Don't Knock The Jukebox
Stopped in what has become my new local bar tonight. It isn’t a very good bar, but, if I tried at all, I could get from my door to theirs in less than sixty seconds.
I’ve been trying to get a handle on this bar for a while. My first night, pretty hoppin’ Friday, there was an eminently capable bartender with a sweet, hearty ass and lots of ink on her back and shoulders (kinda bartender that is super-attentive, and who, if you ever asked her out, would laugh out loud in your face) and great rock on the juke, heavy that night on the margins of GnR. Two nights later, some cheeseball with excessive product in his hair is offering something he describes as “just like a fudgicle” as the bartender special, and Phil-fucking-Collins is playing.
Guys, where are we?
I’ve described this place to friends with just exactly this above description, and always asked, “What kind of fucking juke has Turbo Lover and In Too Deep?”
Turns out the solid bartender works almost always, so I’ve gone back a bit. Cheap, plasma flatscreens for SportsCenter, and Monster Madness on the touch screen.
So, anyway, I’m there tonight. And I look over my cigarette, trying to disguise my empty head with a pen and notebook in front of me, absent, and see it.
Internet Juke.
What is does first is explain my first two visits here. Except the fudgicle bullshit.
And then I’m mad. Because jukes are supposed to be something different than that. They reflect choice, and we are externally the choices we make. When I first got to town, I judged the pubs I crawled by jukes, and recommended places largely on that. A good juke is a good bar. Someone that has lived there decided which were the songs the patrons were going to pay to play, or said fuck it and picked what they liked. Either way, an important and definite statement.
Ever been in a bar where the juke just sucked? Yeah, so, okay, you understand what I’m getting at.
The Internet Juke is the non-statement. My reddish friends would be lampooned saying “He-who-states-nothing-meaning-anything-saying-nothing.” (Cousin of two-dogs-fucking.) I mean bullllllll-shit. How can I know who you are when you won’t even say what music you like?
That is a marketing-driven bar, appealing to the cult of the individual. What’s on your juke? Whatever you like, baby. I see all the possible advantages here. Nobody ever walks away from that juke disappointed, and the public is fully in charge. It is all very open source.
But it reveals the flaw in the confluence, which is inevitable, between open-source and I-marketing. Namely, when we worship I and have the power to individuate, public spaces and possibilities for institutional character erode. We destroy the ability, in the face of competition from the clones, to create things that can have life beyond the immediate. We destroy continuity of shared existence in favor of gratification.
20 of my friends pack this bar and play this juke, and a Renton bachelorette party does the same the next night, can we even call it the same bar?
We go too far. Kill the spirit of place and time in favor of here and now.
I’ve been trying to get a handle on this bar for a while. My first night, pretty hoppin’ Friday, there was an eminently capable bartender with a sweet, hearty ass and lots of ink on her back and shoulders (kinda bartender that is super-attentive, and who, if you ever asked her out, would laugh out loud in your face) and great rock on the juke, heavy that night on the margins of GnR. Two nights later, some cheeseball with excessive product in his hair is offering something he describes as “just like a fudgicle” as the bartender special, and Phil-fucking-Collins is playing.
Guys, where are we?
I’ve described this place to friends with just exactly this above description, and always asked, “What kind of fucking juke has Turbo Lover and In Too Deep?”
Turns out the solid bartender works almost always, so I’ve gone back a bit. Cheap, plasma flatscreens for SportsCenter, and Monster Madness on the touch screen.
So, anyway, I’m there tonight. And I look over my cigarette, trying to disguise my empty head with a pen and notebook in front of me, absent, and see it.
Internet Juke.
What is does first is explain my first two visits here. Except the fudgicle bullshit.
And then I’m mad. Because jukes are supposed to be something different than that. They reflect choice, and we are externally the choices we make. When I first got to town, I judged the pubs I crawled by jukes, and recommended places largely on that. A good juke is a good bar. Someone that has lived there decided which were the songs the patrons were going to pay to play, or said fuck it and picked what they liked. Either way, an important and definite statement.
Ever been in a bar where the juke just sucked? Yeah, so, okay, you understand what I’m getting at.
The Internet Juke is the non-statement. My reddish friends would be lampooned saying “He-who-states-nothing-meaning-anything-saying-nothing.” (Cousin of two-dogs-fucking.) I mean bullllllll-shit. How can I know who you are when you won’t even say what music you like?
That is a marketing-driven bar, appealing to the cult of the individual. What’s on your juke? Whatever you like, baby. I see all the possible advantages here. Nobody ever walks away from that juke disappointed, and the public is fully in charge. It is all very open source.
But it reveals the flaw in the confluence, which is inevitable, between open-source and I-marketing. Namely, when we worship I and have the power to individuate, public spaces and possibilities for institutional character erode. We destroy the ability, in the face of competition from the clones, to create things that can have life beyond the immediate. We destroy continuity of shared existence in favor of gratification.
20 of my friends pack this bar and play this juke, and a Renton bachelorette party does the same the next night, can we even call it the same bar?
We go too far. Kill the spirit of place and time in favor of here and now.
posted by JJisafool at 12:04 AM
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