Tag: commerce

turbans at the annex: serious business

Our local lame bar, Pierce Street Annex, has revised their policies to allow turbans in the bar, after a Sikh complained and asked for an apology.

The article says: “Sanjum Paul Singh Samagh, 24, accompanied friends to the Pierce Street Annex bar last year, only to be turned away because his turban was deemed to conflict with a rule prohibiting hats.”

Good, he can enter with his turban now.

What’s not mentioned is why bars ban hats: it’s to keep out black guys. American black guys almost always wear a hat going out at night. It’s an old, known technique for keeping their presence to a minimum. It’s similar to gay bars banning open-toed shoes “for safety” to keep down the number of women who show up to dance with gay guys.

For some time now, Pierce Street has been a destination for black guys from Riverside County who drive out here to be in Newport/Mesa instead of Riverside. I guess the management decided there were too many of them.

Bars are just a disaster in Southern California. Everyone drives home, and a bar can’t make money unless you have at least two drinks, so the entire business relies on drunk driving. And then they make desperate attempts to keep a money-making “demographic” in the bar, which they can only achieve by violating discrimination laws and acting like assholes.

I liked the bars in SF and NY, where you could walk home if you wanted. I bet they have similar issues with the “mix of the crowd” though.

ticketmonster

I just bought show tix (Mountain Goats in March at the Troub!) on the web from Ticketmaster. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a rich dot-com twit, and I didn’t fight the power. Anyway.

There’s the usual hilarious set of charges reminiscent of a Near Eastern hotelier or a bank. Heifer Mastication Charge, Plonk Fee, Spline Adjustment, bla bla. The $32 for two tickets balloons into $52 by the end.

Then there are two new kinds of Ticketmaster fun. First, they charge you $2 extra to print the tickets out on your own printer right away. But it’s free to get them by regular mail. In my putative Near Eastern Hotel, this is like providing free bottled water but charging for running water in the room. It only makes sense if your business model consists of “we’ve got them by the short hairs now, boys!”

Finally, there’s the checkout line sales pitch. The usual items like insurance for your tickets show up, but now there’s a new one! They try to get you to buy music by the artist from iTunes.

In this particular case the artist has loads of stuff available in friendly DRM-free mp3 via emusic, so the temptation is particularly low.

Maybe the next step should be a hard drive search for downloaded music, followed by a pop-up auto-sue device that charges you $150,000.

I’m going to go see people play pop music anyway, and it’s not the kind of monopoly that kills little kids or strangles the free internet to death; it’s essentially trivial.

But it sure is fucking funny!

Email from someone I did business with maybe two years ago?

Bonjour substitute!

Pardon! On est désolés! Le serveur a mangé trop de bûche
à Noël et nous avons du retard pour l’envoi des brouzoufs.
Nos petites mains ont travaillé dur et le problème est
maintenant résolu : voici 222 brouzoufs.

Avec toutes nos excuses!
A bientôt sur [REDACTED]

L’équipe [REDACTED]

1. I have no idea why they’d owe me 222 euros.

2. I had to look at an online French slang dictionary to find out that a brouzouf is a euro.

Edit:A commenter has the real story: it’s some kind of bonus point scheme at LaFraise.com, and not 222 euros. So it is for real and not incomprehensible! Yay!

Nick and I came up with some book ideas last night

I was soured after my trip to B&N and nicholasjamesb and I started riffing on the “publishing market.” Here are some sure fire books we came up with:

Hitler’s Secret Weapons: Your Success Advantage for Life

The Templars, 9/11, and God’s Promise for Your New Life after Divorce

Chicken Soup for the Unholy Occult Secrets of the SS

Harry Potter and the Liberal Traitors of the Media

Donald Trump’s lives of the Templars

Sylvia Browne Channels Gilles De Rais

Q is for Quagmire: Sue Grafton’s Tour in Baghdad

Joel Osteen’s TEMPLARMANIA! & workbook

Mein Kampf: The Essential Church Group Reading Guide

My Pants Got Wet: A Suburban Woman’s Essentially Uneventful Life, Overexplained

A Wide Stance for America: The Larry Craig Story

Dr Laura’s TEMPLAR DIET AND WORKBOOK

ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK FROM JOHN GRISHAM’S CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE NEW AGE TEMPLAR SOUL BY DAVE KOZ

any of the above + (THE DAILY MEDITATIONS JOURNAL)

Why I like the Village Hat Shop

Dear Customer:

I cannot write an email suggesting that you purchase a hat. Chances are, you do not need another hat. If you have opted into this email newsletter, it is likely that you have recently bought a hat for your one and only head. (If so, we hope that hat is serving you well.) In fact, you probably don’t need any more stuff right now. So, I suggest that you take a walk in your neighborhood instead. Identify a plant that’s new to you, or watch the birds, smile at your neighbor, or pet a dog – but take a moratorium on consumption.

Eighty percent of the traffic that comes to VillageHatShop.com is new i.e. first-time visitors. This is no surprise, as we aren’t selling a product that needs to be replenished on a routine basis. When you return from your walk, if you have a moment, I am asking a favor. We now have a Product Review option at our site. Please find your hat’s product page at VillageHatShop.com, click the Product Review link, and submit a review. The more we learn about how our hats are functioning – on heads, not on shelves – the better we can serve our customers. The new visitors to our site will appreciate it also.

Thanks … and Happy New Year!

Fred Belinsky &
The Gang at The Village Hat Shop
http://www.VillageHatShop.com
http://www.Berets.com
http://www.JaxonHats.com