What are the rhythms of life where you live? Does it suit you?

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6312/wolfrm.jpg

When do people go to work, leave work, when is rush hour? Do nights out happen early or late? Does the world shut down at night, or is 24-hour pachinko a reality for you? Are the streets at dawn full of people jogging, buying milk, saying hello? Have you ever seen it?

That sort of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioW7krNC_zE

choon

I awaken at 6:30 a.m. most days, on weekends no later than 7:30-7:45. When I go out these days I'm usually headed home shortly after midnight (a few weeks ago I stayed out til 3 a.m. and while I stayed relatively sober my body was wobbly the next day).

My commuter town shuts down completely at night as far as I can tell. Occasionally I'll go for a walk in the evening, but never pass more than one or two people in an hour. It's fairly empty during the day and not really built for walking anyway, but vibrant street life it is not.

When do people go to work, leave work, when is rush hour?

A lot of people in the normal times, 7ish to 9 or so in the morning, and 5-630ish in the evening. there are people around in the day though generally, i guess plenty of students or people with unconventional working hours.

Do nights out happen early or late?

Pretty late, but there's always people sort of "out", the pubs are generally busy enough. You often hear people coming home when you're in bed at night, shouting or singing or whatever.

Does the world shut down at night, or is 24-hour pachinko a reality for you?

It shuts down a bit, the really late places aren't right beside me.

Are the streets at dawn full of people jogging, buying milk, saying hello? Have you ever seen it?

Lots of joggers at all times, I'm very near Victoria Park. People say hello sometimes, I know a lot of my neighbours as I've been here about five years, it's a one way street and fairly quiet so you tend to recognise the same faces after a while too.

Hey. I tell you what is. Big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But. Is not city open. Only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay

Ppl get up and go to bed alarmingly and confusingly early tbh

don't cry - it's only the rhythm

I live in Vauxhall which has a number of co-existing rhythms. 8am - 9am Monday morning brings some of them together as the clubbers from Fire emerge to mix among the grim commuters at the Bus Station and Underground.

I know a lot of my neighbours as I've been here about five years

Been here almost 20 years...I know my immediate neighbour and -um - that's it. I think that's not unusual for London.

Been in London seven years and have never known any of my neighbours. Except for when one of my flatmates who was here for about six months started dating one of them. Now they're having a kid.

I walk to work at 11:OO Am, and I walk home at 7:3O Pm. Some days I walk to work at 2:3O Pm and go home at 1O:3O Pm. On the days that I go in at 7:OO Am, and go home at 3:3O Pm, it is still light outside. I see the people at the gate, and some dog walkers. Some restaurant workers in the evening. Late nights, I can hear the music from the places that are still open.

On my days off, I see some dogs out the window from my neighbors at 8:15 Am and 5:30 Pm.

I look at the grass next to the sidewalk to see how it is doing.

Suits me.

O_O

Feel of 'you could kick a ball in the street' wist about that one ledge

Time was you could chat with your new neighbour and in six months have a kid with them. Now everyone hides indoors on the smack heroin and kids are too frightened to come out of the womb in anything less than nine months.

time was you'd stay wombéd the full term, now the government macbeth our foetii and force emigrate them just to cut down on maternity leave

Traffic starts around 7 am and goes heavy to around 9 am. A second smaller wave starts around 9:30. I try to hit the sweet spot for my commute when I'm driving, but catch a ride around 7:30 when I commute in with a friend. When I'm waiting for her on the walk out front, I see a dozen neighbors, mostly walking dogs or biking to work. I have a nodding acquaintance with most of them. I also see 3 or 4 of the neighborhood cats out; they keep their distance. Nights out start early here. There's a baile club down the block that starts up around 8 pm and goes til 2ish on the weekends. Restaurants are busiest from 6 to 9 pm, but there are some 24 hr options within walking distance.

All in all, it suits me.

Been here almost 20 years...I know my immediate neighbour and -um - that's it. I think that's not unusual for London.

Been in London seven years and have never known any of my neighbours

Do you both mean in the same flat?

