If You're Going Out, Aim for Two Locations
Anything more than that and you risk utter chaos.
Because cities are so big and open-ended, and because its elite caste is enclosed in the grandiose and impatient and deliriously shallow world of socialites and social climbers, the ways in which nightlife has been discussed by the influencers who discuss it the most tend to be ridiculous and righteous. The city is sometimes a place where Important Things happen, and it is more often a place to watch less-important things happen alongside other people. The overheated and overcaffeinated register in which urbanites tend to talk about city life does not undermine how miraculous or impressive it is that humans of many walks of life can gather in a horizonless agora to create a semi-functional environment, sans the endless streams of urine on the sidewalks. Cities are lauded for “bringing people together,” although this is a value-neutral thing, and a critical mass of humanity does not become a community—and is not prevented from devolving into a mob—simply because they are all in the same place.
By nature of their bustle and amenities, cities attract the extroverted types who always want what’s next because they quickly grow bored with inhabiting or maintaining whatever reality they currently occupy. If you are like me and have these people hovering in your social orbit, you will have to be diligent in reigning in their worst impulses and instincts. So as a rule of thumb for summer activities, anyone grabbing drinks with their friends should always aim to premise their night out around reaching and remaining in the second location.
The first location is fun—though, in a backhanded way, there is something almost too soothing about a dull abundance flooding the circuit of conversations. Dialogues are strewn with weird spans of silence and avant-garde disagreements, and banal and trite pleasantries luxuriously buffer the possibilities of them heading toward anywhere interesting. People will ask about work and whether you’re still remote and maybe they will inquire into whether you’ve watched the series finale of Barry or Succession and fish for any congenial or contrarian opinion. An evening like this is pleasant enough, but this falls under a chill excursion out into the city. It will predictably conclude with a nondescript subway trip back to your overpriced and undersized apartment.
The second location is more of a booze-soaked sweet spot. While the conversations are janky, they are also more weird and obscure and deep. Your friend will ask if you feel like they have wasted the last two years of their career or whether they updated you on what new anti-depressant they started taking. The other more overbearing and oversharing friend will have a pale look of horrifying embarrassment on their face because they have realized they’re supposed to wait until the second location to bring up current meds. These moments are when the group breaks through the unsettling nausea of are we at that point of the night? apprehension, and then bellyflop into the pools of spilling tea and tequila shots. When you leave the second location, you will try to catch one of the last subways, but if there’s a nine-minute wait time on the board, you will impulse-call an Uber.
People will be humming after a liquor buzz and glorious chats, but the overall positive vibes will soon deteriorate.
Night owls speak in wonder and whimsy about the third location, but it is a genuine coin toss as to whether the night will fall apart. This presents a conundrum because the third location is the one bar too far, but it’s also where the drugs are. It’ll have a dark nighclub atmosphere and Ke$ha will be blaring way too loud and everyone will be shouting incomprehensibly into each other’s ears. Your friends will tug you by the collar and lean in so you can’t avoid the sordid stench of lemon vodka soda in their breath and their increasingly sweaty rants about how you two should take a hip-hop dance class because WE WOULD BE SO FUCKING GOOD AT IT!! Someone who is clearly blacking out will ask everyone else to call their phone because they looked everywhere for approximately 94 seconds and firmly concluded that it is not in their jacket. The phone is definitely in their jacket. Your single friend will try to debate you into going to a warehouse rave that will start in an hour but doesn’t pick up until around 7 AM. When it’s time to leave, you will be ordering an Uber XL. Before you even make it home, you will be paying $40 for Big Macs and McNuggets.
I will never go to the third location, but I will sometimes skip to the fourth, which is inevitably standing in a complete stranger’s kitchen.
Unless there is a hippy. Never go with a hippy to a second location.
I just stay in the kitchen.