Millennials are sharing how they used to get home before Uber and it’s blowing young minds

Sometime in the early 2010s, a little app called Uber took the world by storm. With a tap on an app on your phone, you could summon a car and driver to take you anywhere you wanted to go. No phone calls to weird numbers, no sticking your arm out in the street and yelling, “Taxi!” Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare apps completely changed the way we get around. They’ve become so popular for getting home from places like concerts, bars, and even the airport that cities have to design dedicated pick-up spots for the large crowds who rely on these services. But it all begs the question: what did Millennials and Gen Xers do before rideshare? How did they get home when they couldn’t drive? Lucky for us, they’ve got stories. Professional dancer, choreographer, and actor Blake McGrath recently took to Instagram with a funny observation: “So Gen Z is asking Millennials how we got home from a night out in the 2000s. And, to be honest, I have no idea,” he quipped in a recent Reel. “I do not remember anything. I do not remember whose car I got into … All I remember is waking up the next morning and being like ‘Oh, I made it.’” McGrath was curious whether he was the only Millennial who felt this way, and asked his viewers to chime in with their own stories about how they got home before Uber existed. The post went viral, reaching five million views, and the 30- and 40-somethings had a lot to say. Designated driver mayhem Most of the older generation were smart enough to utilize a designated driver when going out on the town. But the process was rarely organized or smooth: “I was DD a ton of the time, so I hauled all my drunk friends and whoever they made friends with in the club to Denny’s and then home … and we did work after yes. (Lots of those people didn’t remember how they got home, and I’m just glad it was safely with me)” “There was also a lot of ‘here are my car keys, there’s my car, but I can’t drive.’ And someone would just drive us.” “Someone’s boyfriends cousins brothers friends coworkers boyfriends car.” “For every 9 people drinking, there was 1 sober friend driving them home all in one shot. People in the trunk, laying across laps, whatever it took to get home” Impromptu sleepovers Before you could pull up an app and get a ride home anytime, anywhere, sometimes you never made it home at all. And that was perfectly alright. “You slept at a random house on a couch until you woke up sober enough to drive home.” One commenter dropped an incredible philosophical conundrum: “Maybe we are all still out somewhere and never got home” Walking home, no matter the distance Most Gen Zers would be mortified at the thought of walking a long distance home at night, potentially in the freezing cold. But that was just how Millennials and Gen X got by. “walked an hour in heels and somehow never got lost” “As a GenX woman we knew it was safer to stay out dancing till dawn when the streets were safer to walk home” What about taxis? Many Millennials and Gen Xers took taxi cabs home from a night out. But if you didn’t live through it, it’s hard to overstate how chaotic it was to get a cab. For one thing, you never knew up front how much it would cost, and many of them didn’t take credit cards. “Yellow cabs in nyc! But you’d have to ask them to stop at an atm to get cash out” “We pulled up to my apartment and asked the cab driver how much we owed him. He said ‘I’m not a taxi you ran in front of my car on the street and asked me for a ride home’” The mystery method A frequent theme among Millennial commenters is that they simply don’t remember how they got home most of the time. Probably because (aside from having a few drinks) the patchwork methods all blended together after a while. “We don’t know … and straight to work” “just assumed home came to me” “I know there was pizza involved too but how, I can’t tell you” One person summed up the Millennial bar-hopping experience beautifully: “Phase 1: leave the bar … Phase 2: … Phase 3: in bed” No matter how you wound up getting home, one thing almost all Millennials and Gen X can agree on is that you had to stop for greasy food on the way. When Uber and Lyft hit the mainstream, they eliminated a major source of friction in the daily lives of many people. Finally, there was a relatively safe, convenient, and affordable way to get home when you couldn’t drive. Studies even show that the rise of rideshare apps played a big role in reducing drunk-driving rates. But like many friction-reducing modern conveniences, rideshare also partially eliminated the sense of whimsy, the adventure of not knowing, the resourcefulness of finding a ride or a safe place to sleep. Do we want those days back? Probably not. But for Millennials and Gen X, those chaotic late nights helped shape who we are, and we’re still nostalgic for the memories after all these years.