Before I was a reporter covering the death of American fun, I tried to run on saving it. In 2021, I ran for New York City Council in my home district of Astoria, Queens, on the slogan “Public Space for the Public Good”—a promise to wrestle back sidewalks, plazas, and streets from car storage and give them back to actual human beings. I wanted more open streets, more benches, more places where a neighbor could just sit down. I didn’t win, but I’ve never stopped noticing when a city takes away somewhere people used to gather, and lately, it feels like that’s happening everywhere at once.
Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics back that feeling up. According to its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages—which counts business establishments by industry down to the county level going back to 1990—the U.S. has lost a fifth of its movie theaters and nearly a third of its bowling alleys since 2001.
