THE NEIGHBORHOOD SPIRIT
Poured by
Vlado Vragovski
Probably generations before the, so called, IT era with nostalgia remember the neighborhood socializing, moments when they begged their parents for at least five minutes more with their friends in the park, children’s playground or school yard. Such moments undoubtedly left a lasting mark on these generations. Neighborhood spirit is quite the opposite of the today’s – the virtual one, expressed through program instructions with ones and zeros.
There are two fundamental differences; life through the lens of digital technology and real life we live in, although many people will say that technological life is the one in which most of us live. Virtual life is not real, and experiences are created by technology in order to approximate and simulate the actual experience.
Unfortunately, the new generation replaced the neighborhood life with the virtual one. Neighborhood socializing is replaced with computer games, gaming consoles and mobile phones. A lot of free time but very little socializing. Most of them have never experienced the moment as when praying for five minutes more, playing football in the local park, being green from the grass or how it looks like when girls play on the rubber or some other neighborhood game. It is sad that most of them do not know how it looks like to have a lot of friends from the neighborhood, what does it mean to strive to be the best so they can keep part of the winning team, do not know how does it feels when the hands are muddy from playing marbles. Even sadder is that the generations who lived this period when telling to their children, their answer is usually “It was so because at that time you were young.” There is truth in that, but no social network or application for correspondence can replace communicating with friends in the neighborhood.
The project of Pivara Skopje and Coca-Cola Company and the construction of the Coca-Cola active zones in several cities gives hope and provides diversity in the today’s virtual life. Particularly because the number of users of all generations of the active zones is growing daily, further more because most of them are young people who slowly but surely are starting to feel the neighborhood spirit. The city of Ohrid, and I believe in other cities, the active zone is the area in our neighborhood, a place where people of all ages and ethnicities come to recreate, have fun and socialize.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of Pivara Skopje.
