Public parks were initially set aside for recreation and leisure.

Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education.

The distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is loosely applied, i.e. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility.^[1] A distinction may also be drawn between free time and leisure. For example, Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely free; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as "leisure".^[2]

Leisure studies is the academic discipline concerned with the study and analysis of leisure.

Cultural differences[link]

Men relaxing in a cafe overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv, Israel.

GI Card Game, Watercolor by James Pollock, U. S. Army Vietnam Combat Artists Team IV (CAT IV 1967). During the Vietnam War soldiers waiting to go on patrol would sometimes spend their leisure time playing cards. Courtesy National Museum of the United States Army.

Time for leisure varies from one society to the next, although anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers tend to have significantly more leisure time than people in more complex societies. As a result, band societies such as the Shoshone of the Great Basin came across as extraordinarily lazy to European colonialists.^[3]

Workaholics are those who work compulsively at the expense of other activities. They prefer to work rather than spend time socializing and engaging in other leisure activities.

Gender gap[link]

Men generally have more leisure time than women. In Europe and the United States, adult men usually have between one and nine hours more leisure time than women do each week.^[4]

Adolescents[link]

Free time has potential for youth development, which is influenced by parental attitudes of interest and control, mediated by adolescent motivational style.^[5]

See also[link]

• Hobby
• Otium
• Personal life
• R&R (military)
• Recreation

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Peter Borsay, A History of Leisure: The British Experience since 1500, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 0-333-93082-7
• Cross, Gary S. 2004. Encyclopedia of recreation and leisure in America. The Scribner American civilization series. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Charles Scribner's Sons.
• Harris, David. 2005. Key concepts in leisure studies. London: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-7057-6.
• Jenkins, John M., and J.J.J. Pigram. 2003. Encyclopedia of leisure and outdoor recreation. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25226-1.
• Rojek, Chris, Susan M. Shaw, and A.J. Veal (Eds.) (2006) A Handbook of Leisure Studies. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-0278-8.
• Huzinga, Johannes. ____. Homo Ludens
• Grudin, Robert. ____. Time and the Art of Living
• Pieper, Josef. ____. Leisure, Basis of Culture
• Poser, Stefan: Leisure Time and Technology, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: October 25, 2011.
• Czikszentmihaly, Mihaly. ____. Flow

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Leisure

• Peter Burke, The invention of leisure in early modern Europe, Past & Present, February 1995
• The Development of Leisure Amongst the Social Classes During the Industrial Revolution
• The Serious Leisure Perspective

Al Lowe (born July 24, 1946) is an American musician and game designer/programmer who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line. He is best known for his creation of Leisure Suit Larry and the long-running series it spawned.

Early career[link]

Lowe began his career teaching public school music for 15 years. After that time, he decided to teach himself programming and in 1982 he created three games for the Apple II: Dragon's Keep, Bop-A-Bet, and Troll's Tale. Sierra Entertainment bought these games in 1983 and Al worked for them as a programmer and game designer for 16 years.

His first projects included Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, Donald Duck's Playground, and The Black Cauldron, all based on Disney properties.

In 1986, he was lead programmer on King's Quest III and Police Quest I and also created the music for other Sierra games.

He is best known for his Leisure Suit Larry series of games and its theme song, which he composed. After Larry's success, Lowe also designed other games such as Torin's Passage and Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (with Josh Mandel). Throughout his career, Lowe was known for his distinctive bald head, full beard, and considerable belly. He liked to call himself "the world's oldest game designer".

In 1994, he moved with his family to Seattle and supposedly "enjoyed" retirement since 1998. Lowe has played saxophone professionally since age 13 and still performs with local jazz bands, including MOJO.^[1]

iBase Entertainment[link]

In a 2006 interview,^[2] Al revealed that he was not actually retired, but had spent well over a year secretly designing a new game Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure, an action comedy game developed by iBase Entertainment, which he co-founded with Ken Wegrzyn. Unable to locate a publisher to promote and distribute Sam Suede, iBase Entertainment shut down in December 2006. Following this setback, Lowe expressed serious doubts whether he'd ever reenter the gaming industry again.^[3]

As of January 2007, the website for Sam Suede developer iBase Entertainment lists the project as postponed pending acquisition of additional development funding.

Other[link]

In November 2007 he was the guest of honor at the Alternative Party 2007 in Helsinki, Finland and played saxophone live with David Hasselhoff Big Band.^[4][5] Lowe's primary emphasis now is his humor web site Al Lowe's Humor Site and CyberJoke 3000, a daily joke mailing list.

Lowe has been a model railroader for several decades. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the 4th Division of the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Model Railroad Association.^[6]

In 2010 he produced and directed Al Lowe's Comedy Club, developed by The Binary Mill for iOS devices. ^[7]

Lowe has been recruited by Replay Games to work on high-definition remakes of six of the first seven Leisure Suit Larry games, as well. The fourth game in the series was never developed. ^[8]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Al Lowe profile at MobyGames