I know the guy above me well enough to stop and have a chat with, though usually about football or weather or brief work conversation. There is a Swedish girl across from me who has also been there the entire five years, more just a friendly hello generally, though I've chatted to her before if I've met her out and about.

Below me is a Somalian family, the dad was a v gruff old guy who passed away last year, I recently found out. The son, in his 40s, is a lot more friendly, would generally just say hello but occasionally have a chat.

I know some others to see or in one case due to them complaining about a party. They don't seem to hold a grudge though. One of my oldest friends lives a stairwell over so I know his flatmates too, obviously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Jx9Y_MX9I

Same flat for me, yup. (Have been in London 14 years total.) Most of the flats near me are rented and change occupancy fairly often, and I don't seem to pass people on the stairs enough to even have a nodding acquaintance. xp.

Wake up at 8, Get to work at 9:30 back around 7:30. There's people in the streets early, from 6 onwards the streets are a bit busy. The nights end early since idiots decided bars and clubs should close at 11-11:30pm. Past that time the city is rather quiet except for a few house parties.

I'm going to find out now, since I'm actually home for it! When I walk to work in the AM there's not many people walking with me but I think a lot of folks around here have cars, so you barely see them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ul2FM4GZ8

my morning routine

I always wonder about the how time zones and when the sun rises affect commuters.

I expect everyone here to say something similar to "rush hour between 7-9," but do people on the East Coast generally go in later than those on the West Coast? All I'm basing this on is that one episode of "Eight Is Enough" where the daughter joins an investment firm and is horrified to learn she has to be at work at 5:30 a.m. since that's when the market opens in New York.

The sun rose in my town at 6:50 this morning. I pretty much got to do everything but shower in daylight before I left. However, the sun didn't rise in Louisville, Ky., until 7:30 this morning. Do people use that as an excuse to go in later?

MI is on the far edge of the Eastern time zone so the sun comes up an hour later there but as far as I can tell those Swedish- and German-descended masochists use it as an excuse to go in an hour earlier, since everyone I know there starts work at 8am instead of 9.

See? You always hear about this "9 to 5" world, but I haven't had a day job yet that didn't want me to be in the office at 8. Living in the Central Time Zone, I always chalked that one up to the fact that I get to go to bed an hour earlier than the East Coast after Monday Night Football.

My informal polls of Midwesterners indicate that ppl there generally think your lunch hour doesn't count as part of the workday since you don't work during it.

Instead of, you know, a basic human need for sustenance and a rest from labor that your employer is obligated to deal with if they want you to work for 9 hours.

we don't get paid for lunch hours here

yeah I have to clock out to get lunch

oh right but the point is there's nothing to do during it except mope listlessly whilst wishing i was elsewhere. i dunno, flexitime is pretty flexi in my job.

Oh, those midwesterners are getting a whole hour for lunch? Their employers must think that they're doing a pretty sweet job!

</attempted p/a midwestern humor>

It's not so much getting paid for the lunch hour itself, but that it counts as one of the hours in an "eight-hour workday."

so i kinda work 9 to 5 but that's a 7 hour day plus an unpaid lunch hour. the actuality is i do my alloted hours kinda at some point over the week even if some of that allotment is spent here or thinking unworklike thoughts

Turn up anytime btwn 8 and 10, lunch anytime btwn 12.30 and 2.30, leave btwn 4 and 6, flexi is the best thing about the gig

think i wd struggle to work unflexibly now tbh

Def, the thought of some crab shuffling over to me to ask why i'm five mins late is bizarre

i live in "warehouse hippyland" (i guess that should be hipsterland now)

i know about 30 people down my street that i'd stop and chat with for a bit. prob another 30 that'd get a nod. there's always people around, prob buying drugs or some such. busiest during summer- people hanging out on the st and in adjacent parks. thurs through sunday there's usually a gig or a party somewhere within 100m. not that i ever go to any of these things, far too anti-social and fun hating for that.

