12 ms·

The Death of the Party

112 points by mojuba 11y ago

anonu 11y ago
Curious to post this on a Saturday evening when ya'll should be partying... But its been an hour with no comments. So it would seem like at least some of us on HN have a life. Then again, its an interesting article but not super HN-pertinent.
- peter_caltrain 11y ago
  Why should we all be partying? Who are you to tell us what to do?
  - foobar2020 11y ago
    Relax captain, it is just a joke. Go drink a beer with your friends, or not.
    - federico3 11y ago
      And here comes the good old "it's just a joke". http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustJokingJustification http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustJokingJustifi...
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - foobar2020 11y ago
        That's really how I see that, as a joke. After all - who feels pressured by an anonymous internet comment?
  - gaius 11y ago
    You created an account to say this?
    - peter_caltrain 11y ago
      Yeah I did actually create a throwaway to save personal attacks. Often on HN there's some discussion and people feel that they can tell other people what they should be doing about some subjective thing. One example is this thread. Some people don't like to party. The commenter said that we should go and party. Even if we don't like it. We should all like what they like and we should all do what they want to do. That's a brilliant example of the kind of pushy asshole I don't like to meet at parties. It's like those people that try to force you to dance at weddings. I don't like to dance - that's my decision. Another recent example was mother's day. I don't like my mother. She seriously neglected me as a child until I was removed by the state, which still causes me medical problems to this day. But everyone feels entitled to say that I should call my mother to say hi. Why should I? Because they have a good relationship with their mother? Good for them. But don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - DanBC 11y ago
        In this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519994 I said this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520124 (25 points)
      - gaius 11y ago
        Fair enough :-)
jsumrall 11y ago
Seems like a very different situation here in the Netherlands. Most people live somewhat close by, within 15 minutes of biking, and its not at all unusual for everyone to show up with some drinks or snacks. This takes care of two of the main reasons the article claims Americans are not having a house party. At one point in the article someone said that only have a 400ft space, and can only host 5-6 people before it gets crowded. I was just at a gathering yesterday in a room of less than 16m^2 (172ft^2) with 12 people without a problem.
- jeswin 11y ago
  It's probably 400 sq ft, which is a 20x20 ft room. 52 sq ft would be really small.
  - jarvist 11y ago
    I suspect 16 m^2 --> 215 sq ft. (GP mistakenly multiplied by feet-in-metres rather than square-feet-in-square-metres conversion factor.)
- mojuba 11y ago
  Same in Ireland, house parties are pretty common. I'm wondering if it's to do with the population density and public transportation (you don't want to drive drunk), among many other factors already mentioned in the article.
  - dazc 11y ago
    It's been awhile since I've been to Ireland (10 years) but I remember the cost of alcohol being very high, not just in tourist areas. I also notice police being very proactive against drink-driving - in the centre of Dublin at least.
    - mojuba 11y ago
      Drinks are much cheaper in shops compared to pubs/bars (the latter are taxed much more heavily). Another reason for Ireland to party at home :)
johan_larson 11y ago
One bit of hard data and a whole lot of anecdotes and speculation. Not worth it.
- sp332 11y ago
  Interpreting history is a valid way of getting insight. Not everything is rigorous.
ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
When I saw the title of the article and the source I was convinced it would be about the end of the political party, in view of the poll numbers for outsiders such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
petewailes 11y ago
UK here - people don't really do this in their 20's anymore, but in their 30's, and what hosting is seems rather different. It's more about enjoying social company around food, some music on Spotify, and probably a board game. It's an excuse to spend time with people you like outside of a work context. Most of the people I know have someone over to a house around once a month or so, or do an event of some kind (gallery showing, horse trials etc) for similar purposes.
- Intermernet 11y ago
  Australian here (Sydney) - House parties are alive and well in my local area. Last night my neighbors were going 'til about 4AM (I'm in Newtown, which is renowned for being a bit different [1], so this is probably a terrible data point). Age seems to have nothing to do with it. My said neighbors are uni students, I'm in my late 30's, my other neighbors are in their late 50's, and we've all been known to keep the block awake all night. No one complains, especially considering that friendly pre-party warnings / invitations are usually letter-box-dropped, and the late parties are usually confined to Friday / Saturday nights. I personally love the house party vibe where I live. We may not all share the same music tastes, but it does my soul good to hear people having a good time pretty much every weekend! It's possible that the reasons given in other comments (increased rent prices, social media redefining relationships etc.) are valid in Sydney as a whole, but thankfully they're having little effect in my surrounding area! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown,_New_South_Wales#Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown,_New_South_Wales#Cultu...
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Same story for the Netherlands I guess. We do house parties in our twenties too but usually it's for an occasion like a birthday, not just random having fun. There's also a lot of the 'meet around 9-10, have some drinks, light food and music at home until about 11:30 when you turn down the noise, all bike/taxi to the city centre and start hitting some pubs around midnight and stay there until the clubs fill up with people around 1:30 or so and stay until 4, maybe club-hop inbetween and then all go your own way home. The house party is more of a place to meet collectively, to get some drinks in 5x cheaper than in a club and talk to people while still sober and in a relatively quiet place, a pre-party really. By the 30s nobody really hits the clubs anymore (at 24 I've pretty much stopped already), plenty of parties at home though but usually there's no dancing involved which may tell you something about the nature of the party.
greggman 11y ago
I hosted a few house parties a year in SF. I love doing it. I don't mind the prep or the cleanup (though it would be nice to have help; :P) The problem is I lived in an apartment and the neighbors weren't happy about it. If I didn't have to worry about them I'd have thrown 3x more house parties. I probably got that from my family who threw large family parties and a giant new years party at our house with > 80 people every other year. One thing I liked about living in Tokyo, it was relatively trivial to rent an entire bar. So, people have parties and they don't have to worry about noise or cleanup. Of course one thing they do have to do is charge for the party but I guess that's a cultural thing. No one has a problem paying because they're used to it. And by paying I mean $20-$40 a person.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  $20-40 per person actually sounds reasonable, considering prices you'd normally pay for drinks in a bar. Hell, even just being at home having a party one could easily spend that on drinks and snacks. Plus, you're in a bar with non-strangers, which is something i'd also gladly pay for. Sounds like a right good idea to me!
greggman 11y ago
I hosted a few house parties a year in SF. I love doing it. I don't mind the prep or the cleanup (though it would be nice to have help; :P) The problem is I lived in an apartment and the neighbors aren't happy about it. If I didn't have to worry about them I'd thrown 3x more house parties. I probably got that from my family who threw large family parties and a giant new years party at our house with > 80 people every other year. One thing I liked about living in Tokyo, it was relatively trivial to rent an entire bar. So, people have parties and they don't have to worry about noise or cleanup. Of course one thing they do have to do is charge for the party but I guess that's a cultural thing. No one has a problem paying because they're used to it. And by paying I mean $20-$40 a person.
seibelj 11y ago
I'm a millennial and I go to parties all the time. I chose my apartment partly on party-throwing amenities. And my social network has parties too. Maybe it's just the city (Boston)? House parties have always been a big thing for me throughout college and after.
- hessenwolf 11y ago
  I was going to ask, but I figured I'd google it. "Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and ends. Most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s."
  - Namrog84 11y ago
    When did generation y get absorbed by the word millennials? Last time I looked they were 2 distinct ones. Soon gen x and baby boomer gonnna get gobbled up too?
    - hessenwolf 11y ago
      "In August 1993, the phrase Generation Y first appeared in an Ad Age editorial to describe those who were aged 11 or younger as well as the teenagers of the upcoming ten years who Ad Age defined as different from Generation X.[6] Since then, the company has sometimes used 1982 as the starting birth year.[7] According to Horovitz, in 2012, Ad Age "threw in the towel by conceding that Millennials is a better name than Gen Y",[1] and by 2014, a past director of data strategy at Ad Age said to NPR "the Generation Y label was a placeholder until we found out more about them".[8]"
- ambicapter 11y ago
  Where at in Boston? Looking to move closer to the city soon.
personlurking 11y ago
I find the whole US experience quite odd. Among everyone I knew up until my mid-late 20s (before I went abroad), the only viable options for nighttime fun were clubs and bars. Period. Luckily, I knew foreigners who would have house parties, bbqs and picnics. When I moved to Brazil, people met on the beach, or were otherwise mostly in public spaces (you can drink on the street there). In Portugal, it's a mix of bar/club and public space* (drinking on the street is allowed), plus house parties. Whether in Brazil or Portugal, I can go out and spend $15 (incl. two-way transportation) and have a great time. Try doing that in the States. * pretty typical scenes in Lisbon on the weekends http://imgur.com/a/5Fcvt http://imgur.com/a/5Fcvt
- adventured 11y ago
  On an observational basis, the public parks in LA are almost always filled with people having fun, having picnics, holding parties, et al. Drive by them on any weekend and they're full. BBQ is a massive industry in the US for a reason. It has gotten bigger, not smaller. More people today BBQ, not less. Potlucks are extremely common in the US as well. I think your criticism is unfounded. It's trivially easy to hold group get-togethers in public parks in the US and only be out $15.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    > "only be out $15." It very likely won't involve alcohol. There's almost nothing in the states you can do in public involving alcohol that will put you out < $15 and satisfy the notion of 'event' that anyone wanting alcohol would agree with. The "going out with friends and getting drunk" for $15 might fly in other countries, but probably not here.
    - sp332 11y ago
      You'll have to be more specific than "in the states" because when I do that, it feels like an "event" to me.
      - mgkimsal 11y ago
humanrebar 11y ago
I think they buried the most rational conclusion. After complaining about expensive cheese (really? someone lives in a hipster bubble) and awkward sorry-didn't-invite-you situations (which always existed), the NYT gets to the point: "More financially injurious, however, is the exorbitant rents that millennials often pay..." House parties take space. Space costs money, especially in and near Manhattan. They also require either lots of room between homes (to keep noise down) or amazing soundproofing. Neither of which is common in Manhattan. And everyone pays crazy rent. Remember when housing prices crashed in 2007-2008 and the government was brainstorming ways to keep them up? This isn't a force of nature, and it's not extra hard on millenials. It's policy. If anything, it's harder on families, since they need more space for kids (who don't pay rent) and have less tolerance for walkups (strollers) or rough neighborhoods. Besides, there are plenty of house parties across the country. They call them BBQs or pool parties, and they have them during the day in places where people with steady jobs can afford to own or rent a home with a yard or pool. You know, flyover country. The places that don't read the Style section of the NYT.
- morgante 11y ago
  > This isn't a force of nature, and it's not extra hard on millenials. Older people are more likely to own their homes (even in expensive cities like SF), so higher rent absolutely hits millenials harder.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Increased land prices mean higher taxes for homeowners too.
    - del82 11y ago
      And if property taxes go up on my landlord, my rent goes up to cover it.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
PaulRobinson 11y ago
I think the party went out of fashion in the UK when Abigail's Party ended up on TV in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail%27s_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail%27s_Party I basically hate house parties. I prefer spending time with my friends in pubs/bars, or going out to museums/galleries and that sort of thing. Occasionally we'll have people who want to spend time in our neck of the woods (London) and they can stay with us for a weekend and we'll do things like that. Occasionally we'll head back to our home town (Manchester), and we'll go and do things around there. The idea of a bunch of probable strangers in a house with a poor/prescribed collection of booze just doesn't interest me. It is too open to posturing, egos clashing, being unable to drift away or having "forced fun".
- personlurking 11y ago
  I suppose the definition matters in this case. While house parties used to mean "probable strangers in a house" when I was in my teens, for me it's now more like the UK experience described below by another HNer in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247096
winterismute 11y ago
I lived the last 5 years in the NL, as a foreigner, where I finished a MSc. In the last, say, 2 years I have been working full-time, and I noticed how throwing house parties became harder being in my late-20s: people have tight schedules, need to commute early because of work etc. Nonetheless, with my partner, we threw a handful each year. We lived in shared house but it was big, with a backyard and ok neighbors. We would always have some kind of big dinner and then mostly gather around the fire outside, sometimes watching stuff with a projector on a canvas we would put on the back wall. Although always a lot of effort, I really enjoyed it, it creates a nice and safe space so that people can be really open with each other, I have seen many people getting to know each other and "relationships" (work/feelings related) bootstrap. We have recently moved to the UK, outside London, in a smaller house. I don't know much of the people and the town, and I am observing on myself how I spend more time on the internet or watching movies. Maybe it's not related to being in 2015, maybe it's just that after 25 in modern societies it gets more difficult to get close to people. I wonder if it is a problem that a private or public venture could address in an innovative way.
- infodroid 11y ago
  > I wonder if it is a problem that a private or public venture could address in an innovative way. Yeah that would be meetup.com
  - jldugger 11y ago
    Indeed, my university town meetup for "Young Adults" is oversubscribed. It really needs a better waitlist function -- roughly 2 percent of the entire city is subscribed, which means if 5 percent of subscribers attend your party, your average apartment will easily be filled up twice what is reasonable.
- VLM 11y ago
  "Maybe it's not related to being in 2015, maybe it's just that after 25 in modern societies it gets more difficult to get close to people." Being a student used to mean being a teen, and that gives maybe a decade to party before the biological clock starts ringing and nobody can party all night because they have little kids. Sure, outliers always existed, but they were rare. Post teens were adults with adult incomes but not adult responsibilities, like kids, for quite a few years, usually. The modern economic strategy of extending childhood by about a decade by extending education and eliminating entry level positions and near elimination of the high school grad career path has all kinds of fascinating economic effect, mostly bad, but one big effect is by the time the advanced degrees and internships are done and someone finally has an above poverty level income and medical insurance and a place to live other than parents house, the biological clock is ringing and if you don't immediately start popping out newborns, you aren't going to have biological time to do it, thus dramatically limited party culture. So lets say culturally theres a shift from the delay between "I graduated and now I'm an adult" and "I got a herd of kids and after school stuff to attend and kids sports and ..." used to be a decade and now its maybe two years? So you'd naturally expect a decline of maybe 80% in party culture, taking it from dominant activity in the 20s to its basically gone? There is also the biological effect that scenes from the movie "Animal House" look like fun to a teenage brain, maybe not so much to an older brain, so increasing the drinking age and dramatically criminalizing drinking while also socially pushing the mantra often heard on HN that its impossible to socialize (party) without being an alcoholic (which is criminalized) will result in a natural decline in party culture.
sp332 11y ago
Parties used to be mostly full of strangers? And have no food and no alcohol? So... what did people do at a party?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- huxley 11y ago
  Listen to music? Talk? Pass a joint around? Those that played instruments brought them and would jam. I know I'm getting old and was kind of a prole but most parties that I went to in Atlantic Canada were like that, you brought what you could afford and the people holding the party provided the venue. You had strangers at the party because friends would invite their friends who'd bring some other friends. One never knew if the party would be huge or a bust. We were relatively poor students so food wasn't common unless people kicked in for a pizza or went out for donairs, whatever was plentiful and cheap and easy. The worst parties usually involved alcohol, I spent New Years Eve (1989) cleaning a walk-in kitchen pantry at a friend's flat because my then-girlfriend had barfed in it after she ran to what she thought was the bathroom. I was a bit disillusioned with parties after that.
  - sp332 11y ago
    You know, making music sounds great. I host "parties" on a regular basis, but they're small, I know almost everyone, and we usually play boardgames which I guessed most people wouldn't do at a party in the 80's :)
  - eitally 11y ago
    I'm not young (38), but my parents used to throw these kinds of open parties all the time when I was growing up. We had an open door policy, too, where anyone who showed up around a meal time was automatically served, too, and that provided a really awesome opportunity for us to build and strengthen friendships (being older and more worldly now, I know this is pretty common in large parts of the world, but it wasn't in central Virginia in the early 80s). We had a couple acres, and our house parties ranged from just a couple of folks over to hang out to large outdoor events with up to about 250 folks. In those cases it was always friends-of-friends-of-friends. As mentioned elsewhere, my family provided the venue and some general amenities (some drinks, core food) but it was expected that attendees would bring something to contribute. As adults now, my wife & I try to have friends over regularly, too, but it's a lot more complicated in suburban US because of dual-income households, kids that either don't go to neighborhood schools or are involved in lots of extracurriculars, and generally antisocial neighbors.
abhv 11y ago
Poorly written story based on 3 anecdotes and misused facts from BLS. I am on sabbatical in NYC for the year, and I've seen "the party" occur in common spaces, like parks. For the last 20 years in nyc, people right out of college have always used public spaces (parks, bars, clubs) as venues for their parties. On any fair-weather Saturday during spring-fall in Morningside park, there are 100s of people having parties with outdoor bbqs, lounging, bubble-making, etc. Same in central park. A friend of ours had their post-wedding party in central park around a huge oak tree; maybe 80 people showed up. The same couple hosted at least 3 parties during the year in their 1bd Village apartment (900 sq ft). It seems contradictory that the guests of parties expect "bourgeois cheese and beer" and yet themselves have limited budgets.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  I found this strange too. The few parties I go to are generally for birthdays and are held at parks or at inexpensive restaurants (kid's birthdays), or at someone's house with cheap snacks (chips, cake, wings, burgers, etc.) if they want to have alcohol. The notion of guests turning up their noses at your generic beer and non-gourmet appetizers suggests to me that the author needs to hang out with a better class of folks.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > It seems contradictory that the guests of parties expect "bourgeois cheese and beer" and yet themselves have limited budgets. Not if the guests see themselves as children and their hosts as parents.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    That's funny, but I think it touches on the effects of easy credit to this whole phenomenon. Kids are graduating university today with what was previously considered unconscionable debt, and then they pile up credit card debt because they want the best of the best that they see every day on Facebook and Pinterest. I'm not saying this as a blank statement against young people, there are irresponsible people living beyond their means at all ages. But consumerism as a trend in aggregate has amped up to record levels, and SV is a significant part of that.
littlewing 11y ago
I know I'm in the minority but our street has had house parties fairly frequently over the past years since we've lived here. Here's our story: When we first moved in, we went to each home in the area and invited them to come over and meet their neighbors that weekend. It was a cold weekend and all of those that came had coffee and hot chocolate in the garage and spoke for a little while. From then on, other neighbors and ourselves would periodically make extra cookies or other food and just take it over to a neighbor's house. When the weather is nice, people would just walk around the neighborhood and stop by to talk to others that happened to be outside. We put a fridge in the garage and offered people a soda, beer, or glass of wine when they stopped by, and over time others would gather and talk. Eventually people started to have dinner parties. Cocktails were served, chips, appetizers, etc. Ours is not an affluent neighborhood, but those that could afford it did all they could. Over the years, it has slowed down a little. There have been some weird friends that messed up relationships, and other mistakes with people drinking too much, etc. But, there have also been solid friendships that came out of it, and people still get together. It doesn't happen everywhere, for sure. We consider ourselves blessed to have such good friends and neighbors. But, I think that if you do similar things, you could have a chance at the same type of experience.
roymurdock 11y ago
> Rent is higher > More Millenials unemployed > More Millenials living at home > More geographic dispersion after school (good friends end up all over the world) > City scene is all about bars and clubs, especially for those who can afford it and want the prestige factor > Everything more competitive than 50 years ago when U.S. enjoyed an economic heyday after WWII >>> Millennials still party all the time regardless, and it's not that big of a deal
drivingmenuts 11y ago
Acc. to the article, New York is the only place where they party. Screw New York. Move to Texas. We have plenty of room to party.
jgh 11y ago
Cheeses, food, and expensive alcohol? Sounds like a gathering I'd attend now that I'm in my 30s...in my 20s it was all bottom-shelf liquor and terrible beer (and pretty much no food unless someone thought they were being classy by buying a shrimp ring)
notact 11y ago
They seem to have missed an important data point involving alcohol. If the stories I hear are accurate, a few decades ago if you were pulled over while intoxicated, the officer would likely say "You boys drive straight on home mkay?" We've become much less tolerant of alcohol-related accidents, and so that same situation sudenly becomes a much bigger problem. Who wants to risk a DUI to hang out with a bunch of squares from the office?
joesmo 11y ago
And of course you have raves that draw in hundreds of thousands in the US (134,000 for one night of this year's Electric Daisy Carnival for example), something unheard of in the 90's or 2000's here, so while house parties may not be as popular, partying itself obviously still is. I do think people are much more disconnected socially, but I don't think that's a different scenario than ten or twenty years ago, just one that's ramped up. It is possible to live today in the US and have close to zero social interactions. I can work from home, get all my goods delivered by Amazon or Instacart, all my entertainment delivered digital, and all my socializing online. This isn't a hypothetical: other than my immediate family, this has been a sort of experiment for the last year and a half or so. It's certainly unusual, but also can be very appealing in its own right. There are, however, many things that are quite unappealing as you might imagine. I certainly wouldn't recommend it for long periods because of them, but I wonder if this isn't the direction that society as a whole is heading, but I fear that it might very well be.
EC1 11y ago
Everything has been commercialized into absolute death.

