much prestige and profit as possible and pricing out
| the mass market.
|
| Cinemas and concerts are in the same boats.
|
| With the cost of essentials through the roof spending $$$ for a
| night out is now a periodic luxury rather than every Saturday
| night.
| ta988 wrote:
| I live in a big US city. There are raves almost every week-end
| (like the real kind amateur stuff not the money grubbing ones).
| Sure they are not announced on RA and you need to know people but
| it is still alive and well. They are mostly in old abandonned
| industrial places and often literally underground.
| mjsir911 wrote:
| NPR did a recent expose about a local renegade spot & the shows
| it supports in my scene:
|
| https://www.kuow.org/stories/under-the-bridge-a-portrait-of-...
|
| With mixed results, it kind of burned the spot by virtue of being
| talked about in too wide an audience but I think it's also
| important to make it known to the mainstream that this kind of
| stuff is happening.
|
| All that's needed to make a rave happen is music & speakers,
| scale and quality is all configurable. Humans will always find
| spaces to congregate: whether it's their own houses, local parks,
| abandoned warehouses, industrial districts, or deep in the woods.
| I hope we're not losing our drive to be around eachother and
| dance, it's been such a integral part of my life story (as a
| fairly young person!) and has let me find my people.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > Humans will always find spaces to congregate ... I hope we're
| not losing our drive to be around each other and dance, it's
| been such a integral part of my life story (as a fairly young
| person!) and has let me find my people.
|
| I'm gonna dump a little bit with the blind hope that someone
| can explain what I'm feeling. Not meaning to disrespect you
| mjsir, but this thread just has the right context:
|
| I'm in my 30s and I have never danced, I don't dance, I think
| of myself as not having the brain lobe for dancing. I've done
| choreographed dancing like tap dancing and pole dancing, but I
| don't _dance_ dance. I don 't want to dance, but people keep
| saying it's essential to the human experience. So I would
| prefer either dancing or knowing for sure that I don't need it,
| over my current state of anxious uncertainty.
|
| I don't find places to congregate, I don't know if I've found
| my people at all, and I feel like my life story is incomplete
| when I come to these threads on the nerd computer-touching
| website and see people say that raves are so important. I'm a
| nerd's nerd, one of my fondest memories is staying up all night
| alone in my room playing with threads and sockets in Java as a
| teen. I've had 3 romantic partners, 1 asked me out, 2 I met on
| a dating site. I do not approach people in real life. I barely
| live in real life.
|
| This feeling that I'm missing out on something and unsure if I
| want it, peaked earlier this year when I dated a girl who was
| just a hundred times cooler than me. A chill go-with-the-flow
| hippie literal surfer type. When I think about her I have to
| wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. She did not stick
| around, and I've been left with the sense that I'm living my
| entire life wrong.
|
| Can anyone relate?
| Dibes wrote:
| I would highly recommend talking this through with a
| therapist! I don't think anyone on the internet has the
| time/understanding/or context to tell you either way in any
| satisfying manner that would settle your confusion. It is
| never too late to introspect and learn about who you are as a
| person, and a therapist is a great sounding board at the very
| minimum.
| willseth wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with you if you're not into dancing.
| It's 100% okay to be introverted and happy. Many people are.
| The only thing I would say is it might be worth the effort to
| try to get out and find some of your people, whoever they
| are. Feeling uncomfortable doing things like that is also
| totally normal, and imo sometimes feeling uncomfortable _is_
| an essential part of the human experience. I'm fairly
| extroverted and still feel awkward, anxious, or uncomfortable
| pretty regularly.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Can anyone relate?
|
| I can relate with everything you have said and my life
| experience seems to be similar to yours. When I was younger
| in the 90s I forced myself to go clubbing a few times. I
| hated everything about it, frankly. Even so, I can't help but
| feel like I'm missing out on important life experiences when
| I read comments here.
|
| But I think it's important to keep in mind that threads like
| these suffer from selection bias because, objectively
| speaking, _most_ people in real life do not go clubbing or
| raving in their adulthood...
| dnquark wrote:
| Yes, but I'll just speak to the part about dancing: it is
| true that (a) many people find it fun and rewarding and (b)
| many people don't find it easy and/or natural a priori.