leave for work at about 8:30, cycle 8 miles or so, see the same cyclists every day through stokey/dalston/shoreditch, see the same people waiting for buses, try and avoid eye contact with my ex's friends when i pass through stokey. rush hour on my journey seems to be from about 8-10am and 4-6:30pm. stop off at a shop near work for my orangina, croissant and banana. see the same people getting their lottery tickets, 10 gallons of coca cola and cans of spesh.

exit work at 5, or as early as i can. same journey home and then the day finally begins. usually some kind of activity at home, but if i'm not feeling social i'll lock myself in the studio or go to my gfs. always end up in bed far too late because hardly anybody i know bothers getting up until midday.

are you up in those warehouses beyond manor house?

oui

Ah I had a friend who lived there for a while, was at a party there before (and then another party that was on next door.)

He lived with some Australians, amongst other people. Irish guy called Neal.

Mornings in my neighborhood are p busy - I live right next to a university medical center, traffic's usually just starting to pick up when I leave for work around 7:15/7.30.

I usually take a shortcut around the main drag if I leave any later, say after 8am because it takes forever to get anywhere - there's a school about a half mile away on the other side, so between people trying to get to the hospital and people trying to get to school it's a slooooooooow ride anywhere.

Freeway gets nasty by about 7:30am.

Evenings are pretty quiet - ours is a pretty residential neighborhood aside from the med center, so people are walking their dogs or walking home from the med center til about 8pm and then it's quiet. No bars or anything nearby - any businesses that sell food close up by 5 or 6pm so no real 'nightlife' to speak of.

You're in LA? I always think of California as having this up-early überhealthy lifestyle. I'd like a bit of that tbh, but come our dark winter mornings it would be hell.

Even more hell, though, is that I was ill before Christmas, slept through a day and woke up about 4:30pm because I had to go out, by which time it had got dark again. It's awful doing that in the morning, but ten times worse when daylight is three-quarters of a day away.

i just walked home from work and saw about 3 people the whole way? even for back streets just outside a city centre that's pretty cool

xxpost I'm in Sacramento. Sleepier than LA, not full-on 'city' craziness. Plus I don't live in a very hip area so the only people around in the morning are just normals walking to work. No real joggers or yoga girls or anything like that.

No satin shorts/ headphones/ rollerskates, is what I'm saying

I live in a crazy downtown area for half the week and at a beach for the other half my life barely makes any sense to me most of the time but I am kind of going w/ it

I have been living like this for a few years and still havent really gotten a good grasp of it I just kind of go places

Live on a busyish but not hypercrushed street corner in OC suburbia not far from three separate freeways, so it's a little more active than some spots. Always some traffic but it's more background flow at worst, aside from the occasional noisy fuckup. Locations on the exact four corners are a gas station, a Wahoo's, an El Pollo Loco and a 7-11. (The latter has proven very damn handy when necessary.) Thankfully the blocks themselves also include a number of good bars, Japanese restaurants, other basic eateries, independent coffee places (no Starbucks!), and a slew of established and up-and-coming restaurants and places to eat, including a great new bakery that just opened. Nearest supermarket is a Mitsuwa, which is a nice variant. None of the bars in the area are right there below my spot so while there's been the occasional late night drunkery, nothing constant or annoying.

Weekdays -- up at 5:30 if not earlier, catch a bus to campus at around 6:15. Back usually between 4:30 to 5. My nature means it's easy for me to shut out the world some, but even with all the noise it's always fun to sit out on my balcony -- doesn't look directly out on the intersection, but you can see most of it pretty easily anyway -- and enjoy a meal or drink while zoning a bit.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8352/8427749603_1ed33f896b_z.jpg

wow that's a pretty photo Ned

I'm in the centre of Central London; this is my fifth year in my flat. It's a nice mostly-council block and all the neighbours are on first-name, small-talk terms, but I've only been indoors to see my downstairs neighbour who is a little disabled and always needs help resetting the Freeview. Three of my neighbours have lived in the block since 1949, and the newest neighbours are Bangladeshis with close family in the next block. There's also a guy living on the ground floor who has taken on the role of local green-biro busybody, who leaves grandiose notes insulting local councillors/housing officers by name when things don't work, which gives me the creeps. When I moved in, I did a lot of decorating/floor-sanding so it was pretty important to introduce myself to the immediate neighbours and warn about noise before I had to make any.

