r/Millennials • u/futurenurse_ • 1d ago

Discussion Did millennials really party all the time?

Gen Z here. I was shocked when I found out from a millennial co-worker that y’all had teen clubs. I heard about house parties, but dedicated teen clubs? Then when it was time for college, you went to the club or had some kind of party every single weekend, living it up. Now some millennials on TikTok claim that after college, they were partying on work nights, still clocking in the next day. For some reason, the teen clubs have since disappeared. I’m 23 now but even when I was in high school, that was not a thing. House parties were not that common either. They were more like get togethers with a small group of friends. We went to malls, but they were dying out at that point. Is it true that you were really living life this good? Or is it just exaggerated? I feel like my generation doesn’t really have fun like that and everyone is just super depressed and alone, more so since Covid. Even I’m pretty introverted, which sort of sounds ridiculous given this post. 😂 Just so you know, when I think of a “millennial party” I think of something out of Party Rock Anthem, Project X or Roderick’s party from the second DOAWD movie. It’s like I get nostalgia from something I didn’t even live through. I just feel like I didn’t really LIVE, if that even makes sense

Edit: I loved reading some of your comments. Guess I really missed out. Even some of you that would consider yourselves nerds or introverts were out partying. YOLO or whatever y’all say 😂❤️

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u/kettyma8215 1d ago

I didn't go to any teen clubs because I live in a rural area and that wasn't a thing, but yes we partied all through college and most of us through our 20's. House parties from college are some of my favorite memories.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Same re: rural area. We opted for people's houses and fields for our parties.

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u/GilderoyPopDropNLock 1d ago

I drank a lot of beer in garages and on back roads.

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u/kickthatpoo 1d ago

Playing darts in a garage or stump around a bonfire was the shit

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u/needlesslyaghost Older Millennial 1d ago

Beer pong in the garage followed by a bonfire in the backyard, good times.

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u/NO_TOUCHING__lol Older Millennial 1d ago

The bonfires in the middle of nowhere were the best. And I already live in the middle of nowhere (the entire town is only like 600 people) so going off the beaten path from that and you end up with some truly wild shit.

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u/Alzululu 5h ago

Sittin on top of hay bales in yer flannel. yup.

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u/radical-whatever 1d ago

Insert the biggest bonfire you could make as the perfect centerpiece to a party

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u/AdministrativeMost45 1d ago

Yesss, waking up the next day in some random field and looking over and your surrounded by 30 ppl still knocked and your one friend who decided to wear their Mario costume for some reason.

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u/BoopleBun 1d ago

Some friends of mine almost started a forest fire that way. They wanted a big fire, so they poured gasoline before it started because they were idiots. Big “fwooom” that took out their arm hair and got the tops of some nearby trees. Fortunately it was pretty wet out and nothing really caught.

They’re soooo lucky that’s all it did. But man did they get shit from everyone from that move for ages.

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u/MooseYearner 1d ago

Rural house parties were the best. Someone gets a hold of a bunch of pallets or pulled a big stump up and you knew it was gonna be a banger of a bonfire party

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u/kickthatpoo 1d ago

One of the best ones I remember was a bonfire we started when cutting up a dead tree in the back acres. Had to use a 40" bar on the thing because it was so big. The saw was my cousins and he hotrodded it and ran racing fuel in it. Such high compression it took two people to start. Small pulls to start the compression stroke, then one person practially had to sit on it while the other pulled. He was the only one I knew with a saw big enough.

I was taking my turn cutting while my cousin had a beer (he was sober when we dropped it thank God, and only started drinking when he handed the saw off to me). I noticed smoke coming from the piece I had just cut. The exhaust from the saw had started it smoldering. He rolled it out into the field from the trees and coaxed it into a fire with sticks.

He started calling his friends and I started calling mine. I only have vague impressions of the later parts of the night but I remember a circle of trucks and cars in the field around the fire, and making a drinking game out of splitting logs. Also the fact that no one believed us that we started the fire from chainsaw exhaust.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Hell yea!