| However, given the right style, music, AND a few (or possibly
| many) months of deliberate practice to make it "click" in
| your brain, many people could move from category (b) to (a).
| Searching through this parameter space requires time and
| effort. This is a thread about EDM, and I spent some time
| trying to like EDM because it was cool, until I realized that
| it's not for me, and I have zero inclination to dance to it
| unless I'm on MDMA. On the other hand, swing, salsa, bachata
| ended up being absolutely my jam -- after months of
| deliberate practice, as none of these musical styles were
| super familiar to me at the outset.
|
| For a lot folks, partnered dance forms are nothing short of
| life changing, and they tend to appeal to analytical
| introverts; if you haven't tried already, go sign up for your
| local lindy hop lessons, and keep your expectations low.
| There's no downside, at the very least you'll get some
| exercise.
| randomopining wrote:
| Tons of people just go and imbibe in various things and just
| sway to the music or the beat. It really is a blank slate to
| make it what you want, and i think that's why its popular -
| many types of people all go to them for many different
| reasons.
| jakefromstatecs wrote:
| Was a favorite spot of mine. A shame that the NPR coverage
| burned it.
|
| At least we still have plenty of forest areas to renegade in.
| indrora wrote:
| It was burned years ago.
|
| Give it two years or so to fade. There's just not enough low
| cost big spaces to hold shit in.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Just putting this out there for those who may be interested. If
| you are into making electronic music and want to get started
| performing, check out the EMOM movement.
| https://electronicmusicopenmic.com/how-to-start-your-own-emo...
|
| I've been participating in Toronto version (TEMOM) and it's
| developed into a wonderful community.
| qprofyeh wrote:
| Music volume these days is too loud for me.
| jppope wrote:
| yea, yeah, everything sucks now... we know.
| highwayman47 wrote:
| COVID + Middle Class Poverty
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm curious where they got their data (or I should say I'm
| suspicious of their analysis). My cousin is a raver and she sends
| me Snaps of the events all the time. They're just as crowded as
| ever and happening just as often as a decade ago.
|
| There was obviously a pause during COVID and a slow ramp after,
| but it's been back to normal for about 1.5 years now.
| saberience wrote:
| I totally doubt this is true personally. I started raving
| myself in university in 2002 and see more raves happening now
| and have more friends who are ravers than back then...
|
| I also see more electronic artists playing gigs all over the
| world, more people getting into DJ'ing or electronic music
| production, and there are more EDM artists getting hugely
| popular in the mainstream, see acts like Fred Again.
| n4r9 wrote:
| "Rave" has become quite a vague umbrella term. Perhaps the
| closest modern equivalent (in Europe at least) are free parties:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_party#List_of_free_partie... .
|
| A group of sound systems put the word out that they're going to
| get together illictly in a field in some remote location. There's
| a number that attendees ring to get the location on the (first)
| night. It carries on all weekend or until the police convince
| everyone to leave.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Tangential discussion from a month ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352825
|
| _Nightclub stickers over smartphone rule divides the dancefloor
| (91 comments)_
| saberience wrote:
| I find it really hard to believe this and am questioning the
| data.
|
| I raved back in the early 2000s and I still rave now and the
| popularity is absolutely booming in a way I've never seen before
| and in more parts of the world.
|
| 15 years ago there was zero electronic music events in Dubai, now
| there are huge electronic music festivals there and it's clear a
| ton of people at those events are taking "something" that isn't
| just booze. Even Saudi has had its first big EDM festivals,
| albeit I think they were no alcohol allowed.
|
| EDM artists are more popular than ever and more and more of my
| friends are getting into EDM and going to EDM festivals like
| Tomorrowland, Mysteryland, ADE, etc.
| brotchie wrote:
| I feel like they're conflating "rave" with "clubbing."
|
| Friday, Saturday club attendance has been dropping across the
| world, and many electronic music focused club venues have shut
| down (at least in Australia and the UK).
|
| My word association of "rave" is "festival" though. Festivals
| feel like they're still booming, or at least not in dramatic
| decline.
|
| From a small personal sampling: Coachella, Portola, Outside
| Lands, Proper, Lightning in a Bottle, festivals are still going
| strong. For some (Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle) attendance
| felt like it dropped 2023 -> 2024, but perhaps 10-20%, and this
| is likely economically correlated (inflation, etc). Late 2024-
| festivals (Portola, Proper) were packed.
