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Showing posts with label death to chains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death to chains. Show all posts
If you're an indie operator rushing to perform fellatio on Shake Shack -- a $1.6 billion company -- for returning the PPP loan money Republicans AND Democrats bestowed upon it, consider the fine print in the designer chain's mea culpai last week.
Shake Shack was fortunate last Friday to be able to access the additional capital we needed to ensure our long term stability through an equity transaction in the public markets. We’re thankful for that and we’ve decided to immediately return the entire $10 million PPP loan we received last week to the SBA so that those restaurants who need it most can get it now.
Which is precisely what Shake Shack might have done in the first place, seeing that PPP was supposed to be for businesses without financing options like this.
At the end of the week Ruth's Chris Steak House spewed similar bilge during the course of giving back its $20 million. So did an insipid salad chain called Sweetgreen (huh?), Harvard University, and maybe a few others.
The main point: The two-party system is responsible for bailouts that help huge corporate monoliths first, and small indie businesses almost not at all.
And, huge corporate monoliths are greedy bastards that should be eliminated from the face of the earth. Death both to chains and the two-party system.
With program out of money, backlash prompts executives at Shake Shack to return $10 million loan.
The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars in grants before the $349 billion program ran out of money Thursday, leading to a backlash that prompted one company to give the money back and a Republican senator to say that “millions of dollars are being wasted.”
Thousands of traditional small businesses were unable to get funding from the program before it ran dry. As Congress and the White House near a deal to add an additional $310 billion to the program, some are calling for additional oversight and rule changes to prevent bigger chains from accepting any more money.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a chain that has 150 locations and is valued at $250 million, reported receiving $20 million in funding from the small business portion of the economic stimulus legislation called the Paycheck Protection Program. The Potbelly chain of sandwich shops, which has more than 400 locations and a value of $89 million, reported receiving $10 million last week.
Shake Shack, a $1.6 billion burger-and-fries chain based in New York City, received $10 million. After complaints from small business advocates when the fund went dry, company founder Danny Meyer and chief executive Randy Garutti announced Sunday evening that they would return the money.
They said they had no idea that the program would run out of money so quickly and that they understood the uproar ...
On more than one occasion the past week there have been reminders from the local owners of national chain restaurant franchises that they’re mom and pop shops, too.
Jeeebus, this gets tiring. For background see the charts above and below, and then allow me to pound the desktop for a moment.
Taco Bell, Burger King, Culver’s, McDonald's -- whichever, whatever -- are not chains, they yell, because they’re franchises, and because the franchises are locally owned they’re not chains at all, and therefore, this 1,298th location cut from the same template is no different from Aladdin or Lady Tron’s.
We're locals just like you indies! We're mom and pop!
By the same mangled logic, the 2009 Ford Fusion that I inherited from my mother, which I believe was manufactured in Sonora (Mexico), magically becomes a “local” New Albanian automobile because I drive and operate it locally ... and because of this, I can take credit for building it by hand.
Uh huh. Look, you substituted money for creativity and bought a fully developed restaurant designed and programmed by others. You cannot change the menu on whim by substituting Frito Bandito Hot Browns for Roadkill Chalupas, but you’re quite happy to reap the benefits from national saturation advertising and sponsorship campaigns of the sort almost never available to genuine indie innovators.
Yes, it’s true that you must have enough money to buy the franchise and sufficient moxie to run it, but I’m guessing that bankers are far more cooperative with proven franchise financing than start-ups from scratch, and of course the entire point of franchising is to adjust the risk factor downward compared with start-ups by applying the sheer weight of huge and bland pervasiveness.
Which the public adores, even those who ought to know better.
It's ever harder to discuss matters like this without unleashing f-bombs. Franchisees are almost as annoying as those wealthy kids born on third base, convinced they hit a triple. It’s more like paying the umpire for a base on balls, trotting to first, and claiming to have been hit in the face by a pitch.
And, as a side note, genuine independent local small business owners know exactly what being hit in the face by a pitch feels like; it's how we learn, daily, without a safety net extended lovingly by a multinational.
All in it together? In terms of the pandemic, yes. But as it pertains to this idiocy about franchises being local, no, not really. Think you might stop pretending?
I posted this one on Food & Dining's web site, too. It continues to amaze me that so many friends and acquaintances who are directly or indirectly involved with independent food service businesses still merrily buy into chain restaurant logic -- with both sentiment and cash.
Fast food is bullshit, and we're all dumber for the transaction. This ends my rant, but Soleil Ho's is only just beginning.
... The sandwich was delicious for what it was: a cheap product where the true cost is carried by marginalized people and animals besides the consumer. It seems that, as a culture, many of us who can afford to choose from many options of what to eat vacillate between caring a lot about the welfare of our meat animals and restaurant workers and being willing to put up with anything for the sake of momentary pleasure. Yes, life is hard and sometimes you just want to roll your eyes back and eat something good. At the very least, it’s nice to know what everyone else is talking about.
Snappy Twitter repartee, eye-catching bag designs, whatever political symbolism is inscribed in the object itself — they all function as distractions from the real-world consequences of the choices we make. It is possible to hold all of these truths together and sit with whatever inconvenient implications they lead us toward ...
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance challenges concentrated economic and political power, and instead champions an approach in which ownership is broadly distributed, institutions are humanly scaled, and decision-making is accountable to communities. We believe that economic systems should embody democratic values, and that democracy can thrive only when economic power is widely dispersed. We believe that communities are healthiest when they possess the authority, capacity, and responsibility to chart their own course. We call this vision local self-reliance.
Then read the results of the ILSR's indie business survey.
