9 ms·
Outdoor Dining Is Doomed
- akerl_ 4y agoFeels like a fluff piece. Of course fewer people sit outside to eat when it’s below freezing. That doesn’t mean outdoor dining is “doomed”.
- shapefrog 4y agoIn a few months time "You wont believe this ONE thing that has SAVED Outdoor Dining!!!" Spoiler: Summer.
- nytesky 4y agoYou are probably posting form California or Europe. Summer in much of the US has a humid continental climate. Which means there are about 3 weeks in spring and fall when the sitting outside is as pleasant as conditioned air. Otherwise you have humidity, rain, bugs, etc for your meal, and you will be perspiring quite a bit.
- drone 4y agoEven in Houston, which is an exceptionally hot and humid city in the summer, and cold and humid in the winter, outdoor dining is ubiquitous across the city in all seasons. A popular restaurant down the street from me is outdoor-only and stays packed in the evenings year round. There is no dearth of outdoor dining in the US. On monsoon days, or during periods of peak heat/cold? Yes, the outdoor table attendance is down, but rarely zero. As others have stated though, outdoor dining in other cities is typically nothing at all like what the Atlantic is discussing in NYC. NYC wasn't built for outdoor dining, but it has nothing to do with being car-centric, or too hot/humid.
- rascul 4y ago> Which means there are about 3 weeks in spring and fall when the sitting outside is as pleasant as conditioned air. Highly subjective. I often find it more pleasant to sit outside for most of what I consider the warm part of the year, which includes summer. I eat lunch outside almost every day and love it.
- angry_octet 4y agoYou won't believe it, but in Asia outdoor dining is common AND it's quite humid. And bugs! Yet people keep doing it.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoWhere? I don't think people do it here nearly as much as in Europe. In Japan you rarely see outdoor seats at restaurants, for example.
- angry_octet 4y agoMalaysia, Vietnam, (southern) China, Thailand, Indonesia... Usually under shade/rain protection but open air.
- argc 4y agoPretty common in Vietnam
- none_to_remain 4y agoI think it refers to the specific model of pandemic outdoor dining: eat in a dirty, rat infested plywood shack. The confusion of the journalists is such that they expected people would desire this after the period of exceptional circumstances
- Gordonjcp 4y agoWho would have thought that people would come to the shocking conclusion that having your food rained on isn't much fun?
- wpm 4y agoWow someone really ought to let the rest of the world outside of car-oriented America know. Outdoor dining sucks in most North American cities because you get to eat right next to a bunch of loud, polluting car traffic zooming by 5 ft away. Last time I ate outside in Chicago I could reach out and touch an idling minivan. No thank you.
- nytesky 4y agoSo will electrics cars help bringing an alfresco dining revolution?
- TheCoelacanth 4y agoNo, because they are still noisy and polluting (a huge amount of air pollution comes from bits of tires flaking off, which is still a problem for EVs).
- midoridensha 4y agoThey're also extremely dangerous (just like gas cars). Crazy people and elderly people sometimes drive them into pedestrians and other crowded areas.
- CydeWeys 4y agoGetting rid of the cars certainly will. There's lots of streets in e.g. Manhattan that simply need to have the on-street parking removed, and some of them even need to have the car lanes removed entirely (the most obvious candidates are 32nd St in K-Town, Broadway between Times Square and Union Square Park, those few blocks in Little Italy with all the restaurants, and similar).
- gnicholas 4y agodupe comment?
- tbrownaw 4y ago> Wow someone really ought to let the rest of the world outside of car-oriented America know. I live in the usa. The places I've been to that have outdoor tables and aren't in pedestrian areas tend to have a giant parking lot shielding them from any high-traffic roads. The place that was an exception to that was on the edge of a university campus with relatively slow traffic.
- wpm 4y agoWow someone really ought to let the rest of the world outside of America know. Outdoor dining sucks in most North American cities because you get to eat right next to a bunch of loud, polluting car traffic zooming by a few feet away. Last time I ate outside in Chicago I could reach out and touch an idling minivan. No thank you. New York City keeps their garbage, most of the time, again, within touching or at the very least smelling distance of outdoor eateries. The city is loud because it's overrun with automobile traffic. Who the hell would want to eat in that environment? Perhaps we could work on making the rest of our cities look and feel like the parks that are usually popular places to bring lunch, since, you know, they're quiet and feel safe.
- JohnFen 4y agoDoesn't matter how nice you make it, I'm not eating outside during the cold months. It's freaking cold, and those outdoor propane heaters are not only marginally effective, they're a clear and obvious environmental insult.
- Swizec 4y agoIn Slovenia coffee shops give out blankets during the cold months. They’re bery popular with smokers.
- Nursie 4y agoThis happened in the UK during lockdown as well, when you were allowed to meet for dinner outside but not inside, a lot of restaurants suddenly sprouted outdoor heating lamps and a lot of blankets.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI’m sitting outside my home right now wishing I had a blanket for smoking in the cold.
