corporate take over

[Barbara]

The gay bars are dwindling across the nation.Drag queens like Rupaul are on their way out.Where i live ,the casinos have put the local bars out of business that includes the gay bars.They even went as far as to rename the street were the gay bars were.I loved these little bars .I was young and a pretty ->-bleeped-<-.I loved to dress up and go to these bars There were always guys hitting on me,and buying me drinks,hell they even smoked pot sometimes.I just wish them old places were still there sometimes

[armozel]

This isn't surprising it's really not just an issue of locally owned establishments being gay bars or not, but an issue of the legal infrastructure that works against businesses in general. Note that I stated businesses and not corporations as these are legally two different things (a business can be a corporation, but a corporation is not necessarily a business) for the fact that a corporation has legal privileges related to its operations whether it's a for-profit or non-profit in terms of its status. And it's these privileges that have altered the landscape of the country at large where many businesses and local institutions have been forced out or made impractical with legal manuvers of corporations direct or indirect. The gay bar issue you mentioned is just one example. I can probably list several others like the change in local neighborhoods that were once poor (gentification), loss of local industries (not necessarily factories), and many other delocalizations (loss of cultural and economic heterogeneity). Simply put, this is the result of a corporatist legal landscape and with it a loss of freedom for all in some respects. And yes, it sucks.

[tekla]

Though I haven't noticed that happening on the bar scene here, I do have a list of things that corporations have ruined by showing up, throwing a lot of money around and then working overtime to sanitize for consumption.

NASCAR
Professional Ski Racing
Marti Gras in New Orleans
Las Vegas
Big Rock Music Fests

[armozel]

Another example is organic farming that comes to mind for me. It seems some corporate outfits were behind the whole FDA organic legislation that muscled out the smaller organic cooperatives.

[rejennyrated]

Which will go on until a new generation of entreprenneurs come along and reinvent that thing which has been lost.

Whist there is humanity there will always be a demand for alt type venues... and while that demand persists, as one stock of places fade another will arise to fill the demand.

So don't worry, because to slightly misquote Obi-Wan "If they irradicate us now they will only make us more powerful than they can ever imagine!"


LOL "these are not the gay bars that I'm looking for..."

[tekla]

I'm not sure about that, along the way the rule change making re-creating the old all but impossible.  Some things are born in time, and when they are gone, they are gone and they ain't ever coming back.  When the innocence is lost, or when the rules change it can't be the same anymore.   Just for one example: When I first starting working on big rock festivals insurance was the last thing we ever thought about, now it's pretty much the first, and it dictates what we can, and can not do from the git-go.