The results of the 2019 Independent Business Survey from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance demonstrate the strength and resiliency of small, independent businesses. They also speak to the forces independents see as significant threats and roadblocks to their businesses: a playing field made uneven by policies that favor their bigger competitors, highly concentrated markets for key supplies and services, and difficulty securing capital, among other barriers.
As we have documented in previous surveys, independent businesses have proven nimble during a period of dramatic shifts in technology and consumer habits. Much of their resilience can be traced to the distinct benefits they provide to their customers, industries, and communities.
Yet, despite these competitive advantages and their broader importance to the U.S. political economy, independent businesses are under threat and declining in most industries. The findings of our 2019 Independent Business Survey suggest that the problem isn’t changing technology or consumer habits. Instead, independent business owners say they are often competing on a unlevel playing field. Many public policy decisions in recent years have fueled market concentration and favored their big competitors.
This survey’s findings shed light on these challenges and policy issues. In their comments, business owners also offer insight and guidance to elected officials looking to build a more equitable, entrepreneurial, competitive, and dynamic economy.
More than 1,000 independent businesses nationwide participated in this survey. Retailers made up about half of the responses, while the remainder represented a mix of industries, from service providers to manufacturers, banks, wholesalers, and more. In addition to the main questions, business owners provided hundreds of written responses on various topics. We analyzed these for additional insights and quoted a representative sample in this report ...
Just in case you were wondering. It comes up from time to time, and the point to me remains: "They (franchises) buy into someone else’s business model."
AMIBA readily concedes the "gray" in franchising, but not the fundamental difference between your own conceptual creation and using someone else's. That's always been the crux of it for me, and it always will be. If that makes me cantankerous, so be it.
And are franchises’ advantages worth the trade-offs for business owners?
Editor’s note: we originally wrote this memo for AMIBA affiliates as a member resource. We decided to make the page publicly accessible to help prevent others from making costly errors after we saw many “buy local” campaigns derailed by mishandling franchises or cooperatives.
Franchising is a business model used by corporations (franchisors) wishing to expand their reach and increase revenues without taking direct responsibility for financing and managing each new location. The franchisor grants licenses and enters into contracts with individuals or companies wishing to open a branch (franchisees). These licenses typically are for a limited number of years and grant a specific territory to franchisees. It’s akin to leasing a business.
While some franchises are operated by area residents, others are owned by management corporations that may own many franchises (this is especially common in fast food, where a single company may run outlets of multiple brands).
Individual store owners may own or lease their store building or space, but they buy into someone else’s business model. Support from the franchisor may include a known brand, business plan, trademarks, training, site selection assistance and other tools that theoretically help make success more likely. The franchisee pays a royalty fee and also may pay a portion of sales or profits as part of the franchise agreement, which usually has a finite term attached to it that may be renegotiated at its end. For most franchises, especially restaurants, contracts typically require buying some or all inputs from the parent corporation or its chosen distributor.
The franchisor typically has the right to revoke the franchise from a franchisee if their stipulations are not followed. Because of limited local decision-making authority, franchisees typically do not meet AMIBA’s suggested definition of a local independent business. However, since we are not a franchisor, member organizations ultimately make the decision of how to handle franchises.
If you opt to allow any franchises to be listed in any of your organization or campaign materials, we recommend strongly it be in a “locally-owned franchises” category, distinct from independent businesses. Make sure your board and staff know your policy to ensure consistency and share this page with them so they can speak knowledgeably on the topic ...
Just a random glance at small potatoes fixes, approved and forgotten. From the minutes of the January 22 Redevelopment Commission meeting:
The developer slated for $40,000 to improve a privately held parking lot:
No one argues that Muncy has upgraded an outmoded suburban asphalt pit. The location:
The latest cookie-cutter sandwich chain to titillate us with sheer meaninglessness:
My question, as always: Do independent restaurant operators have a snowball's chance in Guam of scoring a similar subsidy?
Break up into groups and discuss ... and don't forget to #FireGahan2019... to sweep clean those department heads, clear the appointed boards, and see if we can't make all this local system a tad more democratic (lower case "d").
Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.
--Arnold Toynbee, historian (1889-1975)
There was a time when I'd always point to Lew Bryson's pioneering essay as my inspiration for the "Death to Chains" mantra. It's been more than a decade since Lew wrote this stirring call to arms, and at some point I stopped giving him a bow, but let's give credit where credit's due.
Ladies and gentlemen, Lew Bryson breaks it down: Follow. The. Money. -- and reject monoculture.