| itake wrote:
| > My word association of "rave" is "festival" though.
|
| hehe, my definition of a rave is a temporary venue where at
| least 2 people have asked if you need help finding Molly.
|
| There is a bisect of "festival" goers and "ravers", but many
| ravers are priced out of festivals, but may attend raves
| weekly or monthly.
|
| Both of these imho, are different than your traditional
| licensed club that primarily serves alcohol and is 21+
| exclusive.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| The UAE is a microcosm and not representative of general trends
| imo.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I believe that, 15 years ago was peak deadmau5, skrillex,
| dubstep explosion, EDC expanding everywhere. No way globally
| its more popular now then it was in the 2010s
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean music festivals in the US are booming as well. EDC
| attendance more than doubled last year.
| seydor wrote:
| Dubai is a little behind
| alexalx666 wrote:
| It's going strong in Berlin, no one can kill raves, ppl can
| organize raves with friends outside :)
| rramon wrote:
| There are a lot more cool Techno festivals going on though, e.g:
| https://youtu.be/OCyJNS8frn8
|
| A clubbing lifestyle where you're out every weekend isn't
| healthy, but festivals on weekends every other month are doable.
| Society seems much more health aware these days due to social
| media and the web in general.
| MrJagil wrote:
| wow, what a set. thank you.
| virtualritz wrote:
| There are many factors not mentioned in the article. In Berlin we
| simply talk about before and after the pandemic.
|
| Prices have gone up like crazy after; this includes rent. Cheap
| airlines like Ryanair & Easyjet have canceled many flights to
| Berlin in the last year.
|
| I can see this as I rent out my living room on Airbnb part time
| and 2024 was the lowest no. of bookings since I started, almost a
| decade ago (2022 was a brief surge as everyone went traveling
| 'again' but that was it).
|
| Hotel prices are also crazy (I got a lot of guests in 2023 that
| choose a high-end Airbnb over a four star hotel for the first
| time because the latter was now outside their budget in my area).
|
| Then we have the phenomenon of restaurants closing early. It was
| easy to get dinner at 11pm at a good restaurant in my
| neighborhood (central Berlin). Most such places would close at
| midnight/1am. Now the latest is 9pm with most places closing at
| 10pm.
|
| There is a street next to mine that is full of restaurants and
| bars. It used to be lively until 1:30am, even during the week.
| Before the pandemic. Now it's dead and feels like a small town
| now around 10:30pm.
|
| Talking to several patrons there, this is what happened: during
| the pandemic all service staff found other jobs. Places were
| closed because they had to (lock-downs).
|
| At the same time there was turnover of tenants in the
| neighborhood. People fled the cities because remote work allowed
| them.
|
| The empty flats got new tenants and these people moved in under
| the assumption their street would keep the same noise levels. Ofc
| the landlords, desperate to fill their emptying flats during the
| lock-downs, would not tell them of any caveats in this regard.
|
| When the lock-downs ended restaurants initially couldn't open
| longer than 10pm anyway because they couldn't find enough staff.
| People had found other work and didn't return to these jobs.
|
| When staffing rebounded and they tried to open longer, two things
| got in the way:
|
| 1. Customers had gotten used to eat early (we're talking two
| years here from end of the lock-downs to the staffing situation
| in the gastronomy 'kinda' normalizing).
|
| 2. The new tenants in the flats in a street with restaurants had
| lived for 2+ years under the assumption their street was quiet
| from 10:30pm. They called the police and got injunctions for
| noise nuisance etc. TL;DR it was legally not possible any more to
| open longer for these restaurants, all of a sudden.
|
| As a social dancer (tango) I noticed the same things mentioned
| re. the clubs. Prices have gone up, as a result less well-off
| people simply can't afford going dancing more than once a week.
| Most of my friends used to go 2--3 times a week. I still do but I
| work in tech and so does my partner and we don't have kids or any
| mortgage to pay off. We're in the 1%.
|
| To get you an idea: the average venue for social dancing charged
| 7 EUR during the week, in 2019.
|
| It's was 10 EUR when places reopened after the pandemic in late
| 2021 (i.e. 43% more).
