If you publish a list of The World’s Greatest Cities, you need to ensure that your #1 pick doesn’t cause howls of incredulous laughter, coupled with snorts of irritation and open-jawed astonishment. Here’s Time Out’s list:
When did they take this survey — in 1965? Certainly, it was pre-WuFlu, except:
Good grief.
If you’re going to make a list of places to visit, try this one instead. It’s pretty much as full of shit as the first one, though.
Now here’s a place I’d like to visit the next time I go Over There, because the owner seems to have the Right Stuff.
A pub boss has called last orders on customers in sportswear in a bid to drive out ‘chavs and roadmen with bumbags’ from his watering hole.
Landlord Brian Hoyle, who runs The Orange Tree in Hereford, has put a blanket ban on customers wearing hoodies, tracksuits and Stone Island clothing in his pub.
He is also barring under 21’s from the city centre pub at weekends due to youngsters being ‘unable to handle their booze’.
Needless to say, his dress code and age limit have aroused the anger of The Usual Suspects:
But the ban, which Hoyle says is aimed at making his watering hole a ‘proper’ Hereford pub again, has proved controversial among residents in the cathedral city.
Some of the residents have accused the policy of being ‘discriminatory’.
You see, this is what happens when you start ascribing motives to an ordinary word, used in its original (and correct) sense for centuries.
Let me say right now: there’s nothing wrong with being discriminatory: it’s a human trait that distinguishes civilized men from savages and animals, and helps us provide order in our world.
Sadly, of course, “discrimination” these days is used almost exclusively to demonize racial discrimination, which is not necessarily a Good Thing when applied purely as a measurement of skin color. But historically, that is actually the least of the word’s many applications. Here are a couple more.
When I say, for example, that I loathe “American” cheese (that orange paste stuff) and prefer to eat Jarlsberg, Cheddar or Emmenthaler, I am showing that I have a discriminating taste — just as is someone who would prefer to own and shoot a Colt Government over a Jennings Saturday Night Special, or prefers to own good knives made by Ken Onion over cheap brittle stuff made in China. Nothing wrong with that. Experience has taught you that stuff of inferior quality is not worth ownership or use.
When you prefer to invite people of your own sort to dinner parties, you’re being discriminating in your choice of friends — and once again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
So of course, our worthy publican in the above story is setting his preferences — because over many years and much experience, he had discovered that people who dress a certain way and/or of a certain age tend to abuse his hospitality, so he wants to preclude them from coming in and, let it be known, spoiling things for people with manners, respect and proper attire.
Somebody needs to put an end to the loutish, boorish behavior of the younger generation, and he’s chosen to make a stand.
And good for him, say I. If I were in his shoes, I would do precisely the same.
Following on from yesterday’s post about Festung Australia comes a report from an Oz resident:
[Victoria Premier] Andrews has vastly increased state power under a “state of emergency” that was promised to run for four weeks. It’s now been in place for over a year, with no end in sight. The only sunset clause in Victoria is that the premier has declared it out-of-bounds to sit on the beach to watch the sunset.
Police in Victoria may now detain any person or group for as long as “reasonably necessary,” restrict the movement of any person in the state, close any premises, and “require the destruction or disposal of anything.” Police can enter homes and seize property without a warrant.
Police and army patrol the Murray River—the border between Victoria and New South Wales—like Stasi watching over the Berlin Wall. Drones buzz in the Melbourne skies, and snitches diligently scan social media for WrongThink.
Horrifying.
You know, the reason I’m banging on about this is simple. Were this kind of stuff taking place in some Third World hellhole, former Soviet satellite state or Muslim pisspot, I’d be largely unmoved, because tyrannical oppression is a longstanding albeit ugly tradition.
But this bullying is taking place in the Anglosphere, to one of our longest-standing allied people and in a country I’ve always respected (although it may not seem that way at times).
And the pity of it is that I don’t see it ending soon, and don’t see it being changed nor even challenged at the polls either. It’s pretty fucking bleak, Down Under.
In my Inbox:
Nice try… but no. Just… no.
Here’s Salena Zito, talking about the most famous highway pit stop in America:
Everything about Wall Drug, arguably the most iconic and long-lasting drug store in America, exemplifies a doggedness. It took persistence not only to survive but also thrive against insurmountable odds in a place few thought a small business had any business starting an enterprise in the first place.
In 1931, when Ted Hustead and his wife Dorothy were looking for a place to open a drug store, he told the local paper years later he picked the thinly populated town of Wall because the local doctor told them he’d give them all his prescriptions.
Despite all their hard work, though, most of their potential customers passed their little prairie town along the highway, rarely noticing the store.
The Husteads’ dire future all changed one hot summer night when Dorothy Hustead could not sleep. Irritated that the parade of cars along U.S. 16 was keeping her awake, she wondered how could they make all of those people at least stop at their store and maybe buy a thing or two.
Out of that mild irritation came a plan: Plant signs along the highway offering free ice-cold water to weary travelers. And not just any signs, but clever ones like the humorous Burma Shave signs that were famously posted all along small highways in the 1920s.
Her idea was both simple and genius. More importantly, it worked.
Within a year, they went from no employees to eight, and the signs went from a handful to hundreds of billboards. And today, Wall Drug is a 76,000-square-foot, multimillion-dollar slice of Americana where you can still get your prescription filled, but you can also get hand-crafted moccasins, divine homemade donuts, out-of-print books on the American West, cowboy boots, clothing, ice cream, western art, homemade pies, and bumper stickers. If they don’t have it, it’s probably not made.
I’ve been to Wall Drug. And unless it’s fallen off the display, you can see my picture (along with thousands of similar ones) inside.
That was taken in September 2004, in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris.
By the way: I bought some gun gear at Wall Drug, and when we stopped at the Cabela’s store in Mitchell SD, I saw exactly the same stuff — only priced about 20% higher.
Ooooh yeah, baby:
Never been, always wanted to go. Why?
[sigh]
All you folks who have been there, feel free to torment me in Comments.