I used to grab a burger lunch at McDonald's frequently, two or three times a week. That's frequently for me; I like to cook and I'm too cheap to go out much. I'd take the family to Chi Chi's and Red Lobster and Pizza Hut and never think twice about it. Then I interviewed Don Feinberg, half of the brains behind Brewery Ommegang and beer importers Vanberg & De Wulf. Don walked me all over Ommegang's territory by the Susquehanna River in upstate New York, took me on a wild brewery tour, and fed me local apples and cheese sliced with a pocketknife while we sampled his delicious beers outside in a beautiful summer's day. Then he gave me a ride into Cooperstown and started talking about monoculture. Monoculture "The real problem," he said, "and this is politics, not just beer, it’s monoculture versus diversity. That's what we are fighting the fight for, for good beer and for better food against McDonald’s and Monsanto. "Look, monoculture actually means two things," he said, waving one arm wildly as he navigated the small road. "It means a lack of diversity. We’re only here for 60, 70, 80 years, I’d like to try as many things as I can, with as many peoples’ input, creativity, and fulfillment expressed as possible. The other thing: 99 times out of 100, you’re not giving me one choice because it’s better for me. It’s because it’s better for you. "Having said that," he said, calming a bit, "the reason monoculture is so successful in the world is because it’s predictable, and predictability leads to efficiency, and efficiency leads to profitability, and that leads people to get involved in it. The Seductive Key: It's Easier "Why did everyone in America in the 1950s want to have a franchise for McDonald’s?" He posed the question, and here was the nut that would knock my noggin and make me realize exactly why chain restaurants are a blight upon our land. "Because the chances of you coming up with an idea for a restaurant that would be that successful… there aren’t that many creative people. It was easier for you to take this person’s formula and make money off of it, and most of us have to pay the rent and put the kids through college. So it’s easier to adapt things, especially if what you’re adapting has proven to be successful. "Monoculture is very powerful," he said in conclusion. "But powerful and better are not always the same thing." No Chains On Me I stepped out of that car a changed man. Today I shun McDonald's and chain restaurants -- not entirely, because sometimes it's all you got -- and go out of my way to try new local places, wherever I am. It's one of the reasons I love upstate PA and NY; lots of local eateries and stores left up there, and out on Long Island, too. I get questions about that, and I've got some answers. Do all chains suck? No! John Harvard's Brew House doesn't suck, Rock Bottom (despite what beer snobs say) emphatically doesn't suck. Regional chains like Quaker Steak & Lube don't suck. Why? Because they all allow their local operations a lot of flexibility. They don't always impose a menu, a beer list, or (most importantly) suppliers. Besides, when does an expansion become a chain? When the second place opens? The fourth? The tenth? It's like pornography: I know it when I see it. If local people own a franchise restaurant, isn't that a local business? Yeah, like a Toyota made in Indiana is an American car. Follow the money. Money's leaving the area, and what comes in? Orders, ideas, and supplies. Headquarters doesn't care about supporting local suppliers, or serving local beers, or making allowances for regional tastes. Why is a successful chain restaurant bad for my town? Because it sucks up loan money that local, unique businesses could be using. A banker will always loan money to a guy with a chain restaurant franchise over a guy with a new idea: the chain idea is safe, proven, and bankable. It's also boring, leveling, and is never going to make your town a destination. Sure, it's convenient, it's popular, it's reliable. But what kind of great new food is going to come from a place that gets its potatoes pre-peeled and pre-sliced in 100 lb. plastic bags from a depot 500 miles away? Will people from far away come to your town, shop in the other stores in your town, and tell other people where they live to go to your town...because of your local Ruby Tuesday's? No, but I've done all of that for the Miss Albany Diner in Albany, NY, and it's worth the trip. Eat Local So the next time you're away from home, don't do that stupid, cow-consistent thing and go to Applebee's, Shoney's, Denny's, or Wendy's! Take just a little more time and ask around till you find a place, a local place, a one of a kind place. Chances are good that you'll get lucky and find a place like the Academy Dinor in Erie, and you won't find bumbleberry pie at Applebee's! Needless to say, this goes for beer, too. Chains hardly ever carry any decent beer, and when they do, they don't know a damned thing about it. Local chains are often exceptions, of course, like The Winking Lizard's outstanding beer program in Cleveland. I'd still stack Augusta's Winking Judge in Hamilton, ON up against the Winking Lizard, though! (And you can find some outstandingly fantastic local foods at the Hamilton Farmer's Market.) It never ends, the quest for the rare, the local, the different, the best. "Powerful and better are not always the same thing." Reject the chains, and make your life more exciting at every turn.
Next time you're playing bumper cars and competing for inches of asphalt on State Street, look up past the runoff waterfalls to the plateau called Summit Springs, where the buildings being constructed will house businesses like Dunkin Donuts, the subject of Marohn's focus.
According to Marohn, there are at least two big problems with these chains -- which couldn't have been installed without local government subsidies generally unavailable to indie entrepreneurs, and propelled in the case of Summit Springs by TIF bonds used to finance the Daisy Lane road extension.
First, the relationship that Dunkin Donuts – and any national chain, whether selling tacos or auto parts or massages – has with your community is the same relationship that England had with its American colonies back in the 1700’s. The colonies provided raw materials. English merchants, manufacturers and transporters would take these materials, process them and provide them back – with all the value added – to the colonies. The government would take a nice bit off the top for the trouble and, just like that, you have a mercantilist economy, one designed to have a positive balance of trade for the English.
Second, there is an effect on the genuine grassroots entrepreneur.
In the localized version of capitalism, this person starts the doughnut shop. Over decades they slowly and incrementally build their business, creating a modest amount of wealth for themselves and their family in the process. In the national corporate franchise version of capitalism, this person becomes the night manager. They work for someone else. They may have some corporate profit sharing, but it is disconnected from their day-to-day work. They may have a 401(k) plan, but they’re not going to get wealthy from it.
Here’s what breaks my heart: I’ve seen that night manager. I’ve seen the look in their eyes. And I’ve seen that entrepreneur, felt the look in their eyes. One is borderline resignation, an acceptance of fate. The other contains endless optimism. I want an America full of endless optimists.
Tragically, we’ve priced them out.
Speaking personally, I hate chains because they're aesthetic abominations. I also know just how hard it is to create a business from scratch without recourse to throwing money at a tested template, and if this means I have a degree of contempt for those with enough cash to do it, that's fine by me.
But Marohn's valuable contribution to this discussion, as so often echoed in these pages by other contributors, is this:
Not all economic development is created equal. Not all local investments build wealth in our community. Not all open markets produce optimal outcomes for all places. If we want our places to prosper over time, we have to be prepared to ask a tougher set of questions at the local level.
