Enormous record stores and book stores. I used to spend hours in each. Some were so big, they were like department stores, or small malls. Some had cafes in them. One of the book stores downtown had a section just for print newspapers and magazines that was the size of the grocery store in my neighborhood. You could get newspapers and magazines in several different languages, and on practically any topic you could think of. There was a Tower Records that I think had 5 or 6 floors. There was a whole floor for classical music, another for jazz. Most sections had "listening stations" - CD players with headphones so you could sample things before you bought them. If you've ever seen You've Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, that was about these ginormous chain bookstores threatening to put the small, neighborhood places out of business. But it was those ginormous chain stores that all collapsed. The small places are fewer than they used to be, of course, but they've survived better than the big places. When I was in high school, there were 6 or 7 small used record stores I used to frequent regularly, and I'm not sure how many of them are left, maybe 2 or 3, but that's still more than the big stores, which are all gone.
Going to movie theaters seems to be fading as something a lot of people do regularly. I think it's going to become more like seeing concerts or stage-plays, where most people go a couple times a year, some people almost never go, and some people go a lot. In the '80s-'90s, me and my friends used to go to the movies on the weekend, just as a matter of course. We wouldn't even necessarily be going to see anything in particular, sometimes we'd just go to the theater and see what was playing when we got there. There were also a bunch of "2nd-run" and "arthouse" theaters, which would show older movies and foreign movies. Some of them were little holes in the wall, with just 1 or 2 screens. A few of the better ones still exist, although I haven't been to any of them in years. For a period of about 20 years, I probably saw 50 movies a year in theaters. Now, I go once or twice a year. I still watch just as many movies, maybe more, but not in theaters, and rarely with other people. I hang out with friends in-person a lot less than when we were young - that's just life, I think - but movies in particular are no longer a social activity. On the special occasions when I'm hanging out with friends, I wouldn't want to waste it by going to a movie.
We still have an Indigo bookstore, with an attached Starbucks. It's been years since I was there, and of all the new bookstores in town, it's survived all the others. There used to be a Chapters store in each mall (one north side, one south side), but they were closed.
I just got an email yesterday that Indigo is offering me a 20% discount on regular priced books "during my birthday month" because I belong to their rewards program. I doubt I'll use it. It's been at least 10 years since I was last in that store.
Considering how little they appreciated knowing they were selling counterfeit Star Trek merchandise, I figured okay, you want to sell fake ripoffs, I won't be buying that or anything else.
Arcade shops. They were ubiquitous in the late 80s/early 90s.
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There's one of these in a nearby strip mall, unless they've closed already. The person who opened it did so in the spot where a popular Chinese buffet restaurant used to be (it closed due to covid). It's kid-friendly by day, but after 9 pm it becomes a night club for adults.
People "dressing up" to fly. There was a time when flying meant wearing fancy duds for the trip. Not so much anymore.
I watched Ben and David's weekly cruise video yesterday, and they posted the second of their videos on their transatlantic cruise on Cunard's ocean liner. They did dress up for one of the formal nights in a dining room (first time they've worn suits in these videos since I started watching them; apparently the dress code "suggests" that men wear a dark-colored suit, so of course David wore a light plaid and said, "Well, it is a suit").
And then one person in the comments got livid because earlier in the day, OMG, what a HORRIBLE thing David did - HE WORE A BLACK T-SHIRT IN ONE OF THE DINING ROOMS!
Apparently men are supposed to wear collared shirts in the dining rooms. Well, at least he wasn't wearing shorts. And they didn't mention anyone complaining on the ship about the lack of a collar.
As for flying, I've only flown once - in a 4-person plane, just around Central Alberta. We didn't actually go anywhere by the end of it - landed right where we took off from.
But from what I've seen and heard on the news and from what people have said, why would anyone bother dressing up for the stress and misery that flying apparently is nowadays? I would suppose that business class and up is probably a lot less stressful than economy class, but even so... There's a running joke about West Jet here in Canada that's not really funny, given how horribly they've treated some passengers: "We're not happy until you're not happy."
