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Vices and Virtues
Oct. 26th, 2009 09:08 amThe cafes in Britain are all closed by six. Now on one hand this makes perfect sense - only a crazy person wants to drink caffeinated beverages at nine o'clock at night - but on the other hand I am a crazy person, and the fact that I can't get my hot chocolate fix at a reasonable hour is just exasperating.
This issue of closing hours is not something I was expecting. In my (not very cosmopolitan, half the size of York) hometown, the cafes stay open till at least ten, and the ones on campus stay open till midnight. The bookstores are open till ten or eleven; even the public library is open till nine; and the supermarkets are mostly open twenty-four hours.
Possibly I'm looking in all the wrong places, but in York the only things that seem to be open after seven are the pubs. I suppose this is all right, because college social life (as the drinking age here is eighteen) seems to revolve around the pubs.
I've heard a number of people at home suggest that lowering the drinking age will make people drink more responsibly. This is bullshit. College students here drink exactly as irresponsibly as they do at home, and the only difference is that half of their antics are sponsored by the university - because obviously the only way to get freshers to loosen up enough to speak to each other is to ply them with alcohol.
And why on earth would college students drink less if the drinking age were lowered? If alcohol is totally acceptable people will drink less of it, because it no longer feels transgressive? People don't have vices* because of reverse psychology ("It's considered vile! Therefore I must do it!"); people have vices because vice feels good, and generally speaking it feels even better when it isn't laden with guilt.
Because really: when did young women have more premarital sex? In Victorian times - or now?
*I realize that the word "vice" makes me sound like a latter-day temperance warrior, which is a twitch stronger than I mean to be; I just can't think of another word that bundles drinking, smoking, drugs, and sex together efficiently.
This issue of closing hours is not something I was expecting. In my (not very cosmopolitan, half the size of York) hometown, the cafes stay open till at least ten, and the ones on campus stay open till midnight. The bookstores are open till ten or eleven; even the public library is open till nine; and the supermarkets are mostly open twenty-four hours.
Possibly I'm looking in all the wrong places, but in York the only things that seem to be open after seven are the pubs. I suppose this is all right, because college social life (as the drinking age here is eighteen) seems to revolve around the pubs.
I've heard a number of people at home suggest that lowering the drinking age will make people drink more responsibly. This is bullshit. College students here drink exactly as irresponsibly as they do at home, and the only difference is that half of their antics are sponsored by the university - because obviously the only way to get freshers to loosen up enough to speak to each other is to ply them with alcohol.
And why on earth would college students drink less if the drinking age were lowered? If alcohol is totally acceptable people will drink less of it, because it no longer feels transgressive? People don't have vices* because of reverse psychology ("It's considered vile! Therefore I must do it!"); people have vices because vice feels good, and generally speaking it feels even better when it isn't laden with guilt.
Because really: when did young women have more premarital sex? In Victorian times - or now?
*I realize that the word "vice" makes me sound like a latter-day temperance warrior, which is a twitch stronger than I mean to be; I just can't think of another word that bundles drinking, smoking, drugs, and sex together efficiently.
