On a recent Friday night, Philadelphia’s Trestle Inn welcomed a crowd for a Prince-themed dance party. Revelers rocking purple eye shadow and “love symbols” slurped down whiskey sours and lit up the dance floor while a go-go dancer gyrated to hits like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “1999.” Almost everyone was over 50. Many of them were drinking. And it was only 7:30.
Event Context
“We realized that the younger generations weren’t drinking as much, and these early parties were a way to get older folks in the door,” said Ian Cross, the bar’s owner. “They spend money on cocktails, they drink, they have fun.”
Bar owners have a new favorite customer: the Gen Xer.
To be sure, Gen Z is not abstaining from alcohol altogether. In a survey published by the market research firm IWSR in July, 74% of Gen Z respondents from around the globe reported having consumed alcohol in the first half of 2026.
“Gen X drinks more intentionally and more consistently over the course of a night,” said Zack Bush, co-founder of Mad Room Hospitality, which operates several venues including the storied Ball & Chain nightclub in Miami. “They’re showing up earlier and staying longer.”
At the Detroit-area Magic Bag, Gen X-friendly events generate roughly 25% more in alcohol sales than events that are popular with Gen Z, said Andrew Bochenek, the live-music venue’s general manager.
“As a business, you want people that are drinking more per head,” Bochenek said, which is why the Magic Bag has been hosting fewer indie-rock shows—the venue’s bread and butter for much of its 30-year history—and more nostalgia-driven theme nights. Their summer slate includes a “Mega 80s” night and two ’80s vs. ’90s parties on top of tributes to Duran Duran, Tool and Talking Heads. “The coolness factor kind of goes out the window,” he joked.
The Magic Bag has also played host to the Earlybirds Club, a dance party “for ladies who have s— to do in the morning.” These throwback parties take place from 6 to 10 p.m. and are immensely popular with older millennials and Gen Xers. Since their inaugural event in Chicago in early 2024, Earlybirds has spread to over 50 cities in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K.
Randy Maupin, the 51-year-old general manager at the Cat Club and the Eagle in San Francisco, said that his generation has not been immune to the growing sobriety movement. Still, he says, even teetotaling Gen Xers still uphold a certain bar etiquette.
“We have a great support system with our older clientele,” said Maupin. “Even if they don’t drink, they’ll buy water or mocktails just because they want to support and keep and maintain our business. The younger generation? Not so much. They’ll come in a big group and only get a couple drinks and ask for water cups.”
Team Analysis
“I’ve noticed it’s the same people going up to the bar, and it’s always the older folks. The young people come in and go straight to the dance floor,” said Rob Kulathinal, an evolutionary geneticist in his 50s, about his experience going out in Philly. “On the plus side, it’s never been easier to get a drink.”
Sandwiched between the larger (and louder) boomer and millennial cohorts, many Gen Xers consider themselves a “forgotten generation.” The prototypical Gen Xer is resilient and cynical, a “latchkey kid” turned disaffected slacker, raised on MTV and limited parental supervision. “Gen X: We straight up raised ourselves,” reads the caption on one popular internet meme, a photo of an unhelmeted child on a rickety-looking bicycle popping a wheelie.
For Dina Cirillo Strachan, a 56-year-old high school counselor and Trestle Inn regular, the lack of helicopter or “snowplow” parents made for a thrilling childhood—and plenty of opportunities for underage drinking in adolescence.
Match Outlook
“We’d meet under the bleachers—there was always a gathering place. Whether it was announced or unannounced, you could probably show up with a six-pack,” said Strachan. She compared her own freewheeling youth to that of her Gen Z children, whose “third spaces” are largely online and who are coming of age under mass social-media surveillance—the ultimate buzzkill.
“I can track my kids’ location every second of the day,” she said. “There’s just not the same opportunity.”
David Jernigan, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health, said that the alcohol industry marketed heavily to young people in the 1980s and ’90s, using products like wine coolers and sugary alcopops as boozy “training wheels” to draw in Gen Xers.
“It’s never too late but—and the industry knows this—drinking patterns, like so many other things, are set in adolescence into the early 20s,” Jernigan said.
source
As drinking among younger Americans hit historic lows in 2024, those born roughly between 1965 and 1980 largely maintained their drinking habits, according to a 2025 long-term study from the University of Michigan that examined substance use among people between 19 and 65 years old. They want to party, and they want to do it on their own terms. Watering holes are programming their calendars accordingly, with nostalgia theme nights and parties that end way before midnight.
At the time, the industry was benefiting from murky public-health messaging around drinking. In 1991, “60 Minutes” aired a segment exploring the so-called “French paradox,” suggesting that the reason why French people have lower rates of heart disease—despite having less healthy lifestyles overall—is because they drink so much wine. Supermarket sales of popular red wines spiked by as much as 45% in the weeks following the broadcast, according to the Gomberg-Fredrikson report, which monitors U.S. wine sales. Observational studies in the ensuing years seemed to support the idea that moderate drinking has health benefits.
Conversely, Gen Z and younger millennials have entered adulthood amid mounting evidence of alcohol’s negative impacts on the body. Following a series of studies throughout the 2010s that largely debunked the “French paradox,” various health organizations including the WHO have issued guidance suggesting that the healthiest option is simply not to drink at all. Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General called for alcoholic beverages to carry cancer warnings, sending shares of beer and spirits companies tumbling.
“There has definitely been a wellness narrative that has not worked in the industry’s interest,” Jernigan said.