Here's the rest of his essay, which has as its starting point the conditions to obtain a Dunkin Donuts "unit" in Minnesota. Thanks to JG for pointing to it.
... Amid all the celebration, one little tidbit of information caught my attention:
Adequate capitalization – Requirements vary by market, but the lowest requirements are $250k minimum liquid assets and $500k minimum net worth per unit.
Now truly, when going through a list of potential small business startups, the kind of thing that someone without an MBA but just a lot of drive and desire could undertake, is not doughnut shop at the top of that list? Along with bakery, pizza joint and coffee shop, in my mind I imagine these as being the familiar Stage 1 businesses that pop up out of nowhere whenever that magical critical mass is obtained. (For more on Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 businesses, listen to my interview with Economic Gardening guru, Chris Gibbons.)
But if you are going to start a Dunkin Donuts, you need a cool half mil in net worth, at least half of which is liquid, meaning cash or something that can be quickly converted into cash. That doesn’t sound very small business friendly.
For households where the highest wage earner is under 35 years old, the ideal age for someone who is not necessarily college material but nonetheless has the work ethic and the entrepreneurial spirit to step up and start a business, the median net worth (excluding home equity) in 2009 was $2,003. Let me say that again. Take over half the families where the primary breadwinner is 35 years old or less, add up their investments and savings and then subtract their debts, and they have less than $2k. In other words, they are only $498,000 short of being able to start a Dunkin Donuts.
Note that for people 65 and older, that number jumps to slightly over $25,000, which should scare the hell out of everyone.
“Dunkin Donuts – and national franchises like them – are not looking for entrepreneurs. They are looking for investors.”
What this means is pretty clear: Dunkin Donuts – and national franchises like them – are not looking for entrepreneurs. They are looking for investors. They want people who already have money, who have already amassed wealth. They are looking for those people because they want someone locally to assume the bulk of the risk, whose interests will be aligned with the corporation and shareholders sufficiently to ensure that the right management is retained and the store is run efficiently.
That’s a very different person, and a very different impact on the city, than the doughnut shop started by your local go-getter with vision and a dream ...
It's a restaurant "brand" with 300 locations, describes itself in Goebbelsian-level prose as a "lifestyle restaurant" and employs a "chief concept officer" to utter unalloyed piffle like this:
"Our food is top-quality fuel that complements the busy, active lifestyles of our clientele."
Of course, the marketing drone did it in a news release, because can you even imagine a human slinging vapid dreck like this through his pie hole?
Food as "fuel"? Considering that atrocities like CoreLife routinely are situated in almost exclusively car-centric suburbs, we see the circle of futile American alchemy completed: One isn't merely dependent on the car, but has become the car.
What's next, an active lifestyle human detailing shop?
ON THE AVENUES: Taco Bell has as much to do with "local" business as Jeff Gahan does with "quality urban design principles." A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
Serendipity is the chief motivating factor behind all of human existence, and this fact might explain how I happened upon a film clip from a television series I never once watched.
Last week on Facebook, the proud owner of the newly plasticized Taco Bell perched precariously in a bulldozed flat spot halfway up a hillside that used to be delightfully wooded – just below the barren strip mine tableau up on top, which might yet boast a Rio-sized statue of Dear Leader grinning vacantly and C-student-like, hovering over us all – praised loyal New Albanians for supporting his “local business.”
Jeeebus, here we go again. Does anyone around here read? If you’re baffled by the onslaught of “fake news,” then look no further than the bathroom mirror, which reveals a human being desperately seeking self-delusion.
When the Gordita-bearer was lightly questioned, predictably vapid bilge came spilling out: it’s not a chain at all, because it’s a franchise, and the franchise is locally owned because it’s not a chain, and therefore, this Taco Bell is no different from Aladdin or Lady Tron’s.
By the same token, the Ford Fusion that I inherited from my mother, manufactured in Sonora, Mexico, magically becomes a “local” New Albanian automobile because I drive and operate it locally.
Uh huh.
Right.
It’s all so very tiring. You substitute money for creativity, buying a fully developed restaurant built and programmed by others. You cannot change the menu on whim by substituting Frito Bandito Hot Browns for Roadkill Chalupas, but you’re quite happy to reap the benefits from national advertising and sponsorship campaigns of the sort almost never available to indie innovators.
Yes, it’s true that you must have enough money to buy the franchise and sufficient moxie to run it, but I’m guessing that bankers are far more cooperative with franchise financing than start-ups from scratch, and of course the entire point of franchising is to adjust the risk factor inherent to start-ups by applying the sheer weight of huge pervasiveness.
It's ever harder to discuss matters like this without unleashing f-bombs. Franchisees like the strip mine Taco Bell mogul are almost as objectionable as those wealthy kids born on third base, convinced they hit a triple. It’s more like paying the umpire for a base on balls, trotting to first, and claiming to have been hit in the face by a pitch.
Note: Genuine independent local small business owners know exactly what being hit in the face by a pitch feels like; it's how we learn, daily, without a safety net from a multinational, making it doubly ironic that one redevelopment commission appointee loudly cheering this cookie cutter Taco Bell is the legitimate long-term owner of a local independent business.
Such is the busyness of sycophancy.
---
There’s another big difference between franchise accumulators and indie entrepreneurs, in that neither Aladdin nor Lady Tron’s have been selected as winners in City Hall’s subsidized strip mine development lottery, unlike the operator of the sleek and utterly non-unique “local” Taco Bell.
