The high cost of having fun and the lack of fun places

“America appears to be suffering from a fun shortage. For the industries supplying recreational amenities, this deficit is a business opportunity.” That’s a line from an article by Ben Steverman for Bloomberg (via Kottke.org). It argues that demand for in-person shared leisure activities is booming, but that the infrastructure for providing them has crumbled away while we all spent the past 15 years looking at our phone screens. It’s an American article about America but we think much of what it has to say applies to the UK, too. On the one hand, it’s heartening. The need to spend time with other people in Third Places hasn’t gone away and may, in fact, be a fundamental human urge. The smartphone and Netflix were a distraction, their appeal amplified by the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn away from them. On the other hand, the article makes clear that it won’t be easy to replace all the bars (or cinemas, or summer camps) we lost in the meantime: “Creating special places…