Lifestyle ·
Couple Moves to New Town for Nightlife, Exhausts All Options in Three Weeks
WILLIAMSBURG, VA — After moving from Chicago to Williamsburg several years ago, Tyler and Madison Bennett began noticing an unsettling change in themselves.
They were going to bed at 8:45.
Convinced the problem was suburban life in Greensprings West, the couple sold their house and moved to New Town specifically to be closer to Williamsburg’s nightlife.
“We missed living somewhere you could just walk out your front door and see where the night takes you,” Madison said. “We thought New Town would give us that again.”
For the first month, it did.
The couple went to Paul’s.
Then they went to Corner Pocket.
Then they went back to Paul’s.
Then Corner Pocket again.
By Week Three, they realized they had successfully completed Williamsburg nightlife.
“We were sitting at Paul’s one Friday night and I said, ‘What should we do after this?’” Tyler recalled. “Madison looked at me and said, ‘I think this is after this.’”
The realization was difficult for two people who once routinely made 9 p.m. dinner reservations in Chicago.
They had imagined their New Town life involving spontaneous late-night drinks, walking between bars and occasionally waking up Saturday morning wondering why there was a receipt in Tyler’s pocket from 1:47 a.m.
Instead, they discovered that by the time they finish dinner and start wondering what to do next, most of Williamsburg has already begun shutting down.
Within two months, the couple stopped asking what was happening that night and started asking what they were doing “this weekend.”
Then “this weekend” started meaning brunch.
Their 9 p.m. cocktails became 7 p.m. wine.
Their 7 p.m. wine became one drink with dinner.
And one recent Saturday night, after spending the afternoon talking about how nice it was to live “right in the middle of everything,” Tyler locked the front door at 8:31.
Madison was already upstairs washing her face.
Both were in bed by 8:45.
“We moved here for the nightlife,” Tyler said. “Turns out Williamsburg’s nightlife is just your regular life, but you went to Paul’s first.”