Taco Bell’s winning ticket casually rides piggyback, wearing flip-flops, on the backs of the stubborn property development coagulators Pat and Pam Kelley, who have relentlessly pursued a lifelong goal of paving every last square inch of their holdings, whether knob or valley, with the closest distance between these two points invariably measured by enhanced storm water runoff, even when their kinky desire to build a shiny profit-making city shitty on a hill was contested by the Dear Leader – and it was, at least for a while.
Then Scott Wood got waterboarded and the city collapsed into a puddle of cowardly avarice when the unmistakable odor of opportunism became too alluring to ignore, with Jeff “Dollar Sign” Gahan dispatching David “Bag Man” Duggins to broker a deal, and overnight, as though New Albany were standing in for Orwell’s decrepit Oceania, City Hall no longer sought to enforce rationality in development, but instead grandiosely announced its “partnership” in purposeful irrationality.
From that moment, when taxpayers footed the bill for a spanking new mountain-engineered road to reach the very Summit of the Kelleys’ insatiable greed, the Kelley/Gahan Loot-A-Thon became an indirect subsidy for multi-national hotel and fast food chains.
In turn, this helping hand from the mayoral picker of winners has emboldened the Taco Bell owner to proclaim he’s a local independent businessman, which is propaganda so shameless in its deception that neither Paul Joseph Goebbels nor Sarah Huckabee Sanders have shown any interest in furthering it.
At least Goebbels has the good taste to be dead. Shall we discuss the many high-wage jobs being generated by the subsidies granted to Summit Springs?
No? I thought as mush – make that “much,” but not “munch,” at least at a Taco Bell … ever. Local, my ass.
---
Near the end of the Irish ballad Carrickfergus, the singer comes to an epiphany: “But I'll sing no more now til I get a drink.”
That's what I'm saying, and I’ll write just a bit more before shuffling off to the liquor cabinet. At Governing, there’s a cautionary tale about the convergence of excessive economic development subsidies and worsening inequality.
Early this year, construction began on a $130 million luxury high-rise apartment building in St. Louis’ burgeoning Central West End neighborhood. The development will dramatically alter the area’s skyline, but the city won’t be reaping much tax revenue from it anytime soon. Local officials approved a 95 percent property tax abatement that will be in place for a decade, as well as an exemption from sales taxes on the construction costs of the project.
These tax breaks coincide with steep spending reductions St. Louis made last year to bridge a budget shortfall. They are contributing to concerns that many neighborhoods and lower-income residents in the city aren’t benefiting from the tax breaks enacted to encourage projects like the luxury apartment complex.
Many other localities aren’t all that different from St. Louis. Early evidence from newly released financial data suggests that local governments most heavily reliant on tax incentives tend to be those with greater levels of economic inequality.
In New Albany, greater levels of economic inequality have become a favored, risk-free platform for Democratic candidates, and accordingly, the city’s heavily sapped tax increment financing (TIF) areas are displaying an increasingly sickly pallor.
And, speaking of shambles, subsidies and the impending Reisz City Hall historic preservation project, Paul Cooper (at BBC) offers a fascinating explanation of how dictators exploit ruins: “(Saddam Hussein) followed Mussolini’s lead in appropriating ancient ruins to tell a flattering story about his own authoritarian regime.”
For Saddam, the ruined city of Babylon had always held a special fascination. He ordered an ambitious reconstruction of the city’s walls, costing millions of dollars at the height of the Iran-Iraq War. And he raised the walls to a historically-improbable 11.5m (38ft) high, drawing criticism from the international archaeological community, who accused him of turning Babylon into ‘Disney for a despot’. As a finishing touch, Saddam built an anachronistic Roman-style theatre in the ruins. When archaeologists told him that ancient kings like Nebuchadnezzar had stamped their names on Babylon’s bricks, Saddam insisted that his own name be stamped on the modern bricks used in the reconstruction. These efforts were later described by Provisional Coalition Leader Paul Bremer, who was the envoy to the new Iraqi government following Saddam’s fall in 2003, as “a travesty… ersatz monstrosities”.
Our own tin pot Disney despot duly follows in these narcissistic footsteps. From Taco Bell on the bald knob to a promiscuous proliferation of anchors, spiced by incessant attacks on the poor, not to exclude gentrified alleys, full contact karaoke and the only municipal water park in the world with an offshore safe deposit box to keep the financials from prying eyes … a million bucks to desecrate a Native American site with a dog park, and coming soon, quadruple the functionary space for city hall so as to facilitate seceding from Floyd County and actually becoming the Veneer Salesman’s Republic of New Gahania --- and, of course, the inevitable dogs playing poker.
Let’s celebrate government by the worst, least qualified and most unscrupulous citizens with a Burrito Kakistocratio (no, not castrato) from the plummeting depths of Taco Hell’s commanding vantage point around the corner from the butt ugly bison, below the strip mine, where the storm water roams and the campaign finance report is not cloudy all day.
I’ll have mine with a side of Incensed (Jim) Rice -- light on the MSG, the HWC and the complete BS, please.
Hello Roger, We wanted to follow up on the opportunity to share your feedback regarding your experience on your flight from Atlanta (ATL) to Louisville (SDF) on February 22, 2018. We are committed to providing exceptional service on every flight and understand that we didn’t meet those expectations with a delayed arrival. Please know that we are committed to providing exceptional service on every flight, and we appreciate hearing from valued customers like you. We ask that you share your thoughts regarding your recent flight experience by completing this short survey. How likely are you to recommend Delta Air Lines to others?
Thanks for “reaching out” to me, Delta Air Lines.
On the evening of Thursday, February 22, we left Atlanta for Louisville roughly on time, to be informed by the captain that arrival at SDF might actually be a tad early.
