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Penny Arcade - Comic - Chirmp Chormpz

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin

Chirmp Chormpz!

Penny Arcade - Comic - Chirmp Chormpz

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Read the full story here

Posts

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    edited May 29
    Glad no child has to experience that anymore, smoking is banned indoors.

    Edit: oh, except for the states you'd assume:
    Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming

    MichaelLC on
  • LttlefootLttlefoot Registered User regular
    Am I smelling cigarette smoke or freedom?

  • darkmayodarkmayo Registered User regular
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    Glad no child has to experience that anymore, smoking is banned indoors.

    Edit: oh, except for the states you'd assume:
    Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming

    I can’t imagine going back to the days where smoking indoors was acceptable. Going to pubs, clubs whatever back when I was younger and coming out reeking like and ashtray just from second hand smoke. Then it was gone and it just boggles my mind that places still are cool with it

    Switch SW-6182-1526-0041
  • MercadeMercade Registered User regular
    Jerry shitting on Spokane is one of my favorite running things on PA. I’ve never even been to Spokane, but have been to/lived in enough similar places to be like, yeah, I get that.

    Switch: SW-1909-0466-9585
  • RaideRaide Registered User new member
    Ah, yes. I know this experience. Though for me, it was a methed out Iowa town, my Mom, a bar, and Ms. Pac-Man, but otherwise the same.

  • CrimeRobotCrimeRobot Registered User regular
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    Glad no child has to experience that anymore, smoking is banned indoors.

    Edit: oh, except for the states you'd assume:
    Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming

    One of the most unpleasant arguments I've ever been in was trying to convince a friend that works as a bartender downtown that a proposed smoking ban was a good thing. He was just all in on the owner's Kool-Aid, that if people can't smoke in bars they won't come and the bars will shut down, and furthermore it's all about freedom to choose; he chooses to work there and people can choose to go there whether they want to smoke or not.

    I tried to liken it to environmental regulations for, say, coal mines, but I think he was just too dug in on "Freedom!" to make any forward progress

    Of course, I don't know of any bars that closed, the fucking owners just had to spend a few dollars making nice little heated outdoor smoking spaces out of their existing square footage. And now second-hand emphysema/cancer is no longer an occupational hazard of serving drinks.

    "We programmed him to think only of crime!" - Enrico Matassa
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited May 29
    CrimeRobot wrote: »
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    Glad no child has to experience that anymore, smoking is banned indoors.

    Edit: oh, except for the states you'd assume:
    Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming

    One of the most unpleasant arguments I've ever been in was trying to convince a friend that works as a bartender downtown that a proposed smoking ban was a good thing. He was just all in on the owner's Kool-Aid, that if people can't smoke in bars they won't come and the bars will shut down, and furthermore it's all about freedom to choose; he chooses to work there and people can choose to go there whether they want to smoke or not.

    I tried to liken it to environmental regulations for, say, coal mines, but I think he was just too dug in on "Freedom!" to make any forward progress

    Of course, I don't know of any bars that closed, the fucking owners just had to spend a few dollars making nice little heated outdoor smoking spaces out of their existing square footage. And now second-hand emphysema/cancer is no longer an occupational hazard of serving drinks.

    In my area despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from bar owners the only company that actually went out of business was a company that did specialized cleaning for bars and restaurants, because it turned out smokers were 99% of the reason you needed professionals to come in three times a week and wash the walls and ceiling and shampoo the carpets and all of a sudden you could just have your staff run a rag over stuff occasionally and vacuum after close. Bars and restaurants were consistently cleaner with far less work and expense, and they didn't take a serious hit to business because nobody went to the bar to smoke, they went to the bar to drink and smoked because they were already there.

    Hevach on
  • LttlefootLttlefoot Registered User regular
    Makes me wonder why no bars voluntarily enforced "no smoking indoors" before the ban

  • tofurkeyforbigstevetofurkeyforbigsteve Registered User regular
    Bowling AND arcade games? What sort of fantasy wonderland has bowling AND arcade games?

