The door to the car thunks shut and I shift into gear, pulling out of the drive way. “Where do you want to go?” I turn and ask my girlfriend.
“Anywhere, so long as I get to talk to you,” she says. This is a common enough event for us, we may not have seen each other in several days or more and may not have had a chance to talk much, so we’ll go for a late night drive. There’s always been an appeal to talking and laughing with one another late in the quiet evening with just the mellow whine of the engine constant in the background and the dark country roads ahead. We would drive aimlessly and end up in any number of relatively bucolic suburbs surrounding Flint, Michigan. On this particular night, it was Lapeer.
It was a hot, dark summer night around 11:30 p.m. and we were driving through the small town best known for being the home of the store that sold the fourth largest winning Powerball ticket in history, and for having the only roundabout anywhere in the county. As we drove through Lapeer’s darkened downtown we slowed to a routine standstill at a stop sign on Main Street. As I began to ease onto the accelerator once more I was forced to, very suddenly, bring our motorized vehicle to a halt as a baby-faced long boarder crossed in front of us on the crosswalk.
“What the?” we both looked at each other in amusement. As we progressed through the pitch black and tiny downtown it became apparent that we were surrounded on all sides by youth. Oh the youth! There were so many young, suburban teens out in the middle of the night, and they were all staring at their phones.
This, like our night time drives, is also a common occurrence now that Pokemon Go! has been released unto the world by the good lords of Nintendo. Downtown Lapeer was now a silent mecca of adolescents with nowhere to be the next morning, and it isn’t just Lapeer. This is how nights are everywhere that we’ve driven through, and in countless communities around the country. and the last night I drove through downtown Flint there were people crawling the streets, which used to be a rare occurrence even in the day, let alone at night in America’s most violent city.
Needless to say, Pokemon Go! has affected quite the positive change in getting kids out of the house and socializing, but also in getting the people who would normally spend their time in the suburban world of strip malls and Walmarts and chain stores into the city centers of small towns and cities for the first time in a long time. The placement of Pokemon Go! creatures and gyms around various local landmarks is causing a definite shift in activity in areas often less frequented by youngins. The positive educational benefits that this has had by leading kids to points of local history that they otherwise might not have known about is already documented, but there is an opportunity missed as of yet; economics.
Sure, economics have played into the game from its inception, if Nintendo and the companies involved weren’t going to make any money then they wouldn’t have created the game. The ripple effect that the game has caused, however, results in large groups of people out and about at night, and it is no coincidence that the word night has now been used in this article 10 times, for I have a suggestion.
Businesses are missing out. There are crowds surrounding the darkened storefronts now from close until 2 a.m. and oftentimes, later. In downtown Flint, every summer Saturday night regularly sees a busload, or two or three, of people milling about with nothing to do but stare at their phones. If business owners could open their eyes to the situation and add new operating hours there is profit to be made. The central commercial areas that aren’t used to being frequented even while the Sun’s out are now being surrounded at night. My recommendation to businesses across the nation is to extend operating hours to 2 or 3 a.m. just for the summer and see how it works out, because not only is there now a market to be served, but electrical costs are lower at night as well, and it will be an effective way to amortize existing operating costs.
For any reader who is a player of Pokemon Go! and has been hungry on the streets at midnight or 3 a.m., or any reader who knows someone with those late night munchies, please feel free to share the article across all of your social media platforms, and to share it on the Facebook pages of your local businesses. This is a change that we can make happens, the market follows the consumer. Happy playing!
