And nightclubs. There was one in the small city I went to university in and (later on) lived in for about a decade, that catered to a fairly specific subcultural melange (goth, punk, alt rock). Bit of a dive it must be said, but cheap drinks when we were students.

It didn’t change with the times at all and the subcultures themselves went into decline or just aged-out of being club-goers. On closing night it was rammed with people who were sad to see it go, who wished it could stay there. The owner asked “where have you all been?”

Well, we’ve been ageing, hanging out in craft ale bars and doing that a lot less often. Our appetites for hanging out in a loud, semi-subterranean dive are satisfied by an annual or biannual visit to a place we thought fondly of and thought would always be there, but didn’t really want to be in when it came to it.