112 points by mojuba 11y ago

anonu 11y ago

Curious to post this on a Saturday evening when ya'll should be partying... But its been an hour with no comments. So it would seem like at least some of us on HN have a life. Then again, its an interesting article but not super HN-pertinent.

peter_caltrain 11y ago
Why should we all be partying? Who are you to tell us what to do?
- foobar2020 11y ago
  Relax captain, it is just a joke. Go drink a beer with your friends, or not.
  - federico3 11y ago
    And here comes the good old "it's just a joke". http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustJokingJustification http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustJokingJustifi...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - foobar2020 11y ago
      That's really how I see that, as a joke. After all - who feels pressured by an anonymous internet comment?
- gaius 11y ago
  You created an account to say this?
  - peter_caltrain 11y ago
    Yeah I did actually create a throwaway to save personal attacks. Often on HN there's some discussion and people feel that they can tell other people what they should be doing about some subjective thing. One example is this thread. Some people don't like to party. The commenter said that we should go and party. Even if we don't like it. We should all like what they like and we should all do what they want to do. That's a brilliant example of the kind of pushy asshole I don't like to meet at parties. It's like those people that try to force you to dance at weddings. I don't like to dance - that's my decision. Another recent example was mother's day. I don't like my mother. She seriously neglected me as a child until I was removed by the state, which still causes me medical problems to this day. But everyone feels entitled to say that I should call my mother to say hi. Why should I? Because they have a good relationship with their mother? Good for them. But don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - DanBC 11y ago
      In this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519994 I said this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520124 (25 points)
    - gaius 11y ago
      Fair enough :-)

jsumrall 11y ago

Seems like a very different situation here in the Netherlands. Most people live somewhat close by, within 15 minutes of biking, and its not at all unusual for everyone to show up with some drinks or snacks. This takes care of two of the main reasons the article claims Americans are not having a house party. At one point in the article someone said that only have a 400ft space, and can only host 5-6 people before it gets crowded. I was just at a gathering yesterday in a room of less than 16m^2 (172ft^2) with 12 people without a problem.

jeswin 11y ago
It's probably 400 sq ft, which is a 20x20 ft room. 52 sq ft would be really small.
- jarvist 11y ago
  I suspect 16 m^2 --> 215 sq ft. (GP mistakenly multiplied by feet-in-metres rather than square-feet-in-square-metres conversion factor.)
mojuba 11y ago
Same in Ireland, house parties are pretty common. I'm wondering if it's to do with the population density and public transportation (you don't want to drive drunk), among many other factors already mentioned in the article.
- dazc 11y ago
  It's been awhile since I've been to Ireland (10 years) but I remember the cost of alcohol being very high, not just in tourist areas. I also notice police being very proactive against drink-driving - in the centre of Dublin at least.
  - mojuba 11y ago
    Drinks are much cheaper in shops compared to pubs/bars (the latter are taxed much more heavily). Another reason for Ireland to party at home :)

johan_larson 11y ago

One bit of hard data and a whole lot of anecdotes and speculation. Not worth it.

sp332 11y ago
Interpreting history is a valid way of getting insight. Not everything is rigorous.

ezequiel-garzon 11y ago

When I saw the title of the article and the source I was convinced it would be about the end of the political party, in view of the poll numbers for outsiders such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

petewailes 11y ago

UK here - people don't really do this in their 20's anymore, but in their 30's, and what hosting is seems rather different. It's more about enjoying social company around food, some music on Spotify, and probably a board game. It's an excuse to spend time with people you like outside of a work context. Most of the people I know have someone over to a house around once a month or so, or do an event of some kind (gallery showing, horse trials etc) for similar purposes.

Intermernet 11y ago
Australian here (Sydney) - House parties are alive and well in my local area. Last night my neighbors were going 'til about 4AM (I'm in Newtown, which is renowned for being a bit different [1], so this is probably a terrible data point). Age seems to have nothing to do with it. My said neighbors are uni students, I'm in my late 30's, my other neighbors are in their late 50's, and we've all been known to keep the block awake all night. No one complains, especially considering that friendly pre-party warnings / invitations are usually letter-box-dropped, and the late parties are usually confined to Friday / Saturday nights. I personally love the house party vibe where I live. We may not all share the same music tastes, but it does my soul good to hear people having a good time pretty much every weekend! It's possible that the reasons given in other comments (increased rent prices, social media redefining relationships etc.) are valid in Sydney as a whole, but thankfully they're having little effect in my surrounding area! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown,_New_South_Wales#Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown,_New_South_Wales#Cultu...
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Same story for the Netherlands I guess. We do house parties in our twenties too but usually it's for an occasion like a birthday, not just random having fun. There's also a lot of the 'meet around 9-10, have some drinks, light food and music at home until about 11:30 when you turn down the noise, all bike/taxi to the city centre and start hitting some pubs around midnight and stay there until the clubs fill up with people around 1:30 or so and stay until 4, maybe club-hop inbetween and then all go your own way home. The house party is more of a place to meet collectively, to get some drinks in 5x cheaper than in a club and talk to people while still sober and in a relatively quiet place, a pre-party really. By the 30s nobody really hits the clubs anymore (at 24 I've pretty much stopped already), plenty of parties at home though but usually there's no dancing involved which may tell you something about the nature of the party.

