Morning Ed: Vice {2018.09.17.M}
[Vi1] While it may seem that I oppose all anti-tobacco regulations, I think putting tobacco products in back would actually be effective policy.
[Vi2] The Baffler looks at skateboarding, libertarianism, paranoia, and criminality.
[Vi3] Let them smoke.
[Vi4] It’s hard enough to win one war in Afghanistan, so trying to win a drug war with it over there sounds destined for trouble.
[Vi5] What if Russia’s alcohol problem had been kept in check by Gorbechev’s anti-alcohol laws, and the end of that is why alcohol became such a big problem?
[Vi6] A look at the global Fentanyl drug trade.
[Vi7] Strip clubs are disappearing in Canada, because (among other reasons) liberals are apparently social conservatives never could.
[Vi8] Good news: cocaine is just addictive in the same way that chocolate chip cookies are addictive.
[Vi9] As the US cracks down, the UK is considering giving vapers more leeway. Truthfully, there are different situations in each of the countries and different responses may be warranted… but probably not this different.
[Vi0]
4/ High taxes and prohibition differ only quantitatively. Prohibition is just a very high tax (collected by smugglers rather than govt, but that does not affect the markets). Most (not even all!) stories written about Australian cigarette smuggling (hereafter: Ozcigsmug)…
— Carl V Phillips (@carlvphillips) July 5, 2018
Vi2: Oh look, a left-oriented magazine going after a young-white-male coded hobby/sport. How brave! Roping in The Paranoid Style and Rothbard (mostly just by chronology) to create an ideal boogeyman for Baffler readers to boo and hiss at. As if these kids picked up their hobby because they were ideologically in line with their Orange County Goldwater-voting parents.
It’s a 1500-word version of a twitter wypipo/mayonnaise joke packaged for resale in an intellectual wrapper, justifying aesthetic revulsion with guilt by association.
And people wonder why those kids are turning to Jordan Peterson instead of Baffler-style socialist wokeism.Report
Vi2: The Baffler is stressing things way too much. Tennis players aren’t required to wear helmets even though a tennis ball could theoretically hit them in the head. This doesn’t lead to long articles on how tennis is a libertarian bastion.
Vi7: Strip clubs were one of those things that I never had a desire to go to. I think the article gets it right on why strip clubs are disappearing. The really thrived in the era when cities could come close to no go zones. The increased wealth in downtown areas because of gentrification is driving out strip clubs because wealthy people tend not to like businesses that code skanky in their neighborhoods. There are also social changes. The Internet provides strip club shows or more in the privacy of your own home, usually for free. The ethics of the MeToo movement are changing how strip clubs are perceived in society. Male heterosexual tastes are under stricter examination these days, maybe a bit unfairly.Report
This may not be a problem in Canada, but perhaps FOSTA/SESTA’s destruction of Backpage and Craigslist personals will give a second wind to strip clubs. For all the wrong reasons.
I also can’t stand strip clubs, but I’ve been dragged a few times for bachelor parties and drunken friends who thought it was a good idea a dozen beers in at 1am. My style in places like that is to sit in the shadows where the dancers don’t bother me and resentfully nurse my $9 beer. It seems like a lot of patrons that come in with the free-spending bachelors are like me in that regard. These places stay afloat on the backs of a few big spenders; my guess is that the cash will find a welcome home somewhere, if not in a place with the traditional format.Report
I am indifferent to strip clubs as entertainment for bachelor parties and single guys (or gals in some cases) after work. Not what I’d want to spend time or money on, but as long as everyone’s consenting …sure, enjoy.
I am however very happy that they have stopped being a venue for business meetings. Back in the 90s when I worked in Detroit it was still a thing in the auto industry to take clients to strip clubs. I knew another female engineer a bit senior to me who occasionally had to go to such meetings (because in a boys’ club if you buck their rules you can kiss your career goodbye). She always came back looking like she badly needed a long shower. I left for other opportunities for a lot of reasons, but the idea that moving up might mean being in that sort of position was certainly among them.Report
From a strictly geographic point of view, I’m not sure why anybody would believe strip clubs would be great ideas for a business party or meeting. They generally seem to be in the more questionable parts of cities. Taking clients to a dangerous area does not seem like a good idea.Report
Before there was Backpage/Craiglist, sex workers and “massage parlors” used to advertise in the back of various alt-weeklies. The Alt Weeklies folded as soon as these ads went on-line.
The Village Voice held out as long as it could but folded a few weeks ago. I saw two obits in the wake:
1. “Goodbye Village Voice. I learned how to be a cool, downtown, arty, bohemian New Yorker from you.”
