It really doesn't. I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so. Most of my neighbours are the same.
> a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
- Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
- Drinking in public parks is not typically permitted, nor is street drinking.
- Arcades and bowling alleys are out in the burbs and require driving to.
What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
I don't care whether you like that or not - I'm not the one who was getting "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
Yeah. In practice I’d probably coordinate food, make something, and make a run to the liquor grocery store but I could also easily handle 8-10 people showing up at my door.
> I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.
The party you're describing doesn't sound like it needs a dining room.
> Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
Keep in mind this cost is compared to an extra or bigger room in your house. You can throw many restaurant parties for the money you'd spend on a larger house. (Invest the difference and the restaurant parties are effectively free)
I don't really understand what people are imagining here though - it's not like "entertaining space" is some gilded-age ballroom for most people making this choice, and the price difference matters if and only if there is an otherwise comparable house you can buy that meets your other constraints.
Even if you buy a house with an entertaining space, you can use it for something that you do more often. For instance, my house had a 'dining room' but I use it as a music studio/band practice room. This way it gets used every single day.
Ours is being used as an office right now, and has been like that since 2020. Still has a dining table, but it's pushed up against a window and home to indoor plants right now, and we've gotten rid of the chairs since then (they were old and beaten up anyway).
Also I don't think it always makes sense to get a smaller house. We got a smaller house and I kind of regret it now, since housing prices and mortgage rates have shot up so much it's now so much harder to upgrade (and the house we got was intended to be a starter home), and also we'd get so much more if we sold a larger house today than our house now.
For example, let's assume prices went up about 50% on average in the past five years for the sake of easy math (not too far from how much my home actually did go up after a reappraisal last year). Buy a house at $300k and it goes up 50% means you can sell it for $450k and make $150k out of it. But buy a $500k home and it goes up 50%, means you can sell it at $750k and made $250k out of it. Granted you're making higher payments that whole time as well but not as much as it went up.
That math doesn't make as much sense now, with prices starting to dip a bit and high mortgage rates muting demand somewhat, however.
You are overstating the difficulty of finding and renting a public place. It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
You are also discounting the costs you have already sunk into throwing your own parties ("I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.")
> What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
Good, I'm happy that you know what you want and are pleased. But I didn't say it was impossible to derive value from that.
> "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
More frustrated with the way some people try to fulfill those preferences, and that every time I bring it up people get so defensive.
Look, no offence, but I'm a lot less likely to go to your rented public space for a party than I am to drop over to the over poster's house for dinner. They're not comparable experiences, other than being social events.
I also think you underestimate how often many people (especially in more social cultures) socialise. It could be literally 100's of times per year.
Exactly. The insight in this thread into how solitary (I would say lonely, one-dimensional) some HN users' lives are has shocked me.
I'm not going to go to the room you rented at a local business, bring a six pack of interesting beers to try together, bring my baby that my friends have been so excited to meet and play with, etc. My friends who like weed aren't going to show up. Not to mention holidays, the hardest time to rent public spaces and the most likely time for friends to gather...
> It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
Sure. “Hi, I know it’s closing time, but can I rent your party space for my friends and I to drink our own alcohol in starting in 15 minutes time” is not exactly the kind of call a landlord would be particularly receptive to.
It really doesn't. I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so. Most of my neighbours are the same.
> a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
- Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
- Drinking in public parks is not typically permitted, nor is street drinking.
- Arcades and bowling alleys are out in the burbs and require driving to.
What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
I don't care whether you like that or not - I'm not the one who was getting "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.