Weekday mornings here start around 7-7.30am (when I get up, but neighbour D throws out trash at 7am every morning on his way to work); we're behind an office building that wastes so much electricity on lighting overnight that everyone in the block needs blackout blinds. Radio cars tend to park up on the short block between here and a main road. They make a lot of noise backing in and out, which is annoying in summer months if you leave your windows open. Weekends - when there is no work force around - are quiet, but there are a lot more shops in the 'hood than 10 years ago for the people who do live here. Closest coffee shop is one of the best in London, but it's shut on weekends.

VG: thanks!

i leave for work between 8:30 and 8:40, walk about five blocks and there i am. it's a university job so i usually pass a few students, but our downtown is close so there are other commuters around, almost all of them in cars. before i got this gig last year i was driving 50 minutes both ways. glad to be out of that rush hour rat race. this is a very car-driven city. i know lots of people who bike when it's warm but they still tend to own cars as winters are brutal (and all the car pollution makes it worse, ironically). it's a small city but the 'metropolitan area' is a gigantic grid that stretches for a hundred miles, so if you don't own a car you tend to be more confined to your immediate neighborhood and since 99% of immediate neighborhoods here aren't exactly 24 hour markets... car culture tends to perpetuate itself.

now i'm out of all that. i sold my car. i walk/bus everywhere. it's amazing how much good it's done me.

the general rhythm of this place is very 7-7. everything goes to sleep at 10. hardly any 24-hour places that aren't the del taco or the village inn. bar culture has a saint/sinner complex. kind of a boring place 'out'.. downtown is all energy companies, banks, law firms for the former, etc., that dies at 7. throngs of conventioneers in the summer. university is completely dominated by medical. all the hipsters will have children by the time they're 30. i see a fair amount of joggers, lots of dog-walkers. a homeless man accompanied by three dogs wherever he goes.

it's a very good place to have a dog or a child.

Actually being near the med center I do see a lot of odd things. Random old man in nothing but a hospital gown standing in traffic in the middle of the night - we've had a couple of those over the years. People with a pants-leg cut off, or still wearing their hospital gowns sitting waiting for the bus. Also the Shriners Children's Hospital is nearby too, so you occasionally see a family out for a walk with a little one in wheelchair, or bandaged and sitting up in a kid's plastic pushcart. You tend to see all kinds of things when you're out on a walk.

love walking

I can do a good 30 minute walk around here without having to cross much in the way of traffic. Very handy.

its pretty quiet where i am. except for the sirens.

people tend to go in their houses after work and stay there.

which is where i like them. safely behind closed doors.

DC:

lots of people go jogging/go to the gym at 5 am
lots of people go to work at 5-6 am
or at least leave the house to drive a long commute at 5 am if they live way out in the suburbs
probably the only time for these people to avoid horrendous traffic in the mornings
lots of people say they work 10-12 hour days, i am not sure how you can actually work that long but it prob involves lots of meetings and responding to emails
the first thing many people ask is "what do you do"
i don't feel great about having so many conversations about work, fancy beers and liquors that i am not drinking and don't plan to, the price of real estate and paying $500K+ for a rowhouse, the federal budget, the congress, commuting, the kinds of food people are cooking that are not being served to us at that moment, being a lawyer, going to law school, training for a 5K/10K/half marathon/marathon, baseball, griping about poor customer service
so many diehard fans of our football team across all parts of the city esp now with RGIII, but the name is racist

nights out can go to 2:30 on the weekends if you want to get the metro, maybe later if you don't
weekdays it's more of a happy hour type of place imo, like get there right after work, but it's still nicer to go out/see shows on weekdays, places aren't as overcrowded

despite all this there is a lot going on in this city and i do like it here, i think i would get bored living somewhere that was more laid back

Chicago: Public transit rush hour is probably from 7:30 to 9:30 and then from 4:30 to 6:30. As far as I can tell, vehicle rush hour is all the time. Lunch rush in the business district is definitely from 11:45 to 1 pm, so I try to eat late when I can (I also get to work between 9-9:30 and leave anywhere from 5-8, so eating late suits me).