greggman 11y ago

I hosted a few house parties a year in SF. I love doing it. I don't mind the prep or the cleanup (though it would be nice to have help; :P) The problem is I lived in an apartment and the neighbors weren't happy about it. If I didn't have to worry about them I'd have thrown 3x more house parties. I probably got that from my family who threw large family parties and a giant new years party at our house with > 80 people every other year. One thing I liked about living in Tokyo, it was relatively trivial to rent an entire bar. So, people have parties and they don't have to worry about noise or cleanup. Of course one thing they do have to do is charge for the party but I guess that's a cultural thing. No one has a problem paying because they're used to it. And by paying I mean $20-$40 a person.

toothbrush 11y ago
$20-40 per person actually sounds reasonable, considering prices you'd normally pay for drinks in a bar. Hell, even just being at home having a party one could easily spend that on drinks and snacks. Plus, you're in a bar with non-strangers, which is something i'd also gladly pay for. Sounds like a right good idea to me!

greggman 11y ago

I hosted a few house parties a year in SF. I love doing it. I don't mind the prep or the cleanup (though it would be nice to have help; :P) The problem is I lived in an apartment and the neighbors aren't happy about it. If I didn't have to worry about them I'd thrown 3x more house parties. I probably got that from my family who threw large family parties and a giant new years party at our house with > 80 people every other year. One thing I liked about living in Tokyo, it was relatively trivial to rent an entire bar. So, people have parties and they don't have to worry about noise or cleanup. Of course one thing they do have to do is charge for the party but I guess that's a cultural thing. No one has a problem paying because they're used to it. And by paying I mean $20-$40 a person.

seibelj 11y ago

I'm a millennial and I go to parties all the time. I chose my apartment partly on party-throwing amenities. And my social network has parties too. Maybe it's just the city (Boston)? House parties have always been a big thing for me throughout college and after.

hessenwolf 11y ago
I was going to ask, but I figured I'd google it. "Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and ends. Most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s."
- Namrog84 11y ago
  When did generation y get absorbed by the word millennials? Last time I looked they were 2 distinct ones. Soon gen x and baby boomer gonnna get gobbled up too?
  - hessenwolf 11y ago
    "In August 1993, the phrase Generation Y first appeared in an Ad Age editorial to describe those who were aged 11 or younger as well as the teenagers of the upcoming ten years who Ad Age defined as different from Generation X.[6] Since then, the company has sometimes used 1982 as the starting birth year.[7] According to Horovitz, in 2012, Ad Age "threw in the towel by conceding that Millennials is a better name than Gen Y",[1] and by 2014, a past director of data strategy at Ad Age said to NPR "the Generation Y label was a placeholder until we found out more about them".[8]"
ambicapter 11y ago
Where at in Boston? Looking to move closer to the city soon.

personlurking 11y ago

I find the whole US experience quite odd. Among everyone I knew up until my mid-late 20s (before I went abroad), the only viable options for nighttime fun were clubs and bars. Period. Luckily, I knew foreigners who would have house parties, bbqs and picnics. When I moved to Brazil, people met on the beach, or were otherwise mostly in public spaces (you can drink on the street there). In Portugal, it's a mix of bar/club and public space* (drinking on the street is allowed), plus house parties. Whether in Brazil or Portugal, I can go out and spend $15 (incl. two-way transportation) and have a great time. Try doing that in the States. * pretty typical scenes in Lisbon on the weekends http://imgur.com/a/5Fcvt http://imgur.com/a/5Fcvt

adventured 11y ago
On an observational basis, the public parks in LA are almost always filled with people having fun, having picnics, holding parties, et al. Drive by them on any weekend and they're full. BBQ is a massive industry in the US for a reason. It has gotten bigger, not smaller. More people today BBQ, not less. Potlucks are extremely common in the US as well. I think your criticism is unfounded. It's trivially easy to hold group get-togethers in public parks in the US and only be out $15.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  > "only be out $15." It very likely won't involve alcohol. There's almost nothing in the states you can do in public involving alcohol that will put you out < $15 and satisfy the notion of 'event' that anyone wanting alcohol would agree with. The "going out with friends and getting drunk" for $15 might fly in other countries, but probably not here.
  - sp332 11y ago
    You'll have to be more specific than "in the states" because when I do that, it feels like an "event" to me.
    - mgkimsal 11y ago

humanrebar 11y ago

I think they buried the most rational conclusion. After complaining about expensive cheese (really? someone lives in a hipster bubble) and awkward sorry-didn't-invite-you situations (which always existed), the NYT gets to the point: "More financially injurious, however, is the exorbitant rents that millennials often pay..." House parties take space. Space costs money, especially in and near Manhattan. They also require either lots of room between homes (to keep noise down) or amazing soundproofing. Neither of which is common in Manhattan. And everyone pays crazy rent. Remember when housing prices crashed in 2007-2008 and the government was brainstorming ways to keep them up? This isn't a force of nature, and it's not extra hard on millenials. It's policy. If anything, it's harder on families, since they need more space for kids (who don't pay rent) and have less tolerance for walkups (strollers) or rough neighborhoods. Besides, there are plenty of house parties across the country. They call them BBQs or pool parties, and they have them during the day in places where people with steady jobs can afford to own or rent a home with a yard or pool. You know, flyover country. The places that don't read the Style section of the NYT.