This was welcome news. We’d already been awake for more than 20 hours since rising to depart Porto, Portugal for Amsterdam and Atlanta, and gratefully, we hit the runway in Louisville at 11:35 p.m., a full 20 minutes early.
Then we exited the plane – at 12:35 a.m., after waiting an entire hour for a gate to debark, which was explained to us by the captain as a case of other flights being diverted because of fog (with heavy rain predicted after midnight), and with one plane apparently sitting at our arrival gate with almost no workers present to move it out of the way.
He never explained why someone decided to park a plane at a gate where another flight would be due later that evening. If there is any justice in the world, it was an ex-employee.
We got to the car just as the rain started. The way back to New Albany took a bit; we were so long getting off the flight that the storm had moved in, and effective visibility on the interstate a few yards, with a speed of 35 mph.
A little after 1 a.m., we were home, where we rushed immediately upstairs to check on our elderly cat Hugo.
Wait – I forgot to mention that we’d been informed by the cat-sitter that our elderly cat Hugo didn’t look well, and the hour spent on the tarmac was vivid in my mind as we sadly found him lying dead. The circumstances strongly suggested that he passed after midnight. The faithful little guy tried to wait for us, but Delta had other ideas, so listen carefully, engorged multi-national corporation.
Neoliberalism and monopolies being what they are, and Louisville’s connections with Delta being pervasive, we have little realistic chance of boycotting Delta in the future. To claim such would be unrealistic, and I’m not in the mood to shake my fist at you.
Just know that I’ll never, ever forgive you for whatever staggering levels of incompetence led to a plane being parked where it shouldn’t have been, and for sitting on the ramp for a full hour, knowing our cat needed us, and being unable to get to him in time.
Fuck you, Delta Air Lines.
In the future, every time I authorize a payment for a flight, I’ll pause just for a second to honor Hugo’s memory, and I’ll look at the Delta logo, and I’ll repeat, perhaps as many as 16 times (his age): Fuck you, Delta Air Lines.
If it is humanly possible to “hate” a corporation, then be aware that I hate Delta Air Lines’ guts. Apart from that, the flight was just dandy.
Sincerely,
Roger
P.S. I see that there was no oval to be blacked in with my response to the question of whether I’d recommend Delta Air Lines to others. The proper reply: I’d rather drink Miller Lite; if you know me, you know exactly what this implies: Fuck you, Delta Air Lines.
The author makes excellent points about the nadir of debate and dialectic, and the tribalism, and the chest-thumping.
Still, my fundamental stance v.v. AB InBev and other manifestations of Monstrous Chainthink remains unchanged, and for reasons that aren't at all emotional.
Rather, it's factual. Lots and lots of people with no connection whatever to beer or brewing already have done their homework as it pertains to what independent local business means; where the money goes, and where it stays. Two of them are here:
My rule of thumb: To know these principles is to be able to walk the walk when making beer choices.
Yes, it's a matter of shift, and no one's playing to be perfect, because when it comes to philosophical concepts, perfection simply doesn't exist.
There'll always be exceptions, but life is about the everyday. In the main, as a consumer, I'd like to know exactly where my money is going. Whenever possible, I'd like to see my money directed to indies.
It's as simple as that. If I couldn't get good beer without my money going to multinationals, then I'd either submit or stop drinking. However, this isn't the case.
... There’s no dialectic where people are trying look at big beer’s practices objectively or taking a real critical eye to the BA, to figure out whos and whys and hows. There’s certainly never any talk of collaboration, because obviously, you never work with an enemy. There’s hardly even any exploration in why a thing deemed so bad is actually bad; I only need two fingers (one and two) to count the number of well written articles directly about AB-InBevs strategy. The rest of the bad will stems for theoreticals and hard headedism.
... malls were enjoyable enough for a few decades, especially when it rained and you needed to get the kids out of the house. But the formulaic chain-store sameness of malls grew tedious, and I ended up longing for the authentic Main Streets that were killed off by malls, big-box discount stores, and, in recent years, digital shopping.
Now a lot of malls are dead or dying.
Not all of them, by any stretch. The Del Amo Mall, for instance, and the Glendale Galleria seem to be thriving, thanks to some combination of location and marketing strategy.
But shuttered windows and “For Lease” signs are now common at many of Southern California’s three dozen or so malls. They dot the land in various stages of fossilization, thanks in part to the fact that many people now prefer to do their shopping without having to put on their pants or leave the house. One recent report said that up to 25% of shopping centers could close in the next five years.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. The market works the way it works ...
SNIP
Malls I can do without, and rather than hold a wake, we should celebrate the opportunity to put so much concrete and asphalt to better use.
What do we love to complain about in Los Angeles?
Everything, pretty much. But atop many a list are a lack of housing, especially affordable housing, and a lack of parks.
So here’s our chance to put all that real estate to better use.
“The indoor mall is an anachronism, and its time has come and gone,” said Rick Caruso, developer of the outdoor Grove and Americana on Brand, upscale destinations that offer more than retail and are often packed with people who don’t even go there to shop.
Not everyone loves the Caruso concept, but he was onto something in predicting the death of malls and knowing what consumers wanted in their place.
I have a dim memory of seeing that Chi Chi's in Luxembourg, probably in 2002. Kenny Rogers Roasters food never passed my lips. Rax? Maybe in the 1970s.
Losing can be an opportunity to do something different.
... So it wasn’t a surprise then, when (Kenny Rogers Roasters) eventually faltered, and, by 1998, Rogers himself was trying to disassociate himself. The company was sold in 1999 to Nathan’s, the hot dog chain, and after years of declines, the chain—which once had over 300 locations—closed its last location in North America in 2011.
