The endangered Night Life

 

From time to time, we need calm and cozy places that could be retreat from hectic life of urban craziness.  May they be localized Irish pubs or conventional bars, I strenuously found out several establishments and have been regular there.  One of such is place is the localized Izakaya style bar in the Anyang city not that far from hometown Bucheon.  There, under rather dim illuminations, I enjoyed friendly stare of figures of various animals and characters from famous animations, bottles of different liquors, atmosphere surrounding me and other customers as well as chefs & bar tenders.  It seemed all of us may be connected in a subtle, inexplicable way I never understood but I could feel it.  I guess it is partly because of magic of Soju I drunk (figure below shows Hwayo of 17% alcohol content version) there, but also due to warmth of welcoming minds, which is an invisible gift given only to regulars of the place.




Having several glasses, I was ready to converse with people there and heard about business going slower than expected.  The owner of the bar began to tell me about what was lately going on and I understood the situation he was talking about. Things were not recovered to the pre COVID time.  Quite conversely, now the pandemic seemed to impart almost permanent wound to food industries here and there.  They said that these days, bar hopping had gone out of window and people just ate and drunk in the one place then they just shot straight to home after 8~9 pm.  You may argue that this is not settled down practice or new normal, but mere the inertia from pandemic era carefulness.  I hope this is the case, but on the other hand, recent inflation causing rising prices of consumer goods and it is ongoing processes.  Moreover, there is another ominous and persisting trend that not only further undermine this industry, but makes overall perspective of the society grimmer.

Considering that Korea was famous for endless and sleepless night for those who love nightlife in the pre-pandemic days, it is unusual phenomena.  Yes, it doesn’t mean the city totally lost it’s vigor, it may be still endless night only for somebody, may be students preparing for Univ entrance exams. I have read a news article few days ago that a father having more than two kids was forced to abandon his hobby of going to bars or restaurants after work with/without colleagues altogether because he needed to spend several thousand USD for kids. I mean mostly for sending kids to private academia or various tutoring institutes to make them better prepared for the tests.  This crazy competition causes lowest birth rate on this planet.  At the time of this writing, Korea is at the bottom, when it comes to birth rate, and this will be a devastating consequence for economy. Certainly, we can witness appreciable collateral damage of collapsing bar & restaurant industry.  Unfortunately, the new normal could be the end of Night Life as we knew before.



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