Morning Ed: Vice {2018.09.17.M}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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25 Responses

  1. LTL FTC says:

    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

  2. LeeEsq says:

    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

    • LTL FTC in reply to LeeEsq says:

      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

      • bookdragon in reply to LTL FTC says:

        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

        • LeeEsq in reply to bookdragon says:

          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

      • Saul Degraw in reply to LTL FTC says:

        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

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          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

          • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            I think your references might be a tad dated but yep.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

              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

              • aaron david in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                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

              • Saul Degraw in reply to aaron david says:

                Them Park Bohemia is a wonderful typo.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to aaron david says:

                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

              • aaron david in reply to LeeEsq says:

                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

              • LeeEsq in reply to aaron david says:

                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

              • Marchmaine in reply to LeeEsq says:

                I’d say Marijuana is the new Absinthe.

                Craft beers are the new Portabella Mushroom.Report

              • jason in reply to Marchmaine says:

                Ha! This sounds right.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          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

          • Chip Daniels in reply to LeeEsq says:

            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

          • Saul Degraw in reply to LeeEsq says:

            That is an astute way of putting it.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to LeeEsq says:

      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

      • LTL FTC in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        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

    • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

      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

  3. dragonfrog says:

    [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