I'm 40 so who knows when the young people's nights out start. Mine start right after work or with dinner, if they start at all. There's definitely a very busy happy hour bar scene in the business district, which is scary dead by 8 or 9. Otherwise, it's location dependent. Last call for most bars is 2 am/3 am Saturday (some bars have licenses to stay open until 4 am/5 am on Saturday) so it's not 24-7, but there are pretty much always people out on the streets doing something. Whether you say hello also depends on the neighborhood. I used to say hello to my neighbors all the time when I lived on the far north side, because if people were walking around in the residential areas, they most likely lived there. Our next apartment was in a very busy, happening, destination 'hood so I didn't speak to people unless I knew them from around the way. Now we live in bro-ville among the young and chronically intoxicated so I just keep my head down and try not to get puked on.

All of this suits me wonderfully, even if I don't take advantage of the nightlife very often. I like knowing it's there. I like that there are people always up and about, even if I don't want to interact with them at the moment.

Actually, I'm not super fond of the location of our current apartment. Besides the bros, we're in a liminal space between multiple areas of greater pedestrian and street-level business concentration and I prefer to live right on top of things.

i live in a v. convenient and pleasant neighborhood in brooklyn but my life is arrhythmic so

I live in a reasonably inner-suburban area by the bayside. Theres the usual 8-9.30am, 5-6.30pm peak hour traffic into the city: our public transport is straining at the seams as Melbourne has rapidly expanded in population in recent years. Trains and trams are frequently very overcrowded. Roads just as bad, often.

Being a big lively city theres always lots going on, and in my area often til very late at night. People are known to have breakfast at 2pm and dinner at 11pm, on weekends in particular.

One small variation from elsewhere in the city in my area is the fact it's a heavily hasidic enclave, so saturdays are very quiet and a lot of the local shops are closed, and there are big gangs of hasid families walking the streets going to temple.

My current neighbour's my landlord so I talk to him a reasoinable amount (though I'd rather not, he's a whingey old git). I knew my immediate neighbs in my last 2 houses as well, but it was often because they'd come round to complain about my boyfriend's guitar playing being too loud, lol.

The rhythm... the rhythm is going to get me. Sometimes, at night -- I turn off all the lights. To try and escape its infernal embrace, but its just a sham - a lie I tell myself in order to be able to get to sleep. I know, no matter what, no matter what I say... before the night is through... that the rhythm... the rhythm is going to get me.

I live in Capitol Hill in Seattle now. While I had the advantage of jet lag improving my sleep schedule and lived in my slightly-closer-to-work temporary apartment I sometimes made it in to work by 8, but at this point I pretty much just meander in by 9 or 9:30. The bus goes "off-peak" at 9am I think. I live in a mid-rise apartment building and I have no idea how I would ever get to know any of the other people who live here, even if I wanted to.

My neighborhood crawls with hipsters on Friday and Saturday evenings, barhopping and going to shows and whatnot. I approve of them being there but I have no real interest in crawling around with them for the most part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8052uZP6CE

http://www.outsider.ie/Features/May/The-loneliest-place-in-Ireland-%E2%80%93-the-Bangor-Trail.aspx?fb_action_ids=10201358304897652&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.Ul6IlE8sFik.like

I live in New York City and I don't think anyone really needs an explanation of what the rhythms of life are like here, since they are the stuff of cliche, but they don't suit me at all and they bother me a lot, and if I didn't have job and family keeping me here I'd be the fuck out in a second.

One thing I will say in addition to all the standard stuff about NYC (people rushing around and being driven and all that) is that it also seems like the culture here is not very oriented toward having close-knit groups of friends. Everyone is so career-driven and it's not very conducive to "just hanging out."

ilx should come chill out in bangor erris, 200 miles from a house