I’m addicted to Yelp when finding all sorts of businesses, so this is funny and has a ring of truth to it:
Archive for April 1st, 2012
The hot new trend in Sweden: Clubbing on your lunch hour
Posted in International, Pop Culture on April 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Many Swedes have decided that rather than have the conventional staid office worker lunch hour, they go clubbing instead:
Dripping with sweat and awash in disco lights, they dance to pulsating club music at Lunch Beat, a trend that started in Stockholm and is spreading to other cities in Europe.
Swedes dance their asses off in a Stockholm nightclub on their daytime lunch hour. Photo credit: USA Today
Then they go back to work.
“It is absolutely fantastic!” exclaimed Asa Andersson, 33, who broke away from her job at a coffee shop to dance last week. “It is the first time I’m here. I’m totally happy and ecstatic, totally covered in sweat, and I’m full of energy. It does not get any better than this.”
The first Lunch Beat was held in June 2010 in an underground parking lot in Stockholm. Only 14 people showed up. But they had so much fun they immediately planned another event. Word spread, and now the Swedish capital has monthly Lunch Beats that attract hundreds.
The events are alcohol-free, so club owners aren’t sending legions of office workers back to work drunk. And they only last for one hour, after which the music stops. And, since many Europeans haven’t been brainwashed by Gillette and Proctor & Gamble into thinking that we have to all smell like chemical factories, Swedes apparently see nothing wrong with going back to the office a little wet:
The events are not-for-profit. Cover charges are used for rent and sandwiches, so dancers don’t return to work hungry.
Some first-time visitors were amazed at how quickly typically reserved Swedes burst out of their shells. As the DJ pumped up the base, office clerks mingled with business-suit types, the young mixed it up with the middle-aged and university students danced with everyone.
“It was just like bang, straight in to the disco,” said Kristoffer Svenberg, a 34-year-old artist.
But isn’t it uncomfortable returning to an office after an hour of dancing? European workers, a tad more relaxed than Americans, say not at all.
Ellen Bengtsson, 29, came to Lunch Beat with more than a dozen people from a government office.
“It’s great,” she said. “We’ll go back sweaty together.”
Read the rest of the story here.
