Lively Nights

When you think of great night out cities, it’s hard to list 10 of them without having London in your thoughts. With a population of about 8 million, one of the highest in Europe, it isn’t a surprise to hear that London is as packed with people at night just as much as the day. A walk around Leceister Square at 11pm could have you convinced that more people come out at night than during the day. (No, it’s not because some are vampires).

So what do all these people do in London for a “night out”? Well, that’s difficult to answer. But with the variety of nightlife establishments, there is barely a thing that you can’t do. What I’ll like to focus on is the more traditional and oldest of night out experiences – the pint – as well as cocktails, wines and everything in between. Beer cocktails are on the rise in case you were wondering what in between would entail. These are mostly consumed in pubs, bars and clubs with people looking to socialize with friends and families, or even complete strangers. 

Now we come to numbers. Have you ever wondered how many people actually go out for a drink on any given night? Or how many pubs, bars and clubs are in London? To answer the second question, my guess was originally at about 5000, which I can say now, or rather hope, that it is not too far off. Beerintheevening.com lists the pubs as 4000 at the time of writing. I could not find much information on the number of clubs and bars. But I think we can agree that 500 is a good guess since undershooting is better than overstating, in my opinion. This trend will continue. 

There we have it, 4500 establishments where people can go to for a drink. Now assuming the supply should meet demand (that Economics class was for this!), and that each establishment has 2 new unique customers every hour from 6pm – 12am, then we can say, at the very least, given I have used very low figures, that 54000 people go out on a given night in London.

Although the figure could be way off the mark, I believe it gives a good idea on the numbers, which shows that London is truly a great city for a lively night out. 

I’ll continue on this theme on my next post. Write a comment if you have a better source or more accurate numbers, or if you have any thoughts on this at all.

First post, done!