|
| And this year some venues have raised prices to 10--13 EUR as of
| 1st of January. So we're talking a 43%--86% price increase for
| admission and drinks went along in pricing.
|
| It's simply not affordable. As a result, the average age in the
| Berlin tango scene went from 30 to 50 in just five years. It's
| mostly old(er) people with very few younger ones that work in
| well paying jobs (lots of techies) or have other sources of
| wealth.
|
| And because more older people make up the majority of the
| audience, venues close much earlier. It was easy to go dancing
| until 1--2am during the week and 4--5am on weekends. Now it's
| midnight during the week and 2--3am max on weekends.
|
| And because of the issue with airlines and hotel/Airbnb prices we
| also have less social dance tourists. Berlin used to be a top
| destination for social dancers from abroad to come visit but its
| noticeable less in 2023/2024 than before the pandemic.
| croisillon wrote:
| i know it's confusing but in English "patron" means paying
| customer
| some_random wrote:
| Millenials are getting too old while Gen Z is too risk adverse
| and was generally shocked out of the habit of going out by the
| pandemic.
| brink wrote:
| Another factor is why waste the effort going to get a dopamine
| rush by going out when you have dopamine in your pocket?
|
| We're too overstimulated and numb to bother leaving the house.
| Why bother playing a game when you can watch someone play it
| for you on Youtube with less effort?
| tonymet wrote:
| It's very difficult to operate a moderate-sized event secretly.
| Raves used to be promoted locally (at record & clothing shops) ,
| and then shared among friends. The venue was secret right up to
| the event, because you first had to drive to a number of secret
| waypoints that were revealed by phone. The final location was
| often hidden in the wilderness or at a condemned (or squatted)
| building.
|
| Accidental and deliberate surveillance is so common and cheap
| that this is no longer viable.
| jwblackwell wrote:
| Above & Beyond's label has a huge following. I have been to many
| events around the world. They do a big gathering each year e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEqySVgNkIA
| timbre1234 wrote:
| What's missing is GenZ isn't into it. The kids are the ones that
| go out all the time and they drive a lot of the revenue that big
| clubs need to stay alive. I'm not really sure what GenZ is into
| instead -- would've been cool if this article had tried asking
| them.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I think we could say that covid killed a lot of these things.
| GenZ just happened to be coming of age during the pandemic
| years and thus prefers to stay home as they see that as
| normative.
| test6554 wrote:
| We may very well see a future judgy christian nationalist
| generation of youngsters who frown at grandma and grandpa
| millennial's tattoos and our nasty sexually explicit oldies
| music.
| Nasreddin_Hodja wrote:
| > I'm not really sure what GenZ is into instead
|
| Things like this maybe
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuddle_party
|
| As for modern electronic music, it became very dumb compared to
| oldschool techno of 90s, who even listens to that crap
| nowadays? Why someone would pay for loud noise?
| tayo42 wrote:
| Why isnt the cause just trends, music and fads changing? EDM and
| raves have had a big moment early 2010s then every thing kind of
| evolved, there must be new music for the new generation.
|
| Like why aren't we listening to guitar solos, or 80s metal bands
| or grunge anymore? No one killed it
| Pigalowda wrote:
| The kids don't party and fuck like we used to? I guess we're old.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Back in my day we had ASL on IRC and that was good enough for
| us
| kristopolous wrote:
| 16/f/ca was the best 10 years of my life.
| denysvitali wrote:
| There's a similar documentary (from 7 years ago, by Annie Mac -
| BBC) about the UK clubs closures https://youtu.be/n9zjNKQ-snI
|
| Worth a watch!
| fizx wrote:
| Burning Man's been dying slowly since about 2018, so pre-Covid.
| When I say dying, I don't mean "getting mainstream & EDMified"
| like all the old Burners have complained about since forever. I
| mean, the mainstream has stopped taking interest, and increasing
| portions of the tickets are getting taken by internationals
| because its passe in the USA, but still on some people's travel
| bucket lists. This year was the first year in a while with extra
| tickets available, but the writing has been on the wall for a
| while.
|
| I'm sure raving will come back in 20 years like most fashion.
| Spivak wrote:
| I wouldn't use Burning Man as a metric for the scene overall
| because among ravers Burning Man is considered to be one of the
| worst festivals.
