craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

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!

Putting food in jars that don't need refridgeration means the product has to be boiled, right? I'm sure that does affect the flavor. Versus always-chiiled fresh salsa.

yeah i'm just wondering out loud, how much is exclusivity based on limited quantity, and how much is based on selective distribution

I would think that "local" in the UK means "anywhere in the UK." I mean it's only 4 hours' drive across for chrissake.

quantity & distribution are both part of the equation. you don't make a very large batch of expensive high quality salsa because there are only so many people who will be willing to meet your price point. marketing to those ppl who can afford to buy your product, is the surest way to make a buck & not risk losing unsold fresh salsa. or something.

this is MAYBE a related discussion or a different thread, but i have been noticing a few boutique publishing houses (centipede press, really) that will manufacture 100-500 gorgeous 'japanese cloth bound' books etc and sell them for anywhere from $45-295 list. the exclusivity comes from the limited run, which in turn comes from the limited demand and difficulty in distribution of such a niche product.

i love boiled salsa.

http://www.centipedepress.com/sf/shadow.html

like, are you kidding me? this book which you can go buy in barnes & noble if you want as part of an anthology, is being published in a tiny run for a small number of ppl and someone is making a profit. n

i imagine this is JUST LIKE SALSA wherein you make enough to sell to the portion of the population who will both WANT your product and be able to AFFORD it.

volume three still avaialble new for $225!
http://www.centipedepress.com/sf/sword.html

part of why ppl like these products is because they are marketed as (and in reality are) objects of a very high quality. people who buy them buy them the same way people buy art prints.

so maybe it's not like salsa, i don't know. but like salsa, there is a much cheaper option.

people w/ too much money need something to do w/ it, designer salsa, books, clothes, cars are all part of the same story

"i lived in hollister, california and i wouldn't buy 'hollister' crap if my life depended on it."

my refusal to wear "brooklyn industries" branding has to do with the company's relationship to the gentrification of certain brooklyn neighborhoods at the time i lived in park slope. gentrification isn't a bad thing, necessarily. it can bring money and jobs to an area that wouldn't otherwise have much of either. that's all to the good. but gentrification also displaces local culture, and that has its downsides.

brooklyn industries, to me, represented a strange attempt to sell an ersatz version of brooklyn's famous local pride to newcomers (like me) lured by gentrified neighborhoods and still relatively cheap housing. its appeal seemed based on the idea that the "authenticity value" of neighborhood pride was a fungible commodity that could be appropriated and used to add sparkle to whatever. i was bothered by that. i was willing to be an agent of gentrification, but that didn't mean i wanted my clothing & accessories to advertise gentrification.

as the company's grown, it's relationship to brooklyn itself has changed. to buy and wear and brooklyn industries bag in kansas somewhere has no real relationship to the gentrification of this or that neighborhood. but i'm still tied to the time and place in which i first encountered the brand.

Just six illustrations seem kinda a gyp.

i think a good example of the right way (responsible way? fiscally sensible way?) to go about making a boutique product is something like a group of Jack Vance fans did with the Vance Integral Edition, a subscription series to a very limited run of the complete work of Jack Vance, with introductory material, high-quality leather bindings, signed, the whole nine yards. very expensive, costly thing to make, but by doing it together and for each other it became possible & eventually was done to completion in iirc 44 volumes at about $5,000 total for a set.

i don't know where i'm going with this really. just been thinking about boutique printing presses lately, encountering them in amazon searches & google seaches and stuff.

gonna go buy a $12 jar of salsa now and take it home in my $50 reusable grocery bag brb

boutique printing presses are prob gonna be bigger things in the future when books are sorta more comparable to vinyl records

i think what ties brooklynites together, btw, is not a sense of pride or antagonism towards manhattanites, but just people in general trying to ~get shit done~ be it get to work on the train, buy groceries, walk the dog, whatever, people are just about doing what they're doing no judgments, and there seems to be a certain level of mutual respect for people in the community who would otherwise have nothing in common with each other. some sense of 'all in this together.'

what we talk about when we talk about brooklyn

i don't think it's exclusive to brooklyn really, it's probably what ties ppl together where there are residential neighborhoods where people are (relatively) densely packed and walking all over each other every day

gotta get of the internet jesus.

there aren't that many neighborhoods that fit that description in america

but it is true in other countries