Standards and Bars

I went to London in 2006 for New Years Eve. It was a good time: got dressed up, ate some of the most delicious food I have ever eaten, took a walk along the Thames, and watched the fireworks from Millennium Bridge.

Then we tried to walk to the Tube, which was free for the night. I was expecting a crowded Tube ride; what I was not expecting were the 12 million other people trying to do the same thing. At this moment, I became keenly aware of seediest side of human nature.

London did two things I thought were either genius or completely misguided:
1) They made the Tube free: this allowed for people to get drunk without driving. Always good. But that also gave people carte blanche to go out rather than having people over.
2) they closed all but one entrance and one exit of the Tube stations: this funneled everyone into one place, allowing for a smoother flow of people; that is, it would have had not 12 million people gone to the same place.
It's hard to say whether or not those were good ideas, but with those numbers it's hard to say what would be the best manner of handling the situation. Can there be degrees of anarchy?

This is not that entirely different than going out in any large scale metropolitan area (and by large scale, I mean New York, LA, Las Vegas [small in indiginous population, but that is known to balloon around special occasions] and my home stomping grounds, Chicago). I have been in crazy, public situations before: Taste of Chicago for the fireworks every year between 1996 and 2003. The biggest difference between these two situations (New Years Eve in London and 4th of July in Chicago) is the open liquor law. You can't walk into a bar in Chicago, buy a beer, in a bottle, and walk out with it. You can in London.

The same is true of Aberystwyth. Tonight, after reading some dense Russian Formalist Theory (I know; I am a hoot), I wandered into town to blow off some steam, clear my mind, and get away from my room. The walk was mostly solitary until I got to the more centrally located area. Now, because I don't drink, and because hanging out in a bar on Saturday night by yourself is lonely, I haven't really tasted the night light in Aberystwyth proper. I went to a bar on a Sunday night, and it was, not surprisingly, subdued. On a Saturday, at midnight, the situation was entirely different.

There is a dense package of bars on the western edge of town, including one particularly hopping joint on the pier. There was a mixture of quieter, local bars, filled with grim-faced stool jockeys watching the TVs; larger, better lit places with fancy florescent drinks and young girls tossing coins into jukeboxes; and dark, black-lit thunderous clubs filled with aural hallucinations and several types of intoxications. The streets will filled with every variety of partier: girls dressed inappropriately for the cold weather; dudes in hoodies and tennis shoes; crisp, collared shirts and meticulously gelled hair; punk-rock girls with spiked hair and nasty attitudes spelled across their t-shirts; and one girl dressed like she lived in Bedrock. All of this was like any other college town.

What was different was the surprising number of open bottles people just wandered around with. In every square, on every bench, there were a collection of revelers drinking booze purchased singularly, and nearby. This would never fly in America, and it might have something to do with the number of guns per citizens in both respective countries, but I have seen fights start over the dumbest things when people don't have the benefit of a glass bottle to use as a weapon. I could not imagine what two hot-headed Americans would do if they could purchase a weapon at a bar.

I am told that the government on a national level is concerned about drinking and behavior, and that the open bottle policy is being reconsidered. Maybe it's my experience around violent drunks that has me believing that these laws need reconsideration; or maybe it's because I don't like being hit with bottles. It's hard to say.

One thing that I was impressed with here was the sheer volume of taxis that were scuttling drunk groups up and down the hill. One might wonder why a town of roughly 15,000 needs four bus routes and two fleets of taxis. It's a twenty minute walk into town, and while I would like to think that most people would walk it if taxis were not available, I know better. The taxis prevent people from being too lazy and driving into town, getting drunk and driving home. As I was walking home, I would see three taxis flying up the hill, bumper-to-bumper. All three would pull into campus and drop student off, just to return down the hill and repeat the whole process. Again, it's not a long walk, and I imagine that the time spent outside, barring total inebriation, would probably do the less drunk some good; that said, I am glad to see that Aberystwyth has done something to promote responsibility. Carbondale, and even Chicago (as I found out after New Years Eve), is criminally understocked in taxis.

But, as I passed two blond girls talking, but not really talking to each other, just sort of tossing words out into the night, the differences reduced to a non-point:
"Where are we?"
"Look, the pier."
"I didn't want to get drunk."
"Pier...peer pressure."
This one locked eyes with me:
"Peer pressure," she said, "do you hear me. Peer pressure."
They stumbled through the darkness continuing the conversation in this manner.