Back when I was in my teens and early 20s I didn’t consider the week complete if I hadn’t been to at least one party (a loosely defined event characterized by beer, marijuana, and flirting). With the exception of summer, when absence of school and good weather often led to ongoing parties-in-perpetuity down in the remote regions of certain canyons, parties took place on Friday nights and Saturdays (afternoon and night).
Now I’m an older fellow and a city-dweller far from any canyons, but some aspects of the week’s schedule-format appear to be unchanged (Friday and Saturday are still the days on which most folks usually don’t have to be at work or in school the next morning); but party habits apparently have.
Every Thursday evening, judging from the sounds coming out of the karaoke bars and the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks, zillions of young cityfolks are out partying. In quantities higher than on Fridays as far as I can tell.
Clue this old codger in. What gives? Is it a 3rd party night, are y’all toking a day in advance to get into the groove earlier? Is Thursday when you party with people who aren’t your main companionship, and on Friday and Saturday you’re hanging with the homebodies and the she or he who is primary? Or have Friday and/or Saturday partying become passé? And explain about Friday morning, please, and how it is that blowin’ it out on Thursday doesn’t give you a piper you’re not always ready to pay come morning of the next day? Are your bosses and teachers and professors all red-eyed and slow-talking themselves, or just acclimated to expecting no different on a Friday morning?
Don’t tell me that Thursday is for party-lite, with minimal intoxication and calling an early evening of it. I’ve seen plenty of evidence to the contrary on the sidewalks, singly and in loud clumsy groups.
Why not Wednesday? Indeed, if you can get away with it on a Thursday eve, why not any and every night? What’s special about Thursday?
I’m not sure how it is in Manhattan, but I know that your observations are pretty much spot-on for lots of college towns I’ve visted. My best guess is that most of these college students (most people into the party scene, at least) either arrange their schedules to have late Friday classes or to avoid them alltogether.
Not sure how that translates to other college towns, or to cities in general.
Here in Boston (for students, anyway), Thursday is a party night roughly equal to Friday and Saturday. I’ve known a lot of people to arrange their schedules specifically to make Thursday partying possible…
And I have known people to decide that, what the hell, they could just go ahead and party on Wednesday as well. Much less common, though.
When I went to Northern Michigan University, the bulk of classes were scheduled Monday through Thursday. Thursday night was the first party night of the weekend.
I just asked a younger coworker about this yesterday. According to him, Thursday is a big party night because the bars and clubs are slightly less crowded due to less out of town visitors. Our “party central” is a downtown surrounded by a fairly rural area, so it makes sense to me that a lot of more people would commute for weekends that wouldn’t neccessarily be present on weekdays . This doesn’t really explain the situation for metropolitan areas, however.
He also mentioned that him and his friends have more energy on Thursday night than Friday night, and that places often charge less on Thursday, so it ends up being cheaper.
I don’t know what they do about Friday work/classes. Probably just stumble through the day…
Even after I graduated from College and settled into a M-F, 9-5 we always went out on Thursdays and stumbled through work on Fridays (some days were absolutely terrible). Of course, we mostly were able to get our act together by Friday evening and go out again.
It came down to wanting one more night of drunken antics a week and Thursday fit the bill the best.
Now that I’m a little older, I’ll mostly do dinner/drinks with a co-worker or close friend on Thursday (home to bed early), Friday night is to eat out, watch a movie and snuggle with the wife and Saturday is the only day left with late night partying.
When I attended LSU, Thursday night was the first party night of the week. The local watering holes and clubs catered to the Thursday might crowd – it was fully expected. Lots of folks either didn’t schedule Friday morning classes, or else they just skipped them altogether.
I party every night. To do less would force me to relinquish the title of “Party Centurian”, something I have no plan of doing. Homebrew pros and cons: Pro- Good beer, in large quantities that does not give you a hangover. Con- Yeast farts.
When I was in college, classes were generally Mon-Thurs with often a “lab” schedualled for FREAKIN’ EARLY on Friday mornings, and invariably “taught” by some poor grad school schmuck. These were typically classes that you would get out of the way the first and second year.
I recall showing up to one or two of them in pretty rough shape.
I don’t work on Fridays. Let me clarify that: I don’t work much Monday- Thursday. I’m not required to show up where I collect a paycheck on Friday, but I usually end up working my tail off around the house. Thursday night is a big party night for me, and usually means busting out a new, fresh batch of beer for the first time.
Around here (Toronto), Thursday night is officially considered “Pub Night” at any of the colleges & universities I know of. I assumed that was because so many out of town students go home on weekends, so Thursday night you have a better chance of all of your buddies being around for partying together.
For my college (The College of New Jersey), parties are on Tuesday and Friday nights (also Saturdays, but that’s a given). At Rutgers, which is where my sisters went, party nights are Tuesday and Thursday nights. Not sure why they do it that way.
I go to a Big State University and it’s pretty easy to arrange a Monday-Thursday schedule, even with a full courseload. So why not have 3 day weekends and party on Thursday night?
I’m a couple decades out of college now, but Thursday was definitely a party night then, too.
Of course, there was also a group of us who invariably got together on Tuesdays, initially because of certain scheduling coincidences our first term and because bars were so dead on Tuesdays that we could play pool all night and get great drink specials.
Oddly, though, a wider circle of friends began joining us, and then their friends came along, groups split off and invited other friends, and when we came back for sophomore year, the place was packed every Tuesday night from week one. Which pissed us off royally b/c we’d deliberately rigged our schedules so we could shoot-and-shoot (billiards and liquor) on Tuesdays again.
Of course, we refused to give up “our” territory.
By the next year, it had become"the thing" at that bar, and by our senior year it was viewed as some kind of ancient student tradition among the freshmen and some sophmores, while the juniors and certain other sophomores considered it a “freshman thing” that they were “over” – as if this bar had been packed on Tuesdays from time immemorial. (This is back before federal blackmail made 21 the law of the land.) We’d get the hairy eyeball from the younger crowd, like, “check the geezers”.
We even heard of profs admonishing students at the beginning of the term not to come drag-assing in on Wednesdays.
Bck in 1980, my then high school aged sister would party on Thursdays because that’s when the bars sold pitchers for a quarter. Me, I was a good kid and would wait for the weekend. :dubious:
In addition to cheaper prices on Thursdays, many bars play different music on Thursdays nights. Friday and Saturday tend to be more mainstream top 40ish stuff while Thursdays will feature “better” music.
At UW-Platteville, I think Thursday night was party night because lots of students went home for the weekend, or went to Madison (second choice Dubuque) Friday and/or Saturday nights
It’s party night in Providence too. I think a lot of people sort of slide through Friday on the merits of their post-Thursday hangovers, and then ‘fix’ those hangovers by resuming the party on Friday night and through the weekend. Used to work for me. Now, alas, I’m too old and I ache after a long night of serious partying.
