Boston wonders if they can re-support nightlife based on the results so far from the World Cup

People waited to be seated outside The Union Bar. Photo: Christian Kantosky, Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe has been writing about the impact of the World Cup on the city's nightlife.

Where the Scots cleaned out alcohol supplies ("‘We’ve never seen anything like it’: Patrons emptied bars and liquor stores in Boston this weekend"), the city extended open hours till 3 am ("Governor Healey signs bill allowing 3 a.m. last call for the World Cup, expanding public drinking through July"), outdoor public drinking zones, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, etc.  

So the Boston Globe wonders if "Boston nightlife is in the midst of a grand social experiment. Can the good vibes last?."

As someone who worked on commercial district revitalization for 20 years in DC and wrote a lot about this issue, they missed the biggest possible point and difference, the addition of many tens of thousands of people from out of the area who were there for nightlife.

-- "Aging cities | Maintaining economic dynamism in the face of aging populations at the city and metropolitan scale" (2025)

-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization: New business models are needed for 2025" (especially the comments where I quote from relevant articles I come across)

-- "Experience economy/nightlife: Boston, LA, Pittsburgh, London, Santa Monica" (2025)

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc." (2016)

Bourbon Street.

Temporarily, World Cup cities are functioning more like 24/7 nightlife districts in Las Vegas, Miami, and not quite NYC, plus Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Beale Street in Memphis?.  People go to those cities to party.  

I follow Reddit Las Vegas and people write about going there and being drunk and/or high for most of their stay.  Maybe the Scots were like that.  Not Bostonians.

Plus the super posh clubs with bottle service and all night dancing, massive pool parties in Vegas, etc.

Beale Street.

A traditional city, at least in the US, just doesn't have that kind of latent populations always going out, and willing to be shitfaced and then go to work.  Concerns like:

• Having to work two jobs
• mobility when drunk
• the impact of smartphones on entertainment choices, less ability to socialize
• the cost of going out
• consumption of experiences
• labor for the establishments and the the rise of the cost of goods sold, 
• rents and changing business models due to work from home reducing office visits
• people drinking less
• People consuming edibles instead of drinking, 
• mocktails (just as expensive to produce, lower margins, 
• etc.

Make it a lot harder to go out.