The real story, though, is what happened just before that. Because while Kenny Rogers was winding down its U.S. operations it was doing the opposite in Asia, having been bought by a Malaysian firm in 2008. Three years later, the chain was earning $100 million in revenue—nearly all from overseas—despite the fact Kenny Rogers is presumably less of a draw in Asia than he might be in the U.S.
And, last year, the chain opened up its first Indian location, with the goal of reaching $10 million in sales and 40 to 50 locations in India alone by 2021.
Now, there are more than 400 locations worldwide—topping its ‘90s peak and, in the process becoming one of a number of chains that have faltered domestically but gone on to have strange, often lucrative second lives, whether they exist, like Kenny Rogers Roasters, as successful American exports or whether they persist, like the last remaining Chi Chi’s restaurants in Belgium and Luxembourg, as a wildly diminished if improbably stubborn reminders of a chain’s former greatness.
It gladdens this curmudgeon's heart to see another principled columnist -- in this case, The Pour Fool -- embrace a personal change in terminology.
I haven't gone cold turkey on the "craft" descriptor, and find myself using the word here and there (usually in quotation marks, as intended to emphasis the escalating irony), but zero tolerance is a worthy goal to which we might aspire.
As an aside: My current desire to get back into the pub business is being predicated toward what I consider to be "better" beer -- much of it "indie," some "craft"; some retro chic and classics.
... But the term “indie” – short, of course, for “independent” – is a claim that AB/InBev and the BudMillerCoors brands they now control can never plausibly make. There is absolutely NOTHING “independent” about AB/InBev. They’ll work out a rationalization for it eventually, of course; something along the lines of “Hey, we’re independent! Nobody owns any part of our company but us!” But that claim is so patently ridiculous that you’d have to have the IQ of lawn trimmings to even consider it. “Craft” does, in fact, describe the process at Bud’s breweries; maybe not in the same sense as at Dogfish and Stone and Jolly Pumpkin and Lawson’s, but it is inarguable that brewing is a “craft” and that AB does practice that craft, even if it is in a fucked-up, mechanized, soulless, billion-gallon batch, freakazoid manner. “Indie” means what it says: A small, independent, self-perpetuating business enterprise that relies on no corporate sugar-daddy for its survival. It is certainly true that not all of us involved in the “craft beer culture” can agree on what a “craft brewery” is but one thing about which there is NO argument is that a craft brewery is NOT a subsidiary of any larger corporate entity, being kept afloat by their owners’ deep pockets. It’s about the pride in ownership and creativity that has been the hallmark of America’s craft breweries since the whole phenomenon started. It is about not having business and aesthetic decisions influenced by board rooms full of gabardine-clad, Windsor-knotted, bean-countin’ shit-weasels, as is absolutely the case with AB.
A little more than a year ago (February 16, 2016), I was on much the same tangent.
To me, "craft" beer's conceptual basis always has been, and should remain, localism. The inevitable rejoinder: "You're not using local ingredients, therefore you're not local." However, just as there are many styles of beer, there are differing ways of principled thinking. The finished value of any product can be the result of individualized local creativity rather than widespread, industrialized production; accordingly, a substantial local component is present even if local hops are not. After all, beer doesn't often brew itself. This isn't the most important point, because an independently-owned local brewery is an independently-owned local business, and the positive economic factors for independent local businesses in their communities are one and the same. Sorry, but if you're buying Goose Island at Wal-Mart, you might be missing the point in multiple areas. Let's work to make shift happen -- indie breweries, indie middlemen. Often I've pointed to organizations like AMIBA and BALLE, and asked skeptics to visit their web sites and consider the information therein. My impression is this seldom happens, probably because it takes less time to post a selfie with Bourbon County than read a few pages of economic facts. Bizarrely, unfamiliarity with the economic realities of independent local business might be expected of consumers in general, but often it's something not understood by folks who own their own small businesses. Must we cut our own throats? Meanwhile, I like this vibe coming out of San Diego. May it take root, and convince readers to go back to first principles.
Craft is dead. Now we drink Indie Beer: As Big Beer creeps into town, locals want to change the lingo, by Ian Anderson (San Diego Reader) The term Craft Beer may be in need of a makeover. The Union-Tribune reported this week that Bend, Oregon's 10 Barrel Brewing Co. has proposed a 10,000-square-foot brewpub in East Village. In response, local beer industry podcasters have doubled down on a push to describe independently owned breweries as Indie Beer companies, rather than craft. A couple of individuals have tried to coin the term Indie Beer before, but they had different reasons. Not because 10 Barrel hails from Oregon but because in 2014 the company was purchased by AB InBev, the conglomerate responsible for one-third of the planet's beer supply, including core brands Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. It owns 10 Barrel brewpubs in Oregon and Idaho and recently announced plans for one in Denver. The podcasters' believe consumers who patronize 10 Barrel brewpubs mistakenly believe they are supporting small business rather than a global entity ...
In his new book, 'Thank You for Being Late,' Thomas Friedman makes a short story long
"The folksiness will irk some critics ... But criticizing Friedman for humanizing and boiling down big topics is like complaining that Mick Jagger used sex to sell songs: It is what he does well." –John Micklethwait, review of Thank You for Being Late, in The New York Times
With apologies to Mr. Micklethwait, the hands that typed these lines implying Thomas Friedman is a Mick Jagger of letters should be chopped off and mailed to the singer's doorstep in penance. Mick Jagger could excite the world in one note, while Thomas Friedman needs 461 pages to say, "Shit happens." Joan of Arc and Charles Manson had more in common ...
