Cheers to a Good Time

           This is Jamie Ferri.  As a 21-year-old college student, when I think about pleasure and desire, I think about nightlife.  More specifically, New York City bars are common places of pleasure for a variety of reasons.  People can wind down after a week of school and work with some drinks, meet up with friends, dance, sing, eat Buffalo wings, and very basically relax. Alcohol is the number one influence for a good time at a bar.  College students especially tend to immerse themselves in this kind of nightlife so much so that it has truly become a staple for a successfully fun weekend.   

I have had the pleasure of partaking in a night at a very small, college bar.  From an outside, sober perspective, a bar is a fascinating spot of pleasure.  I should clarify, however, when I say “a bar”, I mean New York’s typical sports bar lined with domestic draft beer taps, and flashing flat screens of football.  I am not talking about a classy, clean upscale bar with cocktail waitresses like the women of Sex and the City visit.  The floors of a typical college bar are sticky and the air smells of beer and shame.  If you leave the bar without any beer spilled on some part of your body, clothes, or shoes, you have achieved a miraculous feat and an award should be granted in your name.  (This is an impossible stunt to attempt and therefore if you choose to visit such a place of establishment, I advise you give in and dress to be spilled on.)  So why would anyone want to be in this grungy, smelly, sweaty, dark, loud, minimal space and air atmosphere?  College students are of a curious breed.  We long for the beer and the sweat because it brings people, and shoulders, together. 

People want to be together.  The college bar generation (Warning: Not an actual sociological term describing the generation of 18-25 year old college students.) is drawn to the bar where “everyone” is going.  It might be small and it might be over-packed with an absurd number of people that exceeds way over the Fire Marshal’s codes of safety, but it is fun.  This is the way to ensure the place is going to be the most exciting because it has the largest group of people in one place.  I’m not exactly sure why that is more important than being in a less sweaty atmosphere with a few close friends, but it is a theory that has proven itself time and time again.  The bottom line is that when the cheap beer is flowing, and the music is blasting, people seem to be very happy.  The alcohol loosens everybody’s intuitions and allows for some very honest conversation and perhaps some public displays of affection, which some people might be very sorry for the next morning.