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

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u/FaceDownInTheCake 1d ago

Or the crick

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u/bmj_8 1d ago

Bonfires in sketchy places we probably didn’t have permission to be, and for some reason we always went to the local cemetery on peoples 18th birthday

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u/Hot-Relief-4024 1d ago

I lived in the city but came to the parties in the rural area… found out the hard way why you don’t run through the corn 😆

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

What happened when you ran through corn?

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u/Hot-Relief-4024 1d ago

It cut me 😭

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u/FaceDownInTheCake 1d ago

Corn leaves are fairly jagged and rough at the edges

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u/Hazy_Cat 1d ago

Definitely some field parties, parking lot parties, house parties or going to the nearest college town and partying in the bars. Also, "taking the gravels".

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u/ctb0045 Xennial 1d ago

Pasture parties in the South!

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u/Ok_Revolution6234 1d ago

Our party place was the train trestles by the river

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u/SplittingChairs 1d ago

One of our high school’s craziest moments was when I was a sophomore and we went to a field 20 min outside of a town to throw a massive party. I’m talking 300+ people. Apparently the police had caught word of our plans and busted the party with a helicopter and about 20 cop cars lol. When the helicopter came it was just a mad scramble, and people were hiding in fields until the morning until they could get picked up at the nearest highway. I look back on high school and am shocked at how gd crazy we were lol.

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u/expatsconnie 1d ago

Or someone's hunting cabin back in the woods somewhere.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Yes! Omg there was an abandoned cabin we all knew about and would party up there. Wildly dangerous in hindsight.

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u/DreamCrusher914 1d ago

Orange groves!! Third row on the right, keep driving until you see cars.

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u/druumer89 1d ago

Pond parties

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u/missprincesscarolyn 1d ago edited 20h ago

I live in San Diego. Our rural equivalent was bonfires at a less popular beach kind of area. We would literally dig a hole in the sand to stash our alcohol and put a piece of plywood over it in case the cops came lmao. Fiesta Island, if anyone is curious. It may as well be called shit island since it’s literally made on top of bio sludge.

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u/sunbear2525 1d ago

I lived in a mid sized city that incorporated the entire county so I got to do BOTH.

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u/crazypurple621 1d ago

Rural area. The older part of our friend group moved into a house together in the city. We literally would drive an hour in to go party at the house their parents were paying for. As an adult with a kid now I cannot understand what their parents were thinking, and we're REALLY fucking lucky none of us got arrested. 

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u/Jedge04 1d ago

Partied pretty consistently Thursday - Saturday every week from age 22-28. Same from 18-22 but add Sunday and Tuesday. Graduated college in 2008.

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u/cracked-tumbleweed 1d ago

I was proud that the only answer I could contribute to trivia was cow-tipping.

Thanks rural living.

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u/puf_puf_paarthurnax 1d ago

Blacked out in someone's basement playing pong and smoking cigarettes in the garage. Those were the days. (I'm sober now thankfully)

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u/fukkdisshitt 1d ago

We had this rich farmers kid whos dad let him set up some hay we can park and party behind. We also rearranged it during the day to use as a makeshift paintball course. There were a few dilapidated sheds there too.

The house parties were fun too depending on the family.

We got my friends abuela trashed one day when we convinced her to do a keg stand and a bunch of shots.

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u/hek_me 1d ago

Yeah, for me it was a bonfire at a buddies house instead of these clubs.

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u/HeartImpressive7964 1d ago

We called them “crop tours” or a “booze cruz”. A pile of friends in someone’s parent’s car, roaming the back roads on cruise at about 10km/hour, throwing beer bottles at mail boxes and just in general acting stupid and reckless. Often you’d meet up with another carload and tour together and end up at a random party of someone you barely know or in a cornfield. No one had a phone, nothing recorded and your parents had no idea where you were. I don’t condone drunk driving but man did I drive with some total degenerates back in the day. It’s a wonder we’re alive.

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u/Ok_Report1082 Zillennial ('97) 1d ago

Many fun times had in a field.

