Page - 87 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Samantha Wilkinson, Catherine Wilkinson | Night-Life and Young People’s Atmospheric Mobilities 87 The best one’s drinking when you’re on the way to somewhere and you get there and then you’re already like half way there [to the desired drunken state] (Teresa, 16, Wythenshawe, peer interview) I like drinking on the bus, it’s fun (Joe, 15, Wythenshawe, peer interview) For Collin, Teresa, and Joe, mobilities bound up with the consumption of alcohol are pleasu- rable; they get you “in the mood”; are “the best”; and “fun”. This positive affective atmosphere associated with drunken mobilities can be seen through the following account from the first author’s field diary: As soon as we were in the taxi, Louisa and Sophie requested music to be played. The taxi man said that this was not possible, but that it was okay to play music from our mobile phones, so we did this. It made the journey more enjoyable, and enabled a rea- sonably seamless transition between the home drinking realm where music was consumed, to the club, where music was also consumed (Field diary, 19/04/2014, night out with Louisa, 22, and friends, Chorlton, in the city centre) Playing music from mobile phones can be seen as a “place-making device” (Berry and Hamilton 2010, 114), transforming the taxi into a micro-nightclub, enabling one to dwell within mobilities (Lyons and Urry 2005). During participant observations, mobile phones enabled young people to manage moods, and orientations to space, enabling greater control over experiences (Wilson 2011). This enables young people to override the negative effects of boredom they may have otherwise encountered. The taxi ride to the city centre bars, pubs, and clubs is thus not only journey space for the young people, but also spaces of friendship, alcohol consumption, and play with technologies. The journey to the city centre then, is used as a “technical and social assemblage” to ‘keep everyone going’ (see Jensen et al. 2015, 370). The journey then is not simply a means of getting to the night out, it is a fundamental constituent of young people’s nights out. As Peters et al. (2010) contend, mobility is also about arriving at the right place, often at the same time as relevant others. Buses, trams and trains “shape local temporalities, producing repetitive experiences, embedding their schedules in the life course of individuals and in the histories of communities” (as Vannini, 2012, 257 said of ferry schedules). Through this em- bedding, individual routines become synchronised and young people get “in time” with one another (Vannini 2012, 257). Geographically dispersed young people in the study often wished to be co-present in the same place (Peters et al. 2010). However, as a consequence of problems with mobility infrastructures, time-space synchronisation for the group of friends was not al- ways possible (see Jain 2006): Trams, trams are like, I cannot even tell you, like when they shut down, if I’m going out for a house party, and sometimes they’re out of service it just blows my mind because I’m like “how can you expect me to get around?” (Becky, 16, Chorlton, interview)