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The second photo was coffee.

Attending sports events is becoming more and more expensive, even here, in Europe.

Going to the gym is also not cheap, and, even so, we're not all late 20s - early 30s people, us people in our 40s or in our 50s also need a nice place to hang out without getting physically exhausted in the process.

As for the hobbies, most of the "community" ones also require relatively more money to be spent, and, again, it pertains to a certain demographic.

We have low cost gyms in the UK circa £20 a month which seems like a fairly good deal to me. What does it cost where you are?

Also my local gym is very popular with the 50+ crowd. There seems to be a large social aspect to it for them. Don’t knock it!

I'm not a gym person but my partner is.

I can say that around here in downtown-ish Bucharest the annual subscription for a popular gym varies between 500 to 800 euros per yer, depending on the chosen plan/options, but you really do want to get the more expensive plans/options that are between 700-800 euros. That is if you pay all in advance, if you pay month by month or 3-months by 3-months (it's all so complicated) the costs are between 80 to 100 euros per month.

I agree though that all this may vary. As a man you may choose to "cheapen out" a little and choose less expensive gyms that are located further out or who attract a different kind of clientele, but that option may not be available for many women (as my partner is), unfortunately.

Well I’m in my 40s now and go to the gym more and the bar less than in my 20s or 30s. I assumed this was pretty typical.

I've seen a recent boom in public exercise spaces in some big cities and people really use them and these are free. Would be cool if more companies offered a compensation for gym subscription as in IT sector

> Brought to you by the alcohol industry.

Or rather history? It's been Church or the Pub for a very very long time.

> Think the Paris coffee shops where the French revolution brewed, or British pubs where engineers designed the first public railway

The other part of this is that a third places mixes people of different social strata, and you end up talking to them, getting a cross pollination of ideas.

A self selecting hobby group is not necessarily this.

A hackerspace may be more like this, or a community garden, but a competitive chess club? Probably no.

A gym? Cost, physical exertion immediately excludes a lot of society from participating.

Where is a gym more expensive than a piss-up at a local pub?

taking classes at Equinox https://www.equinox.com/

"it's not fitness, it's life"

Pretty sure that a piss-up in a place that's near an Equinox in London will probably not be cheap either.

I just run outside these days but I thought that starting conversations at gyms was frowned upon?

Even if it wasn't, most people are wearing headphones. Sustained conversation would be difficult.

Yup. Gyms are kind of inverse of pubs, in this way and many more.

For example, the alcohol, as brought into spotlight by 'Animats. It's rather well-known (if a little tough to admit for many people) that alcohol is the "social lubricant". The way it lowers inhibitions and "screens off" pent-up stress, helps people make connections, build and nurture friendships.

It's not the only way to do this, but it's a way that works, and scales well among and across social strata - a fact that's been recognized since time immemorial, and the millennia of culture built around drinking only reinforce its bonding effects.

It kind of depends.

Serious iron gyms are usually a lot more chatty than commercial / for everyone gyms.

None of them are like the pub though, the pub has no activity other than socialising, it's the entire point.

It's not hidden. It's in the title. However the language is... well... local. "our local" or "the local" means "our local pub" in the UK.

"going down to the local" means visiting one's nearest pub.

I agreed with you at first, that was my first reading - but actually it doesn't make sense like that (I think we must have merged it as 'haunts us & hurts us' or something) - it's 'local haunts', which certainly includes pubs but explains why the second photo is a coffee shop, which nobody would non-jokingly call their 'local'.

Ime people don't go to the gym or a sports class to socialise. They might socialise afterwards, but that would usually be in a pub or cafe.

Gyms are not social spaces; they're closer to libraries if anything. People go in, do their reps and leave. Gyms do not encourage hanging out or making conversation, unless it's about signing up for personal training lessons.

As for non-alcohol-based options, they could have used a picture of a coffee shop. But even then, coffee shops today are more like an assembly line for Ubereats orders.