Red Zones

I spent last Friday night at a local night club in my hometown. I went out with a couple of my girlfriends and asked them to help me with this assignment. We had a good time observing the men for the sake of the assignment (all three of us are married….but come on, it was for educational purposes alright?)

The first thing to know is the layout of the space requires you to be in one of a few ‘zones.’ You can be near the bar, along a wall, on the dance floor, or in the netherworld between one of the general areas. That night there was a fun cover band playing. They were drinking all sorts of concoctions, but the most common were bottles of beer.

The demographics have a lot to do with how the observation turned out—most men in this bar were between 21 and 30 and were there primarily in groups. They wore all sorts of clothes—some in jeans and t-shirts, a few in jerseys, and some walking ads for Ambercrombie & Fitch. They were visually separated by these clothing groups for most of the night. The guys tended to stay in groups and interact with people in similar clothes. I can only assume that was because they came with each other and set the tone for the evening when they decided to go out.
Throughout the night, there were several groups who just stood around. It was too loud to identify what they were talking about. Generally, they didn’t dance as a group or make any group-based movements. Some of the guys would peel off from the group to find a lady and go dance (either ask her to dance or see her and go dance with her…or try at least, ha).

I was struck by the lack of group movement. Most of the guys seemed to stay in their safe group, but when they moved (to the bar, to the bathroom, to the dancefloor, etc), they moved alone. Women almost NEVER do this, especially in a bar. We usually travel in packs or at least in pairs. We decided that they felt more confident approaching ladies or moving around the bar by themselves—not sure why though, maybe they feel better being alone if it doesn’t (or does) work out with the lady? Or it could just be that they don’t want to be burdened by a ‘buddy.’
The room really got going around 12:00, and people were moving all over, dancing and having a good time. There were still some pockets of men, but by then there was a bit more of a mingling of groups and sexes. By then, our group had picked up a couple guys too (but they were old high school friends we hadn’t seen in years…so the dynamic was much little less risqué).

We saw on more than one occasion a pair or small group of guys doing some observing of their own. Their movements were subtle to identify where they were talking about. They would use their chins or point their beer bottles in a certain direction then talk about what they saw. Again, too loud to know for certain what they were talking about, but usually it was a pretty woman on the other side of the nod, so it doesn’t take too much stretch of the imagination to see where they were going.

I didn’t see anything I hadn’t seen before, but it was fun to take it apart with my friends and see if we could figure them out when we had nothing on the line. Men seem to be more bar independent--and yet dependent in the way they kept returning to larger groups of ‘home base.’ I’ve had worse assignments, that’s for sure!