craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

at least they're fucking trying! what the fuck have you done!? happy 50th birthday ian mackaye. sucks that you had to ruin the washington dc brand though you sanctimonious humorless hand-crafted straightedge bastard!

http://www.viceland.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ianmackaye.jpg

http://www.fritolay.com/assets/images/blue/tostitos-artisan-roasted-garlic-black-bean.gif

http://www.thatfreebiesite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Free-Dominos-Pizza-300x257.jpg

http://gabbeliphotography.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451ff1869e20167629f2e8e970b-350wi

job creators.

labor economy is good for strawmen itt

the article raises some interesting questions almost in spite of itself i think. the author is awfully agonized over how precious and god, how even embarrassing this whole artisanal phenomenon is! such conflicted feelings about tiny-batch granola and what is implies about him, as a person! if the author ruefully confesses a vulnerability to these handcrafted enticements, at least it's self aware! it's kind of funny, as much as he points out the broad caricature of the craft food industry he comes across as just as much of a caricature of a cultural critic.

That kind of good old-fashioned entrepreneurship can cost you friends in the east–of–the–East River artisan scene. The Brooklyn Kitchen, one of Brooklyn Salsa’s first retail accounts, stopped carrying the product. “I liked it better when it was a fresh product, not jarred,” co-owner Harry Rosenblum says. “They expanded. I saw it in a lot of places. It was a less special thing to offer.”

just amazing how worked up people are willing to get about some white people selling slightly overpriced food

creating cultural identity via the new sincerity

i think the article has interesting questions about how & whether these companies can grow to a larger scale --and if so, where should they grow? it's not just a little bizarre to think that a booming company is 'selling out' when they are becoming more efficient and employing more people! is there some perceived cultural value inherent to small-scale production other than the exclusivity & scarcity of its output? does 'authenticity' just mean this self-conscious, self-imposed scarcity?

for some brands it does, but there is prob a limit to the markup on salsa unlike hermes bags or whatever

idk, man, I have seen some pretty expensive salsa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSxnieYctVM

I like how they made it seem like the cow was talking at the end

idk, man, I have seen some pretty expensive salsa

well I guess people weren't willing to pay $500 for a bag before the created a market for it, so who knows, maybe $500 salsa is in our future

idk if you can fairly compare durable goods & food products like that but $500 is a steal for any hermes bag

tbf, older upscale brands typically are of high quality and will last forever, unless they've bowed to market demand and started churning out lower-quality product

then there's the new brands or some dude constructing stuff out of his apartment with unknown durability and longevity

maybe somebody will say '$500 is a steal for good salsa' in 10 years

you know that guy who is always like "irl a hamburger should cost $100" i think about that sometimes like would i pay $100 for a hamburger? a pretty good hamburger like once a year, maybe i would. like if it were a special birthday hamburger

hermes burger

Always hear Rancid's "Cash, Culture and Violence" when this thread pops up

you know that guy who is always like "irl a hamburger should cost $100"

you mean iatee?

well him but also this other guy

tbf this is why I think the demonizing of stuff as "pink slime" or whatever else is dumb. If people want to be stupid and eat a bunch of hamburgers per week, then there is no reason to raise a ton more cattle just so that they can overconsume top quality beef rather than sponging up the remaindered beef and not complaining about the difference.

artisan burgers on your birthday, responsible minimal meat consumption the other days

otm and you can get someone else to pay on your birthday

i don't think you can say these businesses are artificially creating a demand for fancy unconventional artisan foods, i mean, at least not in new york.

your tastes will expand to spend your income one way or another

http://www.cnbc.com/id/22040234/A_Visit_to_Warren_Buffett_s_Favorite_Restaurant

to do so would be cynical! and cynicism is just not part of the mission statement of my brooklyn-based handcraft pork rinds enterprise

warren buffett is kind of the example that proves the rule, in that his main taste is actually business or something

dude a cynical brooklyn-based handcraft pork rinds enterprise would do millions in business

"You fucking piece of shit, you're just going to buy this aren't you? I hate that I am making so much money off of you and your fucking beard."

"Buy some pork rinds and then maybe go die somewhere so I can be alone."

"My food truck is my Honda Fit, you can just grab some out of the back, I don't even care."

we're working on a lavender-vanilla infused pork rind right now, as well as a mojito flavor

"Yeah I've got T-shirts, I just wrote Elmo's Pork Rinds on the front with sharpie, $45."

"We use the whole pig. Specifically we sell the rest of the pig to people with better taste than you."

your tastes will expand to spend your income one way or another

That must be why there's a half-pound of Bucheron in my fridge.

brb, raiding Laurel's fridge

there's a certain type of noxious boosterism that attaches to some neighborhoods/boroughs, for instance hackney in london is approaching brooklyn levels of boastful swag, you see shirts that say things like "proper east" on them, but you don't see the same things in quite the same quantity or force in places like brixton or queens

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:23 AM (4 hours ago)

This. Also there's a thing about Hackney I've noticed, where the boosters seem to identify with Hackney as a whole, as opposed to (say) De Beauvoir Town or Clapton or wherever. Don't really find this in Southwark, where people from (say) Nunhead and Bermondsey wouldn't necessarily identify with a "Southwark" in common.

I kinda felt the same thing about "Brooklyn" when I was there last week, but it felt a bit different to me because it felt like Brooklynites have a common cause, that of overcoming a (perceived or actual) Manhattan snootiness. But really I know nothing about Brooklyn so please take that with a pinch, or a grain, of salt.

what kind of salt?

Smoked.

my apologies for basically stealing your observations tim

it felt a bit different to me because it felt like Brooklynites have a common cause, that of overcoming a (perceived or actual) Manhattan snootiness

i think there was once some truth to this but now that literally no one can afford to live in manhattan it doesn't make sense anymore; but even back then there was a bit of irony in that the people wearing "defend brooklyn" shirts or whatever all lived in the tiny sliver of brooklyn that nestles right against manhattan

first line of defense

It struck me that there was (once, maybe no longer as you say) a common enemy for Brooklyn-boosters, which is to say that Manhattan snooters. But who's the common enemy for Hackneyites? No-one, as far as I can see.

As I think about this, I don't really object to it - people feeling good about where they live, it's not a bad thing. Over-enthusiasm sometimes gets a bit irksome but it's pretty harmless (with the usual caveats about the upsides and downsides of gentrification).

over-enthusiasm sometimes gets a bit irksome but it's pretty harmless

maybe? i don't want to overstate it but there's a strange isolationist undercurrent here, i don't think there's gonna be any tarriffs on out-of-borough foodstuffs but you know what i mean

Don't perceive that to much in the London version of this - don't see Hackneyites turning their nose up at the Kernel beer we sell them because it comes from two boroughs away in SE1 (SE16 now but whatevs). There is the impulse to "buy local" I guess but I think most Londoners who get into that don't tend to be very borough-focussed (and the restaurants I know which have taken that line tend to talk about"within the M25" or whatever.

does the salsa taste any different now that it's packaged in jars? does larger-scale production effect the absolute quality of the product? i don't know -- i'm guessing not! or is it just less desirable now that it's available beyond brooklyn? does its wider availability just no longer flatter brooklyn's own self-conscious ~uniqueness~?

people get pleasure from exclusivity

ppl get pleasure from all sorts of things. ask katie roiphie!