2. “Good riddance Village Voice. Damn you and your ads for exploited girls that hid underage prostitution and sex slavery.”
And then people making eulogy #1 would say something sheepish about how the backpage ads were really dark or something. But #1 is strange because it seems like a bunch of nice suburban kids want to be cool downtown bohemians but in a squeaky clean kind of way.Report
There is that magical sweet spot dreamt of by hip college sophomores, a world that is tough and gritty, where the characters from Charles Bukowski stories and Tom Waits songs gather and mingle with artists and poets and they all experience a life that is more vivid and authentic than the rest of us.
That this place is wholly imaginary is irrelevant.Report
I think your references might be a tad dated but yep.Report
I was going to reply, “Those references aren’t dated!”, but then my brain filled in the follow-ups of ‘You young whippersnapper, get off my damn lawn!’.
So yeah, probably dated…Report
Well, you can go back a generation or two past us and look to Kerouac and the rest of the Beats for the same effect. While I am sure that there are newer versions of this, the result is the same. As @leeesq calls it quite correctly, Them Park Bohemia.Report
Them Park Bohemia is a wonderful typo.Report
Many of the main Beat Poets did live the full Bohemian lifestyle. There were probably some twenty somethings from UMC backgrounds that lived a safer version of it though. Not enough craft beer for a full theme park bohemia.Report
The difference being between the Beat life and the beaten life. Indeed, one can keep going back to Rimbaud and DeQuincy for further views of this. There has always been a search for the more “authentic” life, or at least a life sans middle-class pretensions.
Oh, and craft beer is the new absinthe.Report
Craft beer tries to be the new absinthe but doesn’t quite have the same allure and mystique. Very few people right poetry about IPAs and stouts.
There are definitely people that walk the walk when it comes to living a more “authentic” life or life sans middle-class pretensions/morality and those that just want the theme park version. Kerouac, Gauguin, and Van Gogh were true Bohemians. I’m not sure about Rimbaud though. He stopped writing poetry early and died on a business trip. It was a business trip in colonial Africa but still.Report
I’d say Marijuana is the new Absinthe.
Craft beers are the new Portabella Mushroom.Report
Ha! This sounds right.Report
Many intelligent and artistic leaning people from suburbia aim for the theme park version of Bohemia. They want the adventures and amenities of urban life. The art, the theater, and the dance but they don’t want the darker, grittier side to it. Bohemia with liberal, upper middle class morality. To a large extent, the social effects of gentrification are just that. Hipster neighborhoods can be seen as theme park Bohemia.Report
Disneyland, ca. 2140:
“Looters of Times Square- The Ride-: Join a rollicking band of looters, pimps, muggers and junkies in the 1975 blackout, as they burn, pillage and loot their way across Old New York City. Stop by the gift shop to purchase .38 Specials, Nike sneakers, syringes and hot pants.Report
That is an astute way of putting it.Report
Vi2: I love how much work left leaning publications put into trying to draw a line from “undesirable white person activity” to libertarian beliefs. Especially when that line has no chance of going to conservative beliefs.Report
They do a very thorough job dressing up aesthetic dislike as due to Bad Politics and not subjective preferences. It’s hard to tell whether they really believe that shaggy skateboard kids dig Austrian economists as much as sick ollies, or if this is the only acceptable language they can find to say they dislike something because it doesn’t match their tastes.Report
Vi7: From the point of view of the supply, why strip at the club when you can strip in your own home? You’ve got a black box in front of you that spits out money when you show your secondary sexual characteristics. Why in the heck would you bother with other human beings?
From the point of view of the demand, why go to a strip club to see secondary sexual characteristics? From what I have heard, there are websites that specialize in showing secondary sexual characteristics and they do it for free. If it’s about a human(ish) connection, there are options for those who want to spend money.
Bemoaning the loss of strip clubs is like bemoaning the loss of encyclopedias. Hey. It’s 2018.Report
You have touched on my brilliant idea for a startup:
A chain of self-service massage parlors.
I await Mr. Bezos’ phone call for a seven figure buyout.Report
With Divynals playing on loop in the background?Report
[Vi1] the hidden wall of tobacco is how it’s done here – I think it’s recent enough they most stores still have the”power wall” in place, but have installed doors or a curtain in front of it, rather than having the cigarettes in a more out of the way spot and taking advantage of the wall behind the cashier for something else they are allowed to advertise openly.
I’m glad to read that it’s an effective measure.Report