Old folks are partying hard. How hard?
We hear they wear Depends not because of prostate issues, but because they're so sloshed they wet themselves. They remove their dentures at night not to clean them, but to give the smoothest BJ's ever. Their hair is blue not because they're old, but because they're so punk rock they dyed it.
We jokes, we jokes. But based on recent rowdy news about the Boomers, we're jealous. With no jobs and no kids, they're living the life.
Exhibit A is the Margaritaville Retirement Villages in the South. Margaritavilles are "active adult" communities based on the sun-blissed attitude of the beach bum poet Jimmy Buffett, who wasted away searching for his lost shaker of salt.
In Daytona Beach, the developers promise a "tropical tailgate party" that "never ends," where you "grow older, but not up" under Tiki huts, a beach club, dancing, "everything but boredom" and, we assume, margaritas blasting out of the fire hydrants. In Hilton Head, South Carolina, they turned a lake into a beach.
Margaritavilles are partly still under construction, but here's the promo:
We have heard your call… Minto Communities and Margaritaville welcome you to Latitude Margaritaville! Learn more: bit.ly/LatitudeMargaritaville
Posted by Latitude Margaritaville on Friday, February 2, 2018
Plus no DUIs, because everyone drives golf carts.
Residents must be "55-and-better," so hit up your fake ID guy for a drivers licence with a 1963 birthdate.
Margaritaville isn't an isolated case. The Baby Boomers are having retirements that look as much like frat parties as sunset years, with money from social security and a ballooning stock market helping them live twenty to thirty years of well-funded, responsibility-free living.
Exhibit B: Drinking. While younger folks are soberer, oldsters jam. Past-month binge drinking among folks over 65 rose from 12.5 percent in 2005 to 15 percent in 2014, according to one study. Some of this chugging can lead to health problems, such as obesity and dementia. But a lot of this heavy drinking looks like a barrel of laughs, as we've reported about older ladies who love to drank them some purple drank.\
Exhibit C: Boning. In the past, old dudes had to holster their peckers like retired sheriffs. But Viagra and Cialis and looser sexual taboos mean lots more pantsless parties. Some of this late-life libidinousness leads to problems — STDs such as gonorrhea and chlamydia spiked by 50 or 100 percent in recent years among the 65-plus, as we reported. But the majority of oldsters these days are actually satisfied with their sex lives, and a study says "sexual satisfaction was a good predictor of global life satisfaction."
All of this advanced-age wildness helps contribute to one startling, overall fact: despite all the billboards and Instagram post of smoking hot Gen Z girls living smiling, sponsored lives, older folks are actually happier — even as their bodies and minds slip, says a big study.
So while Margaritaville may seem like an insane outlier of wrinkly Peter Pans who refuse to grow up, "active adult" communities are opening up from Phoenix to D.C. They often look like adult Disneyland: offering yoga, cooking classes, picnic areas, pickleballs and "man caves."
These types of places are so attractive that the average age of folks moving to "active adult" communities is trending downward, the Washington Post reported. At the Celebrate retirement community in Virginia the adult children of retirees show up to hang out, play cornhole and dance to the weekly rock and roll bands.
Because why live in the adult world when you can live in the "active adult" world? It looks way more fun.
Leave a Reply