- foobiekr 4y agogotta say, as someone made weak by the bay area climate and now intolerant of cold, this sounds awesome. except the smokers.
- infamouscow 4y agoI can see why media folks are afraid of ChatGPT taking their job.
- slaw 4y agoThese days web pages instead of links to support articles should include query to ChatGPT that generated them.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago"For a only $5/m you can see all the queries we used to generate these articles..."
- CydeWeys 4y agoThis is a killer rebuttal to insipid low-thought articles. I'm stealing it.
- horsawlarway 4y agoOutdoor dining is fine and will continue to be fine. Outdoor dining that was not properly planned for, and was shoved in at the last minute to accommodate covid restrictions will probably die out. Outdoor dining that is: - On a pedestrian only (or low traffic) street - Covered (simple overhang is fine) - Heated as needed (or just closed on particularly cold/rainy days) Will stick around for a long time (and mostly predates covid anyways). New York certainly has some areas that are great for this - but given that a lot of the city is... dirty, smelly, and car infested... I don't see outdoor dining hanging around in those spots.
- cfeduke 4y agoMost of the outdoor dining doesn't even need to be covered if its situated in a pedestrian area surrounded by tall buildings. Market Street in Charlottesville Virginia is exactly this, and is an excellent place to dine outside throughout most of the year - the surrounding buildings block wind and shade out bright sunlight. Of course there is rain, but that's maybe 10-20% of the year which depresses foot traffic already.
- t8sr 4y agoThe article is very far from insightful, or even well written. I apologize if this is mean, but who even are The Atlantic's readers? The prose is too dry to overlap with tabloids or, like, Time Magazine. It's strictly worse at essays and cultural commentary than the New Yorker. It's strictly worse at lit than the Paris Review. Who reads this stuff, and why?
- unethical_ban 4y agoThe Atlantic is usually decent, and it is not wise to draw conclusions from a single article. But yes, this turned me off entirely, from the start. Golly gee, people aren't eating outside in uncovered, unheated cold in the North. I live in south Texas, right around the latitude of Cairo, Egypt. We aren't eating outside as much right now, either.
- awiesenhofer 4y agoAs an european I can't stop laughing at that headline - and I am pretty sure lots of HN'ers from other parts of the world will too...
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoDo Americans exclusively eat inside? I can't imagine opening a place in Australia and not setting up some form of outdoor dining.
- torstenvl 4y agoOutdoor dining in the nice parts of America will continue being as amazing as it always has been. NYC is a cramped, overcrowded island that literally doesn't have enough room for dumpsters; trash on the streets, rats, and all the obvious follow-on effects obviously degrade the experience there.
- angry_octet 4y agoNYC chooses to have rat infested dumpsters and trash bags on the sidewalk, parked cars and traffic. Other places with NYC density have pedestrian-first areas for outdoor dining, transform car parks into patios in the warmer months, and transform old parking lots into beer gardens, food truck events etc.
- torstenvl 4y agoA lot of small cities in the South are like that. Beaufort and New Bern are some of my favorite places in the world to eat outside.
- brightball 4y agoBeaufort is a great spot. I almost lived there 20 years ago but the job fell through (company went under).
- lokar 4y agoAll of that is true, but living in Manhattan is fantastic. But, the weather in California is certainly much better.
- Apreche 4y agoMaybe it's the cars that are doomed.
- CydeWeys 4y agoThis article kinda sucks and sounds like it was written by a complete NIMBY. I don't have the energy to do a proper full rebuttal, but I'll just respond to one representative dumb line from the article: > For one thing, dining sheds tend to take up parking spaces needed to attract customers, Cutting-Jones said. This is absolute bullshit. In the space it takes for one car to park, you can easily have a dozen or more patrons dining there. And these streeteries are located in dense cities (the article's title image is clearly Manhattan), where, guess what, the VAST majority of people aren't driving to go out for dinner. Also, yes, it's winter. Of course outdoor dining is less popular (though I'm still routinely drinking outdoors on sidewalk tables at my favorite bar). But you know what? Winter won't last forever, and the outdoor dining will be bustling again soon enough. I'm so tired of hearing these same lame car-centric takes over and over again. Let's just leave everything as parking and never have anything nice on the streets. I bet this guy would get rid of sidewalks too if he had his way.
- cratermoon 4y agoAlso, businesses overestimate the need for parking. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-shoppers-mobility-habits-retailers-overestimate.html https://phys.org/news/2021-07-shoppers-mobility-habits-retai...
- Overtonwindow 4y agoThe last thing I wanna do with the restaurant is sit on the sidewalk and smell fumes and have to deal with people constantly walking by.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoAmerican hipster moves into big loud dirty city and complains of eating outside…