Posts by Tom Beard
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Then Craig, I recommend the cravat
Ah, a very underrated and highly versatile accessory. Easily the best thing to come out of Croatia.
I've just realised that I do own a hoodie of sorts: a Stitch Ministry black merino zip-up cardigan. Of course, I never wear it outdoors, though come to think of it, it might go nicely with a black velvet jacket and a pair of patent leather boots. Hoodies are terribly impractical though: they tend to get in the way of one's fedora.
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"pedophobia"
Or perhaps something like "ephebephobia", since it's fear of youthe rather than children. I think I suffer from pedophobia, as the sight (or especially sound) of rugrats is enough to send me diving for cover.
I was taken with a nicely done suit-type jacket with a hood on I saw in a shop recently.
That "tailoring with streetwear" thing seems to be making a comeback: I associate it with the early 90s, when Paul Smith & Katherine Hammnet were mixing up hoodies with suits all the time. By the time I attempted it, I'd already missed the minuscule cultural trend.
But I'm with Andrew on this: I don't wear trainers, and hardly ever wear proper jeans, so I'm hardly likely to wear a hoodie. I didn't dress like "yoof" when I was one, so I've no intention of doing so now.
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Ravers as the new bogans indeed! Mind, I did go into Super Cheap Auto in Petone at the weekend and they were playing hardhouse.
I rest my case.
But my semi-serious suggestion was just based on a few observations. I used to live opposite End Up in Taranaki St, "Wellington's only Day Club", and the people I saw spilling out of there at 10 on a Saturday morning weren't yer old-school loved-up rave kids: more the type to sell you a few points if you were lucky or knife you if you looked at them the wrong way. And yes, hard house does seem to go down well with the boy racers.
I'm not sure whether Soane counts as "proper house", but the last time I went to see one of his sets, Sandwiches was only half-full. Recloose might count as something like a house act, but he's taken on a lot of dub & funk influences since being in Welly, and all in all it might seem that the strength of the live music scene has been at the expense of DJ-based music.
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Tell that to Chicago, NYC and Düsseldorf
And Detroit, of course. But it never seemed to become mainstream, and there was always talk of branding Prodigy, Chemical Brothers et al as "electronica" in order to help them break into America, with the implication being that no-one in the US quite "got" dance music. Of course, certain communities (often inner city) very much got it, and in fact created it as you point out, but I never got the impression that it was a big part of everyday life.
I remember once in Düsseldorf trying to buy a Kraftwerk album, and none of the crappy music stores I went into had even heard of them. Really! It's like going to Liverpool and not being able to find any Beatles. I eventually found a copy of Tour de France, which went down very nicely as we fahrn, fahrn, fahrned auf de Autobahn.
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the ferocious anglocentricity of our cultural outlook
Funny, I always thought of dance music as a very English thing, but I guess that's just compared to America (and partly due to my extensive collection of Orbital, Underworld, Chemical Brothers, Leftfield etc). Certainly, dance music seems to have dropped off the hipster radar, and with the exception of the occasional partly-ironic electro act it's hard to get away from those damned guitars these days. Maybe ravers are the new bogans, at least as far as the harder end of the spectrum goes. And maybe it's different in Auckland, but house seems almost invisible outside of a few B&T Courtenay Place bars, and the Wellington emphasis seems to have gone from dub/roots (which is deeply unhip now) to indie, electro-punk and alt-country.
And it's good to see Meros getting some success. I loved it when On the Conditions started out as photocopied sheets plastered all over the walls of Cuba St.
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Then again.. I'd be dreaming if the media actualy looked into NZ's number one most harmful drug.
Booze.
Which also happens to be NZ's number one tastiest drug.
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So the next time I get "frustrated" with Garth McVicar I can come at him with a knife?
Get in line.
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Even "Mr Smith" was unacceptably familiar at my school: it was "Sir", and a detention if you didn't. The more radical teachers were the ones who addressed you by your first name. It wasn't quite "Jones minor! Stop that right now, you horrible little oik!", but it was close.
In contrast, I now know hardly anyone who'd address other people with honorifics rather than first names, with the odd exception of doctors and the like.
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What's with trashing the Lone Star?
Because it's shite?
At least it has flavour.
Generic overly sweet BBQ sauce flavour, IIRC.
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even in nzl-owned places here in wellington you get the same "she'll be right" attitude to service and complaints. it's lazy, haphazard, and undermines the entire industry.
And even in places that generally have good service and attitudes, when the owners or senior staff aren't present the standards can rapidly slide into indifference and rudeness.
Marketing of these places is not based on quality of either food or service - it is on an image (and people like you and I are not the demographic that they target!)
The ironic thing is that the demographic in question presumably has less to spend than those who go to supposedly "poncy" restaurants, yet the meals in chain places like Lone Star are no better value. Mid-range cafes such as Floriditas have food and service that are vastly better than that, yet you could get a good portion of main and side for no more money. I guess that the definition of a "good portion" varies, however, and some people think that anything less than obscenely Texan portions represents a ripoff.