Page - 86 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

86 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Samantha Wilkinson, Catherine Wilkinson | Night-Life and Young People’s Atmospheric Mobilities SW: Why do you drink on the bus on the way to the city centre? Kelly: Because then you don’t have to buy more drinks when you’re there and spend more money. Jenny: Cos then you go there say if you’re pissed already then a few more drinks will just do it. Julia: Say if you’re going out with £30, you can come back with a tenner if you drink a bottle of vodka on the way there cos you just like pacing your drinks (Kelly, 17, Jenny, 16, and Julia, 17, Wythenshawe, friendship group interview) I often drink in taxis and maybe on the bus or on the tram or something. If you’re like pre-drinking and then you have to leave and you haven’t quite finished, I always fill a bot- tle with whatever I have left, and usually it’s just like one more drink or something, it just means you can carry on pre-drinking til the moment you get to the next place, so you’re not in danger of sobering up I guess (Evie, 24, Chorlton, interview) According to Kelly, Jenny and Julia, consuming alcohol on the bus on the way to the city cen- tre is cost-effective. That is, it is cheaper to consume alcohol purchased from non-commercial premises whilst on the move, than it is to purchase drinks in bars, pubs and clubs at the final drinking destination. Further, Evie admits to drinking on a range of transport types, recog- nising that drinking on the move leads to less wastage of drinks that have been purchased for home drinking. As Chorlton is approximately four miles away from Manchester city centre and Wythenshawe is roughly eight miles away from Manchester city centre, bus, tram, or taxi journeys into Manchester city centre can take time. Consequently, consuming alcohol on the move means that one is not “in danger of sobering up”. From Evie’s perspective, not consuming alcohol in the journey space is illogical; it risks diminishing the embodied states of drunkenness young people have obtained during home drinking. Extending home drinking beyond the sphere of the home then, means that this embodied feeling of drunkenness is sustained through- out the evening, with minimal further spending on alcohol – a process akin to Hadfield’s (2011, 64) concept of “alcohol banking”. This suggests that travel time is not “unproductive, wasted time in-between ‘real’ activities” (Lyons and Urry 2005, 257). Rather, travel time can be used productively as activity time (Lyons and Urry 2005), revealing that young people’s journeys on nights out are, as Bissell and Overend (2014) would argue, far from passive. Desires for consuming alcohol, when on the move, extend beyond the cost benefits; for some young people in the study, mobile spaces are emotionally important. This can be seen through the quotations below: If I’m pre-drinking now I’ll have a couple at home, let’s say I buy four cans to start drinking before I get out. I might have two at home while I’m getting ready, and the other two I’ll have on the bus. It takes 45 minutes for me to get into Manchester [city centre], so plenty of time there to have the remaining two on the bus. I suppose it does save money, but it’s nice to sort of get out and be in the mood a little bit already, rather than having to start from scratch, especially when, if I’ve been working and people have started drinking earlier than me, I don’t have to play catch up (Collin, 23, Wythenshawe, follow up interview)