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Survey: Millennials love Red Lobster, Boomers love Cheesecake Factory
If you see a young crowd at Red Lobster next time you visit, it is because the restaurant is a favorite of a youthful demographic.
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Phone-friendly movie theaters for millennials are coming
Aron believes that AMC needs “to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives.”
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The New Consumer: Are eating trends age-based or generationally influenced?
NPD detected a divergence in the way that Millennials are consuming fresh foods vs. how Baby Boomers are approaching them, and determined that these behaviors are generationally based, Tielbur said.
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How millennials should deal with baby boomers at work
Millennials may find that baby-boomer self-esteem has declined precipitously in response to rapid societal change.
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Screen Time: The Affair, Doll & Em, Transparent, Portlandia
From New York’s annual Best Of issue: Best 35th-Birthday Bar “Here’s a new one: ‘midlife millennial.’ That’s who Bryce David and his partners had in mind when they opened this bar and dance club, a spot for grown-ups who still want to rage but feel too old for the hangar-size dance bars like Output and Verboten.”
First off, no. Uh-uh. Millennials don’t get to start laying claim to middle age now too. I’m already bracing for an even Bigger Chill over the next decade.
Ok, just had to get that out of the way before playing catch up with some TV portrayals of elder women in bars.
The Affair: Helen is only drinking white wine alone in Brownstone Brooklyn because she got stood up by a Tinder date. “Tinder is more of a hookup site for millennials,” the server informs her, while suggesting Match.com because that’s where the divorcees hang out (hello, OurTime.com). It’s frightening to think I’d be roughly in the same dating pool as this character because I don’t look like Maura Tierney (51), own a home in Park Slope, or a housewares shop, and this probably goes a long way in explaining why I end up with 30 year olds with roommates not middle-aged salt-and-pepper drunk doctors, who hump you in the basement during a rainstorm while your kids are upstairs.
Doll & Em: I might say spoiler alert, but does anyone watch this? Plus, season two has been out since September. Keeping with the brownstone theme, Doll gets knocked-up by Ewan McGregor in the bathroom of what I’m pretty certain is Prime Meats. That’s all you need to know. Can 44-year-olds seriously get pregnant that easily? This is a legit question.
Transparent: I would say Maura (not to be confused with Tierney) is well past middle age yet the moment when one crosses into the next phase is a question I hope to not think about for at least another twenty years, sorry seniors. But still, she is a woman alone in a bar. Though because I’m apparently terrible at reading signals even on TV, I didn’t realize she was hitting on the harried attorney played by Sonya Walger (41) by buying her a glass of sancerre and suggesting tapas until reading a recap. The actress I always think of as Lost’s Penny (but also wives of a certain type in cable dramas a la Tell Me You Love Me and The Mind of the Married Man) could be the subject of a thinkpiece on the art of permanently looking 39. It’s kind of like Bernie Sanders superficially looking the same now as decades ago. Maybe you look a little too mature as a woman who’s only 30, but by the time you’re 50 you seem ageless.
Portlandia: Claire is how I’m afraid I’d appear if I moved back home in as much as I would be too uptight and rigid for a middle-aged manchild, but then I’d have to quit my NYC job to move to Portland and if anyone works there at all it’s service-oriented so I wouldn’t even be drinking pinot noir in a cream blazer, and this is all something I’ve given some real thought to lately because it’s possible that I’m over New York and what I’m doing here. So…the coworker’s boyfriend shows up and is all “Hi, are you ladies over 21?” and that’s a hoot.
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Barred: Acey Ducey’s
When: 5:54pm, Sunday
I have a ritual where I get a haircut in Kew Gardens, have a slice and a beer at Dani’s across the street then take the bus down Metropolitan to Forest Hills and have a drink or two at End of the Century Bar before drunk-shopping at Trader Joe’s, ending up with overflowing bags of things that sounded good at the time, then Lyft-ing home.
The tiki bar was closed so I stopped in Acey Ducey’s, technically not my first time because it’s where I had a pre-dinner drink at Sizzler when Sizzler still existed. It was all men mostly keeping to themselves minus a one in his 50s in a beige blazer who introduced himself to me as “The Spanish Dracula.”
At the same time, I heard someone say loudly “Fusilli Jerry” as Spanish Dracula was getting attention by holding up the side of his jacket over his face like it was vampire cape. Alice in Chains’ “The Rooster” started blaring, and that was my cue to drink up and get shopping.
Was I carded? I may have to drop this category at some point because no.
Age appropriate? For men. Maybe women too, though I was the only one there.
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Restaurant operators keep hearing they should be trying to win over Millennials, but baby boomers dominate at least one style of eating: snacking. The NPD Group says boomers eat ready-to-eat snack food 20 percent more often than Millennials do.
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Barred: The Pennsy & Tracks
When: 3:44pm & 5:02pm, Tuesday
The Pennsy and Tracks are like day and night, one airy and full of natural light (though sounding like a whimsical disease of yesteryear a la dropsy) the other a long, narrow chasm deep in the bowels of Penn Station. Or maybe it’s 2016 Midtown vs. 1981 Midtown (I have no idea when Tracks came into being but since I always think it’s spelled Traxx, the Reagan years seem most fitting).
The Pennsy was mostly empty, many patrons were drinking coffee, and the bartenders wore suspenders and Levi 505s that read more lumberjack than old-timey mixed with a touch of British skinhead chic.
Tracks, which claims to have the longest bar in Manhattan, didn’t have a single empty seat. A few were occupied by middle-aged women in skirt suits, one with a pile of papers so she seemed important in a real estate or law-adjacent way. One woman had magenta hair, which felt cautionary to me since I’ve been dabbling off and on with a ‘90s shade of plum for the past few years.
Was I carded? No and no.
Age appropriate? Yes and yes. How exclusionary can a bar in an NYC train station really be?
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According to Jack Li, managing director, Datassential, 47% of Generation Z and 42% of Millennials come from multicultural backgrounds, compared to 28% of Boomers.
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Barred: Valentine’s Bushwick Bar Crawl
Playing The Middle Ages game in Bushwick is a fool’s errand. And yet sometimes you have to drink cans of Genesee and well tequila in 16-degree weather until it feels like Valentine’s Day. Never mind that you will wish you were dead on Presidents’ Day.
Where: Central Station
When: A little after 6pm
Age appropriate? Not really.Where: The Shop
When: 7:30pm
Age appropriate? For men who like honky tonk, yes. I don’t think there were any ponytails yet I keep picturing that.Where: Heavy Woods
When: Roughly 9pm
Age appropriate? I want to say no, but I stopped paying attention by this point and started focusing on my fried chicken biscuit sandwich.Where: Pearl’s Social and Billy Club (previously)
When: 10-ish
Age appropriate? Nope. And despite the name, the vibe always feels vaguely anti-social.Where: The Cobra Club
When: 11pm or so
Age appropriate? There were a few non-young men. Ladies? No, I don’t think so. Then again, I saw a photo the next day showing a slice of pizza and I don’t remember that either.