This week, Broadway in Chicago, the business that owns and operates many of the Loop’s largest theaters, has warned its customers to check their tickets: curtain times are moving up. Instead of the once-standard 8 p.m., some evening shows will be starting as early as 7. As they often do now on Broadway itself.
People don’t want to be out late in the city anymore, it seems. Chicago theaters are switching out evening performances for matinees wherever they can. Peak demand has moved from Saturday nights to Sunday afternoon.
According to various recent media reports, this is a widening trend. Concerts are starting earlier, restaurants are seeing their peak reservation demand at 6 rather than 8, and young people are headed to bed at a time when their parents at that age would just have been headed out the door in search of some fun.
Why? Several factors seem to be at work. It’s partly a hangover from COVID-19 when restaurants started to close earlier due to reduced demand. More significantly, it’s surely a consequence of the huge rise in the number of people working at home, meaning that the old necessity of commuting home from work and then going out for the night no longer applies. If you’ve been stuck alone at the dining table all day with your laptop, you’re ready and able to find some company much earlier.
Other likely factors include fears for personal safety after dark and the diminished reliability of late-night transit. Some, too, have also speculated that as young people are moving away from booze in favor of now-legal cannabis, typically consumed in private or with a small group of friends, that also has reset the leisure clock.
We see this largely as an American phenomenon; Panama City, Panama and Barcelona, Spain, are still hopping late into the evening. But you can’t miss this trend in the Midwest, and businesses are right to respond to what their customers want.
Still, forgive us for waxing nostalgic for the days of Dr. Night Life, when opera singers kept the Italian Village pouring vino till the small hours. We miss the era of the Tavern Club, the London House (where jazz greats such as Sarah Vaughan would swing until 4 a.m.), of late-night cabarets and restaurants that would welcome people coming from the Shubert Theatre at 11 at night and keep them there until the wee hours of the morning, offering them food, cocktails and music. We’re thankful for Miller’s Pub, the Loop’s one true bastion of old-school, late-night reliability.
By all means, get your sleep. But let’s not forget why old-school Chicagoans love their city, after hours.