| quchen wrote:
| How so? I saw a few vids about EDC and quite frankly it
| looked worse than tomorrowland (like, reminds me of mobile
| games patterns), quite the feat. Burning Man has a
| reputation, and it's definitely not a sharing economy to get
| there. I wouldn't fly half the globe to get there, I think it
| would be quite interesting though.
| briankelly wrote:
| It's more of an arts and community festival than a music
| event. There's a smattering of respected DJs/producers each
| year and some good sets, but otherwise there's a bunch of
| art cars roaming around thumping generic party music.
| Absolutely nothing against Donna summers, but I'm not
| shitting you when I say I heard her around a half a dozen
| times the first big party night, for instance. There is no
| curation there like a music festival.
|
| That said, absolutely worth going to at least once, for
| everything else.
| quchen wrote:
| There are a couple of smaller burns here I have
| connections to, I like the participatory idea, as opposed
| to pure consumption like a holiday park. If burning man
| is (or was) like that I would find that pretty appealing.
| Not sure about August in the desert some 10000km away
| though : - D
| quchen wrote:
| It's how all cool underground things go. Small groups build
| something new and awesome, new people come and join, the
| culture shifts, and at some point money is made, and the
| culture drifts off into a business. Very few places resist
| this, very few stay cool despite. The rave scene around Berlin
| is quite alright, but we learned to protect our safe spaces,
| and many will not mention details online anymore.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Can't see the article but I imagine a big part of it is a combo
| of clubs continually being booted to new locations in cities to
| the point you kind of have to get tickets in advance for one
| place or run the risk of going there, being turned away and
| having absolutely nothing else to do in the area. To battle this
| there's loads of venues that seem to almost exclusively do shows
| that end near midnight and I've never been to one that wasn't
| completely devoid of atmosphere (hard to enjoy the music when the
| people next to you are talking at length about some work deadline
| they have).
| throwaway019254 wrote:
| I realized that it's impossible to find clubs that serve alcohol
| till morning. The laws are more strict nowadays.
|
| Most of the raves I attend now are on indigenous lands, it's
| definitely not mainstream, and I can party till morning.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Plenty of great raves still around. I don't think the Financial
| Times is a great resource on free of charge illegal underground
| parties?
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The smartphone imo.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| I mostly watch 90s and 00s movies and TV shows because you know
| why. Same here. All new things are shit. Could House be aired
| today?
| endofreach wrote:
| Thanks tiktok.
| seydor wrote:
| People travel instead
| readingnews wrote:
| These guys killed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YS_7U0mDgA
| narag wrote:
| For a long time I wondered why nightlife had cooled down so much.
| Then I realized that natality had sharply declined. Not evenly
| distributed, but around me it's pretty much the main cause. Every
| scene is just much less crowded.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| rave != club
|
| IMHO, "raves" are, or _were_ , underground, unsanctioned, and
| generally illegal, whereas "clubs" are typically licensed and
| legal - in other words, expensive and lame. I went to raves back
| in the early-90s, and I can tell you, it was nothing like dance
| clubs of the last 10 years.
| zuminator wrote:
| One more guess: Part of the reason why people would go late-night
| dancing was for hookups. Nowadays, people meet partners via
| dating apps, so the prospect of a random encounter in a dark club
| is less appealing.
| permo-w wrote:
| this sounds like a headline from Plague Inc
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| UK had criminal justice bill [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Or...
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The author doesn't even seem to know what a rave is, most likely
| they aren't in decline at all. They're talking about formal,
| permanent dance clubs shutting down for economic reasons. Raves
| are mostly an underground - often illegal or questionably legal -
| impromptu one off event, organized through word of mouth and
| social media on an invite only basis. There is almost no way to
| get statistics on them because they are intentionally stealth.
|
| In my younger years, I was active in the wearhouse and desert
| rave scene, and it was a lot of fun. Typically it would just be
| an empty wearhouse in a run down industrial district, or simply
| an empty lot far out in the desert far from any homes.
|
| Different rave scenes had different groups of people- some were
| quite out of control and doing very dangerous things, others were
| much more organized and responsible. Although I haven't been in
| many years, I am certain the more organized and responsible ones
| with a strong culture of vetting who is invited, and having
| responsible sober regulars that are able to help those more
| inexperienced are still going strong, and I still get invites to
| them.