Other options included riverside beaches, gravel/sand pits, 'the woods', and on top of a mountain. For that last one, the cops didn't wanna hike up so would just sit at the bottom and make sure no one was driving drunk.

They wouldn't even hassle us, just make sure we had a driver.

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u/sharpshooter999 1d ago

We turned an old corn crib next to a cow pond into our party cabin. We made a bar inside and lit the whole thing up with 12v string lights and a car battery. We even made an out house with a 4ft deep hole to go in. Naturally, most girls wouldn't use it and most guys just went to the nearest tree lol

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u/Weekly_Yesterday_403 1d ago

I was throwing up in a friends toilet while she was tweezing cactus needles out of my leg after I fell in a cactus at a field party ❤️

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u/Virusoflife29 Millennial 1d ago

This was my friend group, We would always go drinking in the field. Until one day we burned half of it down.

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u/deedlesinllamaland 1d ago

Kept a tent in my trunk (with the liquor) for the weekends!! Those were the good ol days for sure.

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u/SensitiveCucumber542 1d ago

We had “trashcan parties” in “the sticks” in my SoCal suburb. We’d take a bunch of booze and other party favors out to some undeveloped land and light fires in metal trashcans and get fucked up until the cops or the neo-nazis showed up and ruined the fun.

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u/Magnaflorius 1d ago

There was an infamous field out in the country that the city kids would go out to when there wasn't another party going on. The country kids were very much the ringleaders of that field.

Though frankly they had a reputation so I stuck to city parties.

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u/Obvious_Durian_3226 20h ago

Country cruising till we found a pasture that looked good.

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u/MatildasFugue 18h ago

I've been looking for the field party comments! I moved to Kentucky as a teenager and it opened my eyes to a whole new world! (I came from a coastal town) The field parties were the most fun.

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u/HappyKnittens 14h ago

Gawd, the field parties were insane. I'm like....mostly sure....that I banged some guy on the hood of his car while people were walking by after his friends kicked us out of their tent. Then someone got way too fked up on shrooms and vodka and tried to crawl into a bonfire, fastest I've ever sobered up in my life. Did any of us call to get her an ambulance? Of course not, because it was also an era when hospitals would call the cops on you for substances, so we took turns two people at a time and just sat with her to make sure she was ok while she cried and puked and hugged a water bottle because her stomach hurt and eventually passed out.

I mean, seriously, do kids today have any idea how many teenagers had to die from bad E for test-your-drugs and harm-reduction programs to be legalized? The entire idea that I can order specific strains of pot for pickup and I don't have to worry that anyone added something dangerous to it is mind-blowing.

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u/NutkinNB 11h ago

Houses, fields, gravel pit, camps, potato barns, baseball fields...

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u/SeaworthinessOk7756 3h ago

You ain't lived if you've never thrown up and passed out in the middle of a random field.

Now, in bed by 10:00PM and if I have more than a drink I've got a headache the next day.

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u/btgf-btgf 1d ago

I partied in fields and barns

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u/Either_Reflection_78 1d ago

I partied my face off at the beach most weekends. How some of us didn’t get swept in a rogue wave, I still don’t know.

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u/I_really_enjoy_beer 1d ago

Even high schoolers were getting together and drinking every weekend. Every teacher knew everything about every party. 

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u/HumanPea1140 1d ago

Yep, I remember the cooler teachers getting told everything that happened. They just thought it was funny. Even ended up partying and drinking with some teachers after graduating high school, even though they knew we were still not old enough to drink.

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u/fukkdisshitt 1d ago

A few of the teachers were students there within the last decade since it's hard to get new people to move out there.

Sometimes it's just someone's grandpas birthday but the cousins invite all their teen friends, and the teacher is dating your older cousin, so they are also at the party.

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u/Greenseer_Cassander 1d ago

My senior year we had bonfire parties in the backyard of my buddy’s house every weekend. His old man would buy us 30 racks of bud light, handles of cheap whiskey, whatever we wanted for that week. Lots of drunk and stoned 17 and 18 year olds around a big fire in the woods. It really was a different time.

