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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

Is a 3am last-call a mostly American (USA) thing?

I've never lived anywhere that allowed purchasing alcohol all night long. I read the article and thought to myself "Who the heck drinks after 3am anyways?" Even through my teens and twenties, an all-night party was the exception.

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Here in Brazil we have no such laws. You can drink anywhere and anytime. I remember drinking till 5am when I was a teenager and bars would stay open until the last customer was out. Today there is still no restriction, but mostly because of labour laws and the costs of maintaining service it's very hard to find open bars after 3am.

* edit: of course I'm talking about my experience living on a medium-sized city (Maceió). I guess bigger cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro you can find a good number of late open venues.

I spent about three weeks in Brazil (Salvador and then São Paulo), and in SP in particular we regularly found bars open around 5 or 5:30 am, but this was circa 2004/2005 so it may have changed since then.

In Berlin you can party at a club from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. Young people fly in from other European cities to 'experience' this.

There are many places around the world that are open late. In many places (I speak from experience in Spain, Peru, and El Salvador) , the night doesn't really get started until after midnight anyways.

The article also mentioned other things, like all liquor must be served with a mixer after midnight. That means drinking a whisky neat is now illegal, which is quite ridiculous, and will definitely drive people away from going to bars.

It varies by state. I currently live in New York and our last call is 4am. I used to live in Delaware and it was 1am.

There are a few exceptions that allow 24 hour drinking, but I think it's mainly casino towns like Vegas & Atlantic City.

On a slight tangent, 9-5 first shift work is also kind of a boomer thing that's going away. I'm an old X-er and I've never, in my entire life, had a 9-5 job. Always "as needed" type stuff aka overtime or weird flex time. I've never had a job where I can roll into the office at 9 and left at 5. By my own choice I do four tens now, and as long as the market permits I'll never work five eights ever again. 9-5 means "real job" and since only boomers get the real jobs, do the math there.

I started out in financial services and per our change management if the building wasn't on fire I wasn't allowed to touch anything until 5pm on trading days, so I wouldn't even show up at the office until at least 4pm and if things went bad overnight I could certainly use a drink around 3am... I suspect this kind of work-life balance is not unusual here on HN.

Over here in the UK, 24 hour pubs and bars was a new introduction about a decade or so ago. And shops selling alcohol are often open til fairly late into the night, especially the corner shop types.

It's variable though, so some pubs still close around 11pm, and some don't.

The jury is out about whether this decision was a good thing. On the one hand, there are some articles and studies saying the amount of alcohol drunk has gone down because of it, and on the other hand, others saying that people are drinking more because of it.

In France you have convenience store (referred to as "Chez l'arabe" as their owners are immigrants most of the time) open until very late at nigth.

They sell all sort of non-perishable food and, well, convenience stuff, but most of their profit comes from selling alcohol at night. And man, be it for alcohol or convenience, they are soooo useful !

It varies by town. When I was younger bars were open until 4-5am on the weekends. Then the 2am rule was put in place for every night. Strip clubs stay open until 4am now, but you have to BYOB.

What this had done is turn the strip clubs into normalish clubs after 2 am since everywhere else is closed.

Most of the US is 2am. Some places are 3 or 4 (I think NYC is 4am?).

Last time I was out at bars in NYC it was 4am and I believe this is still the case. DC is 3am, as is Hawaii, West Virginia, Indiana, and some places in Illinois.

Parts of Alaska are apparently 5am and Louisiana has no official last call from what I've read.

I'm sure there are some other cities or states with late last call requirements but I'm only familiar with these ones. Occasionally in my city, there are special exceptions like New Year's Eve where bars can stay open and serve all night if they feel like it.

Louisiana is like the wild west of alcohol control. I'm pretty sure you can go to a bar, get a drink to go at 5 am, and take it to another bar (while drinking it on the street).

That is correct, New York is 4am. And I even remember many years of my life when 4am used to seem impossibly early and oppressive. I don't remember them all that well mind you.

Someone made a nice graphic that shows opening times in the US: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3ddapj/bar...

I realize it varies, but most of the US has some sort of last-call. I think Vegas and New Orleans are the only cities I've visited (in the US) without one.

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