|
| There is nothing like dancing all night until sunrise under the
| stars on a warm summer desert night... to excellent electronic
| music made/performed live by the artists. Usually people are very
| friendly, warm and welcoming- aided by certain phenylethylamine
| compounds no doubt.
| pier25 wrote:
| This exactly. I was a dj and organized raves back in my 20s.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I'm guessing your mention of desert raves places you in a
| different country to the author?
|
| In the UK, where I believe the word originates when applied to
| late night electronic music events in the mid 80s, the term
| meant an often unauthorised event in a field or industrial
| site.
|
| Perhaps it was the noise menace, or perhaps people dancing in a
| field fuelled by MDMA caused a big deal in alcohol duty revenue
| for the government, but raves became highly regulated with the
| 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Illegal raves were
| clamped down on by police with a fierce intensity. This
| essentially pushed the music back into clubs, where people
| could be taxed more easily. This ended the original race scene.
| By the late 90s the term was anachronistic in the UK. In the
| 2010s certain dance subcultures, drum and bass springs to mind,
| started becoming known as raves again, but these were anything
| from club nights to outdoor festivals. Quite unlike the earlier
| usage
|
| It appears that your usage mirrors the UK rave scene from the
| late 80s to early 90s that died out, and the author has a
| broader usage that is in use today in the UK.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| That seems like important context that should have been in
| the article given they are talking globally.
|
| I'm on the USA west coast, and we still have warehouse and
| outdoor raves here, and people wouldn't use the term rave to
| refer to a permanent dance club. Many are illegal, and the
| police do shut them down sometimes, but mostly just tell
| people to go home. I've also seen the police show up and not
| shut it down.
| byearthithatius wrote:
| As someone from the U.S his language is perfectly correct for
| here. Everyone from the U.S thinks of Raves in the way he
| described.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Yeah, it's always odd how "the number of raves happening in the
| world" seems tied to "how connected am I to a group of people
| who want to push the boundaries of a party".
|
| Sometimes raves are happening every 3 days locally to me,
| sometimes the world has stopped all together. Very odd and
| polite that the world can tell when I am not interested in that
| level of (to be clear, often enjoyable) debauchery.
|
| I presume that they will start up again once I get my warehouse
| finished on my off-grid property in the desert...
| veunes wrote:
| It seems to me that a lot depends on the country where the
| experience in this area was gained. The development of rave
| culture depends on cultural aspects of a country you are live
| in in many ways (it seems to me).
| t55 wrote:
| I really like day-time raves
| polyterative wrote:
| my dumb italian government literally made them illegal. that's
| what
| Funes- wrote:
| Social media killed (real) social life.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| https://archive.is/ul4Ui
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Anything that relies on booze is dying. It's too expensive.
| throwaway_95283 wrote:
| Come to the southern cone of south america (brazil, paraguay,
| argentina), late night dance is alive and well. Colombia too to a
| lesser degree.
| jmdelatorre wrote:
| in some places in Chile its gone down though
| https://www.emol.com/noticias/Economia/2025/01/03/1153139/lo...
| throwaway_95283 wrote:
| Chile is awful (Santiago specifically). Sorry if you are from
| there. High prices, high crime, full of feminists, everything
| closes early. Might as well move back to the west.
| peterarmstrong wrote:
| phalates
| maCDzP wrote:
| Any tips if someone want to join in the Nordics?
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| GenZers are indulging in drugs at much lower rates than previous
| generations. That includes alcohol.
| codexb wrote:
| It's not just raves, it's pretty much all "nightclub" type bars.
| The common nightclub has been replaced by expensive, high-end,
| bottle-service only type clubs.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Maybe cell phone cameras killed the rave.
|
| Nobody wants pics of them dancing like a spastic monkey
| quchen wrote:
| I want to dance like that though, so I don't go to places
| without a no picture policy (important: with stickers) anymore.
| _joel wrote:
| We've got kids and prefer to rave during the day now, back home
| for a sensible time ;0
| aiv1 wrote:
| Miami Beach is still partying at night, isn't it?
