Social change, the group kind
Oct. 22nd, 2007 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexI noted this weekend that the parties once again featured alcohol and drinking and I reflected thus:
The social group I'm typically part of did not tend to drink all that much in college. When I joined the crowd there was a fair amount of drinking at parties. Over time that fell into disfavor. Alcohol became... not shunned or frowned on, but just not the recreation of choice. There was a tad of snobbishness about it, as the crowd used the not-alcohol as part of its self-setting-apart metric. That snobbishness carried over into certain areas of pride in home brewing. If one was going to drink, one should drink GOOD stuff, not just drink for the effects of alcohol. Spread that "good stuff" out from homebrewed meads and beers to people taking wine classes, developing tastes for good scotch and good port.
Fast forward a bit to now. The crowd has changed, as all crowds do. We're older and dare I say it more mature or adult if you prefer. More of us have houses and families and are more secure than your typical just-out-of-college type. And more of us have gone to the point of enjoying drinking-qua-drinking again. I don't see people going out purely to get blitzed but I do see pitchers of mojitos, custom martinis in volume, and more than a few blenders of drinkables being enjoyed at parties these days.
I didn't drink at the party I went to Friday, but I did note more than a few empty bottles and a certain level of comfort with alcohol in the party scene that wasn't there a decade ago. The edges of defensiveness and snobbishness around alcohol that I'd sensed in the past seemed to be absent.
Interesting bunch of folk we are.
The social group I'm typically part of did not tend to drink all that much in college. When I joined the crowd there was a fair amount of drinking at parties. Over time that fell into disfavor. Alcohol became... not shunned or frowned on, but just not the recreation of choice. There was a tad of snobbishness about it, as the crowd used the not-alcohol as part of its self-setting-apart metric. That snobbishness carried over into certain areas of pride in home brewing. If one was going to drink, one should drink GOOD stuff, not just drink for the effects of alcohol. Spread that "good stuff" out from homebrewed meads and beers to people taking wine classes, developing tastes for good scotch and good port.
Fast forward a bit to now. The crowd has changed, as all crowds do. We're older and dare I say it more mature or adult if you prefer. More of us have houses and families and are more secure than your typical just-out-of-college type. And more of us have gone to the point of enjoying drinking-qua-drinking again. I don't see people going out purely to get blitzed but I do see pitchers of mojitos, custom martinis in volume, and more than a few blenders of drinkables being enjoyed at parties these days.
I didn't drink at the party I went to Friday, but I did note more than a few empty bottles and a certain level of comfort with alcohol in the party scene that wasn't there a decade ago. The edges of defensiveness and snobbishness around alcohol that I'd sensed in the past seemed to be absent.
Interesting bunch of folk we are.
