Monday, May 28, 2007

The Rise of Anti-drink-establishment-arianism

West Broadway is improving, by itself, very rapidly. Another local restaurant/bar opened up, and is already very popular.

And yet the calls for "tearing down West Broadway" and cries of "something is broken there" are getting louder. This is destructive and anti-business, and yet people trying to stop the destruction, are labeled "anti-business" ... presumably because we are against developers who want to destroy our lives.

But there is a strong undercurrent here ... a teetotaler's agenda. West Broadway is now "the bar district". You can walk among 10 bars here at night, all within sight of each other. It's a pretty nice scene, tempered by food booths, dancing and art projects.

There are just some people who don't like to see the poor hanging out. They don't like kids "hanging around". And they don't like to see people drunk. But, they have the legal right to do these things. So the underlying "morals" cannot be articulated. Instead, generalities like "we want something more upscale" or "it's just scary down there" are spoken in hushed tones. The fact that adults talk this way, hiding their intolerance with euphenism, is just another sign of the elite dysfunction in the body politic.

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