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Gentrification of areas with music venues is a notable factor.
| It's like a cycle. Very noticeable in London.
|
| Place is cheap and kind of a shithole so it's possible to open
| cool bars and late night music venues. People move there because
| it's now a cool place. Prices go up. People complain about the
| noise from the venues. Venues close and are replaced with sterile
| overpriced crap. Place is now boring and expensive. See:
| Shoreditch as a fine example.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| This article is paywalled for me and I'm thankful because the
| title alone has the scent of bait, ie. the post might be about a
| narrow case like large venue/big name dj events rather than dance
| clubs in general
|
| If there is a 'decline' it's likely because there's been a 20
| year surge in DJ events -- like some clubs either going 50/50
| between live performance events and dj dance nights or out right
| choosing DJ nights over live performance because it's cheaper (no
| sound check, no load-in/load-out, fewer drink comps for
| individuals and plus-ones ....) -- and the era is cycling down.
| But it hardly means nightclubbing or dance clubs are done for.
| Even if the activity were in decline, mobile phones would not be
| the cause. People go out even when their city is being bombed
| jaarse wrote:
| I don't believe this is specific to Raves, but Bars & Nightclubs
| in general.
|
| Younger people don't seem to be going to these places nearly as
| much as generations past. I think a lot of this drop off can be
| attributed to Social Media & Tinder.
|
| You don't need to go out to see your friends or find a date. So
| why bother? It's easier and cheaper to stay home.
| ioseph wrote:
| Cheaper being a big one. Here in Australia student
| allowance/minimum wage has hardly increased while everything
| else has gotten far more expensive, young people simply can't
| afford to drink out/attend events.
|
| There was also a intensive effort to kill nightclubs with
| lockout laws
| aylmao wrote:
| Also worth noting, and the article briefly alludes to this;
| college costs are higher, the difference between jobs that pay
| well and those that don't is wider, and everyone is very aware
| of all this. My guess is young people today are possibly less
| laissez-faire than in the past. People are worrying about their
| future earlier.
| devrob wrote:
| I think there's a lot of nuance here. I teach DJing (house/techno
| mostly) and there's never been more interest in electronic music
| & DJing. Folks who thought I was a bit out there in high school
| for liking electronic & dance music, have recently all now become
| more interested in DJing and raving. The DJ today is continuing
| to grow into the modern rock-star (albeit, in terms of real $ of
| music money, it's no where close).
|
| Moreover, as several commenters have pointed out there has been a
| big growth in festivals and awareness. Lots of people talk to me
| about "house music" now, whereas before it was a relatively
| "underground" thing.
|
| Now, I think there's a question about whether the scale of such
| events have maintained the same cultural ethos as the early rave
| days, and that, though I'm not old enough to have participated,
| is likely a categorical no. There's a greater focus on
| 'documenting' experiences at these events rather than living it.
| Here's a clip of an rising group called Kienemusik [tik tok link]
| (https://www.tiktok.com/@as.anca/video/7359750430345186593?q=...)
| , where you can see there's more video taping than dancing. I
| would venture to say, we are so filled with wonder sometimes that
| we forget that part of experiencing awe is letting go of ego and
| just experiencing.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I know what you mean, and I wish I kept at it. I DJ'd a couple
| raves back then but it was something that any of my friends
| were into so I naturally fell out of it even though I loved it
| so much. I later got back into it briefly and made a few house
| and trance tracks when computer DAWs became popular.
|
| There was a sense of freedom and optimism on the dance floor
| that I've never found anywhere else. I made songs like the
| songs that I most liked to dance to. Most of it came from
| Europe back then, but I wish I followed my heart, or at least
| spent half my time following my heart.
|
| I feel bad for the kids in the video. In my day, and maybe
| yours, it would have been very unusual to see a cellphone in
| the club or at a rave. My kids schools don't allow screens and
| they go away for a couple weeks each summer to a camp that
| doesn't allow screens. They tell me that they really enjoy it
| after a couple of days, and I think it gives them a chance to
| feel the way we did as kids... back then there wasn't a
| movement of people trying to live more in the moment because
| everybody lived in the moment all the time.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Greed, aka promoters, killed the rave scene when they started
| charging absurd prices and pivoting to festivals where they could
| command 100's of dollars for entry.
| f4kt0r wrote:
| Shrek killed the raves
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