Huh. This is a correlation that would never have occurred to me.
Boy, me neither, in no small part because I thought the hookah thing was a flash in the pan that had already fully flashed.
Hookahs aside, there's always a weird dynamic around live music with a cover charge in bar/clubs that don't exist primarily, or on a super predictable schedule, as music venues. It's always a rude surprise when you were planning on going to the place as a bar and discover that it has been transformed into a venue for live music you wouldn't have chosen for yourself. (Though of course sticking around, only to be an asshole about it, is the rudest, and stupidest, of all.)
Also surprising: that Stanley apparently calls bouncers "doormen."
2 is so right. It's really crappy management by the bar owner too, because on one side it indicates that they haven't sufficiently advertised their music nights, so they're missing out on potential audience, and on the other side they're pissing off their regular drinkers. Lose/lose.
Venn diagrams must be one of the most fiendishly clever pedagogical tools ever. They completely dominate the way normal people think about and discuss very simple ideas like set intersection and containment.
It's one thing when you're talking about the marginal slices --- "the intersection of A and B intersected with the complement of C" --- but in this case wouldn't it have been easier to say, "nearly everybody who is an A is also a B" or "A is a subset of B"? Why drag Venn into it?
They do make for good jokes: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1806
3: I mean, there are lots of (most?) venues where somebody is in charge of checking IDs and taking the cover but where it's pretty darn unlikely anybody will have to be removed by force; 'doorman' is a much more descriptive job title.
6: The doorman is a bouncer even if nobody gets physically bounced. Having somebody check ID at the door establishes that force is an option even if unused.
The threat of force is inherent in the system.
6 gets it right. The idea of this scrawny guy bouncing anybody is pretty funny. I'm not sure they've ever had to kick anyone out.
9: checking ID at the door is a licensing requirement at many bars; I don't really think it has to do with projecting force. They just aren't allowed to let people in without checking their ID.
Yeah, I have a category of "guy manning the door" that is definitely not a bouncer, but which somehow I also never would have thought to call "doorman."
13: The doorman works for the liquor control commission tsar.
The guy who checks ID presumably bars entry to those with too obviously forged ID, right? If necessary, physically. While it must be easier to keep someone out than to throw someone out, I don't know that a different term is required.
16: But I'm reasonably sure if Stanley asks this guy if he's free next weekend, his response will be not,
"Can't do it, I'm bouncing," but rather, "I'll be working the