quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

Now they're just fucking with us:

Even Marked Up, Luxury Goods Sell Fast
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
While average Americans watch their wallets, high-end retailers are selling out of expensive items, like Lissette Gutierrez’s Louis Vuitton shoes at Bergdorf Goodman.

http://i1.nyt.com/images/2011/08/04/business/Luxury-shoes/Luxury-hpMedium.jpg

"average Americans"

http://www.theonion.com/video/panel-of-caged-average-americans-weigh-in-on-econo,19694/

my name is Louis farrakhan and I am here to brunch with you

― davon cuul II (m bison), Thursday, July 28, 2011 2:38 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

yeah i loved that

more quotes from this article-

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/sales-of-luxury-goods-are-recovering-strongly.html?hp

“If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?” said Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at the consulting firm Kurt Salmon, and the former chairman and chief executive of Saks.

“You just can’t buy a pair of shoes for less than $1,000 in some of the luxury brands, and some of the price points have gone to $2,000,” said Jyothi Rao, general manager for the women’s business at Gilt Groupe, a Web site that sells designer brands at a discount. “There’s absolutely a customer for it.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/how-serious-a-crime-is-insider-trading/?hp

Three insider trading cases announced last week involved prominent defendants who traded on and tipped confidential information used for trading that resulted in comparatively small gains. These cases lend some support to the view that those who engage in this type of conduct may not perceive themselves as violating the law because there is no immediate victim.

The two civil cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission involved William A. Marovitz, husband of Christie Hefner, the former chief executive of Playboy Enterprises, and a former major league baseball player, Douglas V. DeCinces. Both men were successful in other business ventures, and while Mr. DeCinces made more than $1 million from his trading, Mr. Marovitz’s case involved gains and avoided losses of about $100,000, a modest amount to break the law.

The criminal prosecution of a former director of Mariner Energy, H. Clayton Peterson, which will very likely result in his serving a prison term, involved about $150,000 in profits realized by his son Drew, who received the tips.

Is it worth risking your reputation, and perhaps even going to federal prison, for such paltry amounts?

haha

5/5

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/nyregion/sold-as-lobster-salad-but-a-key-ingredient-was-missing.html?_r=1

can't really tell what tone the nytimes is taking with this, as is the case with so many recent noms to this thread, but outrage over fake lobster is great whether it itself is real or fake and if the nytimes is real or fake in its approval of it

I would like a lobster roll right now though (real or fake)

Krab

“We used to make a salad that we called a seafare salad” that contained surimi, Mr. Zabar said, which he described as “a Japanese version of crab meat using pollock as the base.” (Others define surimi as a crablike product manufactured from fish. Some say it is pollock that is mixed into a paste with starch and other ingredients, and cooked and shaped to look like crab meat.)

i love this weird journalistic impartiality around the definition of surimi -- "but who can really know for sure?"

Surimi -- the paste between two roffles

Surimi (or the American version - krab nigiri is what I always call it) is my guiltiest of pleasures.

aka seafood extender in australia

The best part of that article is the owner's absurd justifications for mislabeling food. The rich-people-mockery angle is that folks were shelling (lol geddit???) out $17/pound for it without examining what they were actually buying.

Surimi that comes in California rolls is okay but the pink spiral fish loaf version is really gross.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/opinion/new-yorks-urban-aloha.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/fashion/maybe-its-time-for-plan-c.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I have some sympathy for these folks, good on them but...

Last year, Jennifer Phelan, 27, left a marketing job at a large law firm to become a private Pilates instructor in Boston. She had envisioned a life of “workouts, getting lots of sleep and blogging every day about health and fitness,” she said. Instead, her classes start as early as 6 a.m. and she feels wiped out by day’s end, which can be 14 hours later.

hahaha 'i'll totally be able to work out and get paid for it!!'

Charan Sachar, 37, a former software engineer who lives near Seattle, used to spend his downtime perusing Etsy, the D.I.Y. crafts site. He daydreamed of an unfettered life at his kiln, creating Bollywood-inspired teapots and butter dishes.

I love this thread so much.

butter dishes!

"scoops westside"

Lolz

"Matthew Kang, 26, a former commercial bank analyst in Los Angeles, has it worse. Last year, he quit his prestigious job to open Scoops Westside, an ice cream shop in Culver City. “I feel like a janitor sometimes,” he said.

At least janitors have a steady paycheck. Plan B might entail more freedom, but that often comes at the expense of financial security. "

Wow, so it's even worse than being a janitor!