morgante 11y ago
> This isn't a force of nature, and it's not extra hard on millenials. Older people are more likely to own their homes (even in expensive cities like SF), so higher rent absolutely hits millenials harder.
- sp332 11y ago
  Increased land prices mean higher taxes for homeowners too.
  - del82 11y ago
    And if property taxes go up on my landlord, my rent goes up to cover it.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

PaulRobinson 11y ago

I think the party went out of fashion in the UK when Abigail's Party ended up on TV in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail%27s_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail%27s_Party I basically hate house parties. I prefer spending time with my friends in pubs/bars, or going out to museums/galleries and that sort of thing. Occasionally we'll have people who want to spend time in our neck of the woods (London) and they can stay with us for a weekend and we'll do things like that. Occasionally we'll head back to our home town (Manchester), and we'll go and do things around there. The idea of a bunch of probable strangers in a house with a poor/prescribed collection of booze just doesn't interest me. It is too open to posturing, egos clashing, being unable to drift away or having "forced fun".

personlurking 11y ago
I suppose the definition matters in this case. While house parties used to mean "probable strangers in a house" when I was in my teens, for me it's now more like the UK experience described below by another HNer in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247096

winterismute 11y ago

I lived the last 5 years in the NL, as a foreigner, where I finished a MSc. In the last, say, 2 years I have been working full-time, and I noticed how throwing house parties became harder being in my late-20s: people have tight schedules, need to commute early because of work etc. Nonetheless, with my partner, we threw a handful each year. We lived in shared house but it was big, with a backyard and ok neighbors. We would always have some kind of big dinner and then mostly gather around the fire outside, sometimes watching stuff with a projector on a canvas we would put on the back wall. Although always a lot of effort, I really enjoyed it, it creates a nice and safe space so that people can be really open with each other, I have seen many people getting to know each other and "relationships" (work/feelings related) bootstrap. We have recently moved to the UK, outside London, in a smaller house. I don't know much of the people and the town, and I am observing on myself how I spend more time on the internet or watching movies. Maybe it's not related to being in 2015, maybe it's just that after 25 in modern societies it gets more difficult to get close to people. I wonder if it is a problem that a private or public venture could address in an innovative way.

infodroid 11y ago
> I wonder if it is a problem that a private or public venture could address in an innovative way. Yeah that would be meetup.com
- jldugger 11y ago
  Indeed, my university town meetup for "Young Adults" is oversubscribed. It really needs a better waitlist function -- roughly 2 percent of the entire city is subscribed, which means if 5 percent of subscribers attend your party, your average apartment will easily be filled up twice what is reasonable.
VLM 11y ago
"Maybe it's not related to being in 2015, maybe it's just that after 25 in modern societies it gets more difficult to get close to people." Being a student used to mean being a teen, and that gives maybe a decade to party before the biological clock starts ringing and nobody can party all night because they have little kids. Sure, outliers always existed, but they were rare. Post teens were adults with adult incomes but not adult responsibilities, like kids, for quite a few years, usually. The modern economic strategy of extending childhood by about a decade by extending education and eliminating entry level positions and near elimination of the high school grad career path has all kinds of fascinating economic effect, mostly bad, but one big effect is by the time the advanced degrees and internships are done and someone finally has an above poverty level income and medical insurance and a place to live other than parents house, the biological clock is ringing and if you don't immediately start popping out newborns, you aren't going to have biological time to do it, thus dramatically limited party culture. So lets say culturally theres a shift from the delay between "I graduated and now I'm an adult" and "I got a herd of kids and after school stuff to attend and kids sports and ..." used to be a decade and now its maybe two years? So you'd naturally expect a decline of maybe 80% in party culture, taking it from dominant activity in the 20s to its basically gone? There is also the biological effect that scenes from the movie "Animal House" look like fun to a teenage brain, maybe not so much to an older brain, so increasing the drinking age and dramatically criminalizing drinking while also socially pushing the mantra often heard on HN that its impossible to socialize (party) without being an alcoholic (which is criminalized) will result in a natural decline in party culture.

sp332 11y ago

Parties used to be mostly full of strangers? And have no food and no alcohol? So... what did people do at a party?

deleted 11y ago
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huxley 11y ago
Listen to music? Talk? Pass a joint around? Those that played instruments brought them and would jam. I know I'm getting old and was kind of a prole but most parties that I went to in Atlantic Canada were like that, you brought what you could afford and the people holding the party provided the venue. You had strangers at the party because friends would invite their friends who'd bring some other friends. One never knew if the party would be huge or a bust. We were relatively poor students so food wasn't common unless people kicked in for a pizza or went out for donairs, whatever was plentiful and cheap and easy. The worst parties usually involved alcohol, I spent New Years Eve (1989) cleaning a walk-in kitchen pantry at a friend's flat because my then-girlfriend had barfed in it after she ran to what she thought was the bathroom. I was a bit disillusioned with parties after that.
- sp332 11y ago
  You know, making music sounds great. I host "parties" on a regular basis, but they're small, I know almost everyone, and we usually play boardgames which I guessed most people wouldn't do at a party in the 80's :)
- eitally 11y ago
  I'm not young (38), but my parents used to throw these kinds of open parties all the time when I was growing up. We had an open door policy, too, where anyone who showed up around a meal time was automatically served, too, and that provided a really awesome opportunity for us to build and strengthen friendships (being older and more worldly now, I know this is pretty common in large parts of the world, but it wasn't in central Virginia in the early 80s). We had a couple acres, and our house parties ranged from just a couple of folks over to hang out to large outdoor events with up to about 250 folks. In those cases it was always friends-of-friends-of-friends. As mentioned elsewhere, my family provided the venue and some general amenities (some drinks, core food) but it was expected that attendees would bring something to contribute. As adults now, my wife & I try to have friends over regularly, too, but it's a lot more complicated in suburban US because of dual-income households, kids that either don't go to neighborhood schools or are involved in lots of extracurriculars, and generally antisocial neighbors.