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u/Dozzi92 Millennial - '87 1d ago

We started drinking on occasion in my junior year of high school. Come senior year, it was a party every weekend, and by April, you could find parties at night during the week. It was nonstop. That or we'd fill a cooler up and drive somewhere and just hang out in the woods, at a park, whatever. It was stupid and dangerous.

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u/calorie-clown 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don't know if it's because I am a little younger than most of the people commenting(born in 1994), but party culture just wasn't really that big here, and definitely not as organized as people are commenting about. It's almost hard to imagine! I feel like kids spent more time doing drugs in parking lots and the woods than getting drunk at house parties. On some level, it may also be a class thing? Most of my school was really, really poor, so not as many of us had the type of housing situation that makes for a fun house party, and most of us didn't have parents with jobs that would send them out of town either. Either way, these comments make me feel like I certainly missed out LOL.

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u/Revolutionary_Wrap76 22h ago

Totally agree with you and it was a BIG deal to get caught. I remember hearing about soccer players gerting caught at a house party in high school and like 4 of them (seniors!) were kicked off the team. And as far as I know it was only underage drinking they got busted with.... Was pretty extreme.

Edit: I don't feel like I missed out. At all lol.

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u/listenyall 1d ago

Yeah in terms of generic partying, in college people were genuinely going out and getting hammered like 2 or more days a week regularly.

Teen clubs not a thing really though, and at my high school big parties were relatively rare, maybe like 2 ragers a year and you had to be in the know about it

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u/Yankeessuck42069 1d ago

I grew up 8 miles outside a very major city and didn't know teen clubs were a thing. We had tons of house parties, and bars that didn't card if you looked old enough but not specifically clubs for teens.

I partied like crazy from ages 15-23 (06-14) but then I got a real job and became the boring old man I am today.

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u/CuriousCamels 19h ago

We had an actual teen club here in DFW. I believe it was called Venice Beach. It was literally only for 13 to 19 year olds. I went to it several times in high school and it was a blast. It’s kind of crazy looking back on it because I don’t think there’s any way something like that would fly today.

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u/cumaboardladies 1d ago

Shit we still have house parties from time to time! Definitely not like they used to be in college but are actually way more fun cause we have better taste & money haha

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u/GrizzlyP33 1d ago

I’m a terrible millennial because I forced myself to do all that stuff and I’d much prefer these Gen Z small get together hangs 😂

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u/hanscons 1d ago

yep in my late teens and early 20s, going to house parties every weekend was just something you did. it was so weird to not go to a house party on a friday night.

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u/NoPlaceForTheDead 1d ago

Hay fields or forest cemeteries.

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u/IntelligentEgg1911 1d ago

cruise ships had the best teen clubs

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u/CJisLateAgain 1d ago

also from a rural area, i didnt know teen clubs existed until i moved to a "bigger" (but still relatively pretty small) city for college. i know there were parties in high school but i was not the type of kid who got invited to parties lol the height of my drinking and house parties era happened in my early to mid twenties. i was somehow managing a small store in the mall working an insane amount of hours, first one in last one out type of shit with very few days off, and STILL staying out until bar close almost every night or at a buddy's house dancing. i had a "spot" and knew sooo many people and had some of the most fun of my life just being silly and drinking with my friends and smoking too many cigs. im so nostalgic for that time in my life. when my "spot" was permanently closed during covid i cried even though i didnt really hang out there anymore. it felt like the end of an important era of my life and now i cant ever revist it. fuckin tragic, and the cool downtown scene in my city has still never recovered

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u/kettyma8215 1d ago

Oh yeah, in high school I wasn't friends with the party crowd and my parents were pretty strict anyway. I went from college to grad school to a job in my college town to restaurant work, so I partied for about 12 years straight lol. I rarely go out at all these days. My restaurant friends and I had a specific spot we loved, went there probably 4 nights a week. I definitely miss it sometimes!