Obvious, but pitch-perfect:

4.
Thingthree
London,KY
August 13th, 2011
3:39 pm
I completely agree. The American's who are able to quit their $250,000 a year job as a lawyer to pursue their dream job only to realize there is no manual labor fairy to wish all their hard work cares away have it tough. That a baker might lift her own bags of flour is a travesty the very idea of which is disheartening. Woe is the life of a baker who must suffer such misfortunes as accidentally cutting a finger in a moment of carelessness with a knife.
This article is fantastic and worthy of a place in the New York Times. It is most fortunate this article about the troubles of entrepreneurs who have to do work should be posted at such an opportune time; had it been posted a week later I would have never seen it as I must sell my computer to afford rent.

lol yeah. my parents owned a restaurant for about two years and it took a fucking toll on them.

http://www.creativewithclay.com/butter_dishes_june09_small.jpg

they're nice butter dishes.

they look like things you painted yourself at the clay-painting-studio downtown

weeeeell, to be fair, those are a bit beyond the average and dude's work is nice though not my style.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_-7KsYJKTlc/TfX9i6Z0rWI/AAAAAAAACNo/6-ILmrfqsew/s1600/IMG_3643-1.JPG
having just done some pottery i can compliment this unironically

but yeah, it's still on the outskirts of professional and it sure ain't my aesthetic

I love how people open businesses in industries which they have never actually worked for money.

People who have worked in restaurants for a long time will tell you that some of the worst owners to work for are those for whom running a restaurant was a "dream" escape from office work.

I'm talking more about full-service restaurants, but the point is the same: some of those proprietors had never before done a lick of manual labor, never mind working in a kitchen or dining room or bar, so it seems like they come at it only considering the perspective of the guest. Maybe think it's going to be a nightly party where they gain popularity and make connections, but it's not. It's hard work and long hours where you're dealing with perishable goods, pleasing the public, and herding a staff of students, actors, drunks, and coke- and pot-heads. The good ones suck it up and run the place, but the bad ones let the wheels come off while they hob-nob and comp bottles of Dom to their buddies.

At my last waitering job, the owners were a corporation, so in the roll of the harried owner was the revolving door staff managers who went stayed a year and then got regular office jobs. Like a couple of them said, they missed their friends and families, who were at home in bed when they got off work at 1:00 a.m.

Basically what Yerac said, but longer.

totally correct.

When my parents decided they wanted to open a coffee shop as a pleasant retirement business, I had a fit because they barely drank coffee, didn't go to coffee shops and had no clue what it entailed to run a business. They also didn't think it would be necessary to hire a manager for the store. Then they realized they would have to be at the store at all times to open, do orders, receive deliveries, schedule workers, do payroll, deal with health inspectors, etc. etc. They actually seemed shocked that the high schoolers they hired gave away free stuff to friends. They got super lucky when the previous owners of the shop for some reason decided not to close on the sale and they only lost a little money.

I at least got a ton of these Plan B jobs out of my system in my 20s so I know that my boring corporate job with cushy pay and hours is something to hold on to. And I have the experience to know what it takes to run a bar, record store, coffee shop, retail business, restaurant, franchise and I would never do any of these things again. Unless I needed a money laundering front.

hah yeah most people who own or work at restaurants/shops push for their kids to get exactly the kind of white collar jobs these folks are giving up (or are fired from), so they can spend those long hours at a desk instead of wrestling with bags of flour in the cellar.

"Former white-collar workers are also surprised by the demands of manual labor."

I dunno it's not like *everyone who owns a cafe* is miserable

Yeah, but I think you have to open that type of business really knowing what you are getting into (that you will be living there, unless you can find super trustworthy people to help you run it).

there are exceptions to everything, and some people do enjoy the grind of owning a cafe. we are mostly lolling at the conceptions of these white collar folks that running a business would be an airy and pleasant daydream.

Every time I think it would be fun to join the Food Truck Revolution® I remember that I hate work.

"Former white-collar workers are also surprised by the demands of money laundering."

Flower shops are another potential vanity business. I've seen burnt out two corporate types open a shop, thinking it will be all playing with posies and balloons and making people happy on their weddings and birthdays. But again, you have to manage perishables, try to make the public happy, do a lot of dirty manual labor, and in this case having to have some knowledge or skills that are more obscure than the basics of food. I mean, does some former insurance subrogationist know if a designer improperly wrapped boutonnieres so that they wind up falling apart right before a wedding? When they do fall apart after her designer has gone home, can she fix them? Since this example is ripped from the headlines of my real life, I can tell you: No, she doesn't know, and all she can do is stab at them with pins to try to voodoo them into functionality.

you guys have me daydreaming about money laundering fronts now

thread making me feel p smug about quitting my cushy overpaid corporate job to get my doctorate