abhv 11y ago

Poorly written story based on 3 anecdotes and misused facts from BLS. I am on sabbatical in NYC for the year, and I've seen "the party" occur in common spaces, like parks. For the last 20 years in nyc, people right out of college have always used public spaces (parks, bars, clubs) as venues for their parties. On any fair-weather Saturday during spring-fall in Morningside park, there are 100s of people having parties with outdoor bbqs, lounging, bubble-making, etc. Same in central park. A friend of ours had their post-wedding party in central park around a huge oak tree; maybe 80 people showed up. The same couple hosted at least 3 parties during the year in their 1bd Village apartment (900 sq ft). It seems contradictory that the guests of parties expect "bourgeois cheese and beer" and yet themselves have limited budgets.

HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
I found this strange too. The few parties I go to are generally for birthdays and are held at parks or at inexpensive restaurants (kid's birthdays), or at someone's house with cheap snacks (chips, cake, wings, burgers, etc.) if they want to have alcohol. The notion of guests turning up their noses at your generic beer and non-gourmet appetizers suggests to me that the author needs to hang out with a better class of folks.
wtbob 11y ago
> It seems contradictory that the guests of parties expect "bourgeois cheese and beer" and yet themselves have limited budgets. Not if the guests see themselves as children and their hosts as parents.
- dasil003 11y ago
  That's funny, but I think it touches on the effects of easy credit to this whole phenomenon. Kids are graduating university today with what was previously considered unconscionable debt, and then they pile up credit card debt because they want the best of the best that they see every day on Facebook and Pinterest. I'm not saying this as a blank statement against young people, there are irresponsible people living beyond their means at all ages. But consumerism as a trend in aggregate has amped up to record levels, and SV is a significant part of that.

littlewing 11y ago

I know I'm in the minority but our street has had house parties fairly frequently over the past years since we've lived here. Here's our story: When we first moved in, we went to each home in the area and invited them to come over and meet their neighbors that weekend. It was a cold weekend and all of those that came had coffee and hot chocolate in the garage and spoke for a little while. From then on, other neighbors and ourselves would periodically make extra cookies or other food and just take it over to a neighbor's house. When the weather is nice, people would just walk around the neighborhood and stop by to talk to others that happened to be outside. We put a fridge in the garage and offered people a soda, beer, or glass of wine when they stopped by, and over time others would gather and talk. Eventually people started to have dinner parties. Cocktails were served, chips, appetizers, etc. Ours is not an affluent neighborhood, but those that could afford it did all they could. Over the years, it has slowed down a little. There have been some weird friends that messed up relationships, and other mistakes with people drinking too much, etc. But, there have also been solid friendships that came out of it, and people still get together. It doesn't happen everywhere, for sure. We consider ourselves blessed to have such good friends and neighbors. But, I think that if you do similar things, you could have a chance at the same type of experience.

roymurdock 11y ago

> Rent is higher > More Millenials unemployed > More Millenials living at home > More geographic dispersion after school (good friends end up all over the world) > City scene is all about bars and clubs, especially for those who can afford it and want the prestige factor > Everything more competitive than 50 years ago when U.S. enjoyed an economic heyday after WWII >>> Millennials still party all the time regardless, and it's not that big of a deal

drivingmenuts 11y ago

Acc. to the article, New York is the only place where they party. Screw New York. Move to Texas. We have plenty of room to party.

jgh 11y ago

Cheeses, food, and expensive alcohol? Sounds like a gathering I'd attend now that I'm in my 30s...in my 20s it was all bottom-shelf liquor and terrible beer (and pretty much no food unless someone thought they were being classy by buying a shrimp ring)

notact 11y ago

They seem to have missed an important data point involving alcohol. If the stories I hear are accurate, a few decades ago if you were pulled over while intoxicated, the officer would likely say "You boys drive straight on home mkay?" We've become much less tolerant of alcohol-related accidents, and so that same situation sudenly becomes a much bigger problem. Who wants to risk a DUI to hang out with a bunch of squares from the office?

joesmo 11y ago

And of course you have raves that draw in hundreds of thousands in the US (134,000 for one night of this year's Electric Daisy Carnival for example), something unheard of in the 90's or 2000's here, so while house parties may not be as popular, partying itself obviously still is. I do think people are much more disconnected socially, but I don't think that's a different scenario than ten or twenty years ago, just one that's ramped up. It is possible to live today in the US and have close to zero social interactions. I can work from home, get all my goods delivered by Amazon or Instacart, all my entertainment delivered digital, and all my socializing online. This isn't a hypothetical: other than my immediate family, this has been a sort of experiment for the last year and a half or so. It's certainly unusual, but also can be very appealing in its own right. There are, however, many things that are quite unappealing as you might imagine. I certainly wouldn't recommend it for long periods because of them, but I wonder if this isn't the direction that society as a whole is heading, but I fear that it might very well be.

EC1 11y ago

Everything has been commercialized into absolute death.