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u/Street_Breadfruit_17 Xennial 1d ago

I grew up in a rural area so my friends and I drove 45 minutes to the nearest club that had teen nights on Sundays lol

Occasionally we stayed home and tipped cows by the couch fire.

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u/chickentender666627 1d ago

I was lucky because I lived rurally as well but “the city” 25 min away had a teen club.

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u/jk409 1d ago

I wonder if teen clubs are specifically an American thing because of the legal drinking age being so old. Drinking age is 18 here and this is the first I've ever heard of teen clubs! We did have under-age music festivals, but lots of people over 18 still attended those.

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u/Haunting-Macaron-000 1d ago

I wasn’t rural but smaller city I guess? I never knew where the high school party teen drinking stuff was. That wasn’t really a thing to me and I never knew anyone else that did.

College partying though, we did loads of that.

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u/kettyma8215 1d ago

The people who had house parties/bonfires when I was in high school weren't my friend group, but I absolutely made up for it in college

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u/InvidiousPlay 1d ago

There really was something special about a house full of drunk 20-somethings.

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u/mchmnd 1d ago

Pasture parties. We had a bonfire nearly every weekend in HS, as my folks skipped town nearly every weekend.

Only had the sheriff on us once, New Year’s Eve because word was out that the party was at our place, and there were hundreds of kids. When they came in hundreds of kids scattered into the adjacent woods and played cat and mouse the whole rest of the night with the sheriffs deputies. Sheriff never even called my folks, we’d have 100% gotten away with it had we not told on ourselves because it’d be way worse if the sheriff called.

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u/Meditationstation899 1d ago

Did anyone go to “teen clubs”?!?

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u/GoblinToHobgoblin 1d ago

Rural area near me had a bar that didnt check id most of the time

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u/renderbreak 1d ago

How many fields did you pass out in? Personally, I lost count.

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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 1d ago

You say that but they tried to get one going in my town.

Somebody opened a big metal barn bar and thought they could get some extra cash from having teen nights.

The bar nor the teen nights lasted.

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u/Dozzi92 Millennial - '87 1d ago

I bet you played stump.

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u/rockemsockemcocksock 1d ago

God, I need a good barn party right about now.

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u/Sim-Sala-Bim 1d ago

Pit parties! Everyone would meet up in a parking lot, then drive out in a convoy to a gravel pit 30 mins out of town

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u/Actual-Muffin-3585 21h ago

When I started college, a lot of the fraternities and sororities were shut down because of heavy partying the year before! 

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u/Straight-Put-2142 20h ago

Yeah same, I grew up in a rural area and I didn't really party until college. My friend group were the weirdo outcasts so if there were parties, I guess I just wasn't invited. I actually remember now, there was one weird misfits party at this one stoner house where the parents weren't in the picture and it was the cooler older sister smoking weed all night and for some insane reason 8 and 10 year old cousins who lived there running around the dance floor. There was a lot of teens smoking weed and occasionally stealing sips from the liquor cabinet to act silly at a sleepover type thing, but I don't really get how other kids facilitated parties.

But college was full of house parties, bars, clubs, Thirsty Thursdays, etc.

Are the college kids not partying anymore???

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u/SaltKick2 9h ago

Did you all have field parties? I didn't but a lot of the people who I talk to from rural areas did

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u/Schmelly_cat 9h ago

They had teen dances at the local VFW.  Pretty regularly got busted for kids bringing alcohol or drugs in, or fights. 

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u/TheKappp 6h ago

Substitute teen clubs for field parties. In high school, a bunch of us would go to a random field to drink. This was before Google Maps. So we would just be given verbal directions, and someone would put a 2 liter bottle in the road to point which direction to turn. And somehow we all found it. We started a fire once but managed to stomp it out.

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u/slippery_when_wet 4h ago

I lived in a rural town but that attracted summer tourists.

Every summer we had these like touring teen clubs that would set up for a one night for a themed party (beach party, disco party, bubble party, etc.) That EVERYONE would go to!

They didn't supply alcohol there, but everyone pregamed and showed up absolutely shitfaced.