Grand Rapids - Night Life or Low Life

Have you noticed as I have, that GR has an overwhelming amount of drinking establishments? You've been there, you're driving home with the kids from visiting the Grandparents, you're driving through the stretch of Fulton between Division and Market, and you see hundreds of drunk yuppies? And then the questions come "Daddy, why is that girl peeing behind that dumpster?", "Mommy, why is that preppy guy puking in his Abercrombie & Fitch pre-worn out hat?", "Daddy, why is that girl wearing American Eagle jeans that you can see her Victoria's Secret thongs hanging out?"

I did a little research and found that there are at least 175 bars in the Grand Rapids area. Why do we need so many bars? I don't think that I am alone when I say that I am sick and tired of seeing all the yuppies staggering down Fulton on Friday and Saturday nights. It's not that I am jealous because I have to go home and put my kids to bed; it's just that it makes me wonder about the future of our society that so much money, effort, and time is spent on people forgetting all the crap that is wrong with their lives. I think that if people spent as much time working together on fixing our society as they did trying to forget their problems (i.e. TV, video games, music, computers, alcohol, just to name a few) that our country would be a lot better off. Ok just a minute, let me get down off my soapbox now. All I'm saying is what happened to people just getting together to talk, hang-out, and socialize? Have you tried to have conversations in a bar lately? I'm not saying that we need to be serious all the time (Lord knows I'm not saying that), I'm just saying that I don't like all the yuppie bars in GR. However, if they were all gone, I sure would miss this: