KORZO AND YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT 173 B alkanistica 25:2 (2012) Nema Rabota: Korzo and Youth Unemployment in Skopje, Macedonia Andrew Graan Wake Forest University Becoming socialized to the summer nightlife in Skopje was harder than I first expected it to be. The city was, and is, full of bars, clubs and cafés, each identified to some degree with the generation, class, clique or ethnicity of its regular patrons. However, to be at the center of Skopje’s nightlight life, and therefore, to be truly young and hip, one discovers that roughly each year, particular locations emerge as indisputable hot spots, around which those seeking to see and be seen congregate. During my time in Skopje, I have seen these places move. In 2000, a café named Flok reigned, the next year, Van Gogh, and during the summer of 2004, I found myself frequently agreeing to meet friends and acquaintances outside Ljubov, which in Macedonian means “love.” I do mean, outside Ljubov. What made hot spots stand out among other establishments was that most of the people who went there actually spent very little time inside the place itself. Rather, numerous groups of friends stood or sat in the area around the bar, coming and going, chatting, mingling, smoking, perhaps drinking a beer bought from a corner store or kiosk, exchanging gossip and stories about friends, family, movies, music and plans. There always were people inside Ljubov, but that represented a different sort of commitment. To enter into the establishment implied that you would sit and socialize awhile with your party, and, significantly, that you would buy drinks. Many Skopje youth would simply not have the spare cash to purchase the more expensive drinks of a café, and so the bar’s entryway marked a socio-economic border. Indeed, one can conceive of the hot spot in terms of two concentric circles: at the center, inside the bar, was a generally older, wealthier clientele with various signs of their social and cultural capital manifest to prove it. Toward the periphery, the crowd transformed into a younger, poorer and shiftless group of students and the unemployed: youth “hanging out,” escaping the familial home, as well as its burdens and obligations, to pass time with friends and scope the action on one of Skopje’s warm summer nights.