On to the main course, referencing Friedman but actually making sense.
... Under the onslaught of the placeless, transnational capital that McDonald’s exemplifies, democracy as a living system withers and dies. The old forms and forums still exist – parliaments and congresses remain standing – but the power they once contained seeps away, re-emerging where we can no longer reach it.
The political power that should belong to us has flitted into confidential meetings with the lobbyists and donors who establish the limits of debate and action. It has slipped into the diktats of the IMF and the European Central Bank, which respond not to the people but to the financial sector. It has been transported, under armed guard, into the icy fastness of Davos ... above all, the power that should belong to the people is being crushed by international treaty.
Monbiot's conclusion:
One of the answers to Trump, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğan, Salvini, Duterte, Le Pen, Farage and the politics they represent is to rescue democracy from transnational corporations. It is to defend the crucial political unit that is under assault by banks, monopolies and chainstores: community. It is to recognise that there is no greater hazard to peace between nations than a corporate model that crushes democratic choice.
I've emphasized one aspect of this program to "champion" independent, locally-owned businesses.
access to capital
a level playing field i.e. governments should stop favoring big corporations through subsidies, infrastructure and awarding contracts
laws against monopolies enforced
laws that allow cooperative ownership of real estate and community investments. While somewhat off topic, she also suggested the effects of gentrification also could be mitigated by community land trusts which, if formed early enough, could buy up properties to control the rise in rents
easing business licensing, permitting and zoning, which are nearly impossible in Chicago due to the strong effect of political influence
Next time you run into David Duggins holding court at Quills, often in the act of entertaining an out-of-towner with promises of boilerplate tax abatements and subsidies, remind him of the virtues of locally-owned businesses, and enjoy the economic development director's nervous laugh. That's because what's "cool" for Duggins isn't necessarily best for the community.
As Cedar Rapids prepares to welcome two more strip malls on the edge of town, and one of our malls announces a new franchise tenant, it's instructive and inspiring to hear evidence that the most potent tax-gathering areas in towns of any size are downtowns and Main Streets, and that locally-owned businesses contribute far above their weight when it comes to developing strong communities. Those messages were crisply presented by Ellen Shepard in a talk Friday at Loyola University's Center for Urban Research and Learning. Ms. Shepard is the founder and CEO of Community Allies, which works with communities to develop organizations and leadership, facilitate community engagement, and "to grow stronger from within." Prior to that she headed the chamber of commerce in Andersonville, a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago.
As my friend Clint noted when passing along this essay, "Longish and a bit wonky, but this section caught my eye."
Indeed. To be honest, I was unaware of Guitar Center's existence, although its probable demise provides a few important eulogy bullet points. Skipping straight to the conclusion ...
... Here’s what this really means: it’s the end of big box retail, an irrational addiction to growth, and the scourge of unregulated structured finance. For a few years, unwise urban planning and unregulated banks created a new bubble in the American suburbs. People bought homes they could not afford and turned their houses into lines of credit. This swindle eventually brought the economy to its knees and has taken most a decade to regain some state of uneasy equilibrium. Still, it was particularly stimulating to a certain type of retail that also depended on constant growth and financial trickery. The objective truth is that the growth of the last decade was financed by banking fraud, and that financial trickery of this sort only fools people in the short-term. Eventually, you must have a product people demand, sold by competent people who care about the business, financed in a way that makes sense.
In the center of Barcelona’s scenic old city, a once-historic bookshop is being turned into a store for Mango, the giant clothing retailer. A maker of combs, founded in 1922, is now a big-name bag store. And a toy store, owned by the same family since the Spanish Civil War, has been converted into an outlet for Geox, the Italian footwear company.
The changes are more than the result of the kind of creeping gentrification that has reshaped so many cities worldwide. Here, and across Spain, historic districts are being transformed as tens of thousands of small, often family-run shops face the end of decades of rent controls this year.
It is not that the establishments did not know the changes were coming — they had 20 years’ warning. But slowly, now suddenly, that time has arrived, provoking 11th-hour resistance as small shops are pushed from historic districts by an inundation of international brands, which are virtually the only ones that can afford the staggering spike in rents.
The rapid turnover has spurred soul-searching and debate about just how far the city should go to protect its distinctive character in the face of the homogenization that accompanies the arrival of multinational chain stores.
The removal of traditional stores from the old city center, known as the Gothic Quarter, is “a criminal loss of patrimony in a city that is getting drowned by big money and international brands and is losing all sense of history, order and proper urban planning,” said Josep Maria Roig, the owner of La Colmena, a pastry shop founded in 1872.
Today is volume two of Indie Fest, and perhaps a time to pause and reflect. Questions and comments are many and varied.
Is the local indie business community making progress toward unity?
How many local indie business people truly grasp the importance of street grid issues in furthering better conditions for business?
What has the city done in 2013 (i.e., marketing) to empower local indie businesses?
Are we ever going to address the iniquities of enforcement as they pertain to downtown parking?
Acknowledging that One Southern Indiana is as useless as ever, has Develop New Albany turned a corner and placed itself in a better position to, well, take positions?
I could go on. You may have your own questions. The following was written in March, 2012.
Most of us accept that when it comes to power, a vacuum is a condition waiting to be filled. It almost always is.
In New Albany, with local government barely a blip on the chart, both Develop New Albany and One Southern Indiana (the latter to a lesser extent) exist to fill the vacuum created by the inexplicable, ongoing refusal of independent local business owners to organize themselves, to advance their economic interests as a bloc, and to take seriously their potential power as such a purpose-built collective.
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