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited May 30
    Lttlefoot wrote: »
    Makes me wonder why no bars voluntarily enforced "no smoking indoors" before the ban

    Drinking and smoking went hand in hand in the US for a very long time. When bans started happening in the 80's and 90's there wasn't just nobody alive who remembered not being able to *smell* a bar from down the street... There was nobody alive who as a child could have heard stories from an old person who did. For all meaningful purposes this stretched back to infinity.

    And before the bans went into effect it wasn't just the bar owners fussing. Their customers were loudly proclaiming they would just drink at home or find a bar that defied the law.

    And if we're getting into the truth of it, definitely not all but at least some of them probably *did*, and bars survived because for every one who did at least one person who already drank at home started drinking at the bar, or somebody who left early now stayed late, because it was no longer a miserable unpleasant experience for them.

    This is one of the classical data biases, but it sure as hell looks to the owners in question like they're about to face a customer exodus.

    Hevach on
  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Bowling AND arcade games? What sort of fantasy wonderland has bowling AND arcade games?

    Tossing one or two cheap cabinets in a hallway is a fairly common practice for bowling alleys that I know. So it's not like, a real arcade. Just a bowling alley with arcade game, singular. Wasn't that long ago that a single throwaway cabinet to keep the kids busy was a common sight at pizza places, too.

  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    edited May 30
    Bowling AND arcade games? What sort of fantasy wonderland has bowling AND arcade games?

    Back in the late 80s and early to mid 90s, every bowling alley had between a couple and a handful of arcade cabinets. I played Crazy Taxi at the bowling alley more often than I did at a regular arcade.

    Djiem on
  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    This is one of the classical data biases, but it sure as hell looks to the owners in question like they're about to face a customer exodus.

    Yeah. It's hard enough to keep a bar/restaurant going in any situation. So I can imagine that someone says they're going to make such a fundamental change and you start panicking.

    I'd probably have more sympathy if their status quo wasn't giving their customers cancer.

  • tofurkeyforbigstevetofurkeyforbigsteve Registered User regular
    I recall movie and video game rental stores having arcade games. I maintain that a bowling alley with arcade games is a fantasy wonderland.

  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    edited May 30
    There's nothing for you to "maintain" though, it's empirically true that many bowling alleys had a couple arcade cabinets. We're not making up our lived experiences.

    Djiem on
  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    dennis wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    This is one of the classical data biases, but it sure as hell looks to the owners in question like they're about to face a customer exodus.

    Yeah. It's hard enough to keep a bar/restaurant going in any situation. So I can imagine that someone says they're going to make such a fundamental change and you start panicking.

    I'd probably have more sympathy if their status quo wasn't giving their customers cancer.

    For sure. As a habit that makes you stay in one place, I understand the fear of eliminating smoking in bars. But you'll also get people that don't want to smell like smoke, families, etc.

    And the cleaning thing mentioned earlier is a huge improvement. Butts, ashtrays, the disgusting tar on everything, all gone into the the street now ..

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    Djiem wrote: »
    There's nothing for you to "maintain" though, it's empirically true that many bowling alleys had a couple arcade cabinets. We're not making up our lived experiences.

    I think the poster isn't saying it's a made up place, but a wonderful awesome place.

  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    I didn't spend a lot of times in bowling alleys as a kid, but I did end up in roller rinks and Cici's Pizza quite often, and if those places can get some arcade games going I don't see why a bowling alley couldn't.

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  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    I'd like to note that no one seems concerned about the hair guy.

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    I'd like to note that no one seems concerned about the hair guy.

    If those guys get banned the bars will definitely go out of business.

  • jberryjberry longtime reader firsttime poster Fort Smith Ark USARegistered User regular
    a drunk guy who liked to touch my hair
    bad part of childhood

    sexual predators were foiled by my loud screams fast legs and deft wits

    others do not escape

    i made my own way in life
    the idea if i can do it anyone can do it is false

    they ought to have to work as i did
    the idea i did it thus others should do it is sadistic

  • GilgaronGilgaron Registered User regular
    I remember when we were so excited when the smoking bans went into place. Some of my drinking buddies even smoked (outside and under the suspicious auspice that if you were drunk you couldn't get addicted to nicotene?) but we were so tired of our favorite dive bars getting literally painful to our eyes and lungs to hang out in after 1130 or so.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    I worked in a hotel bar when indoor smoking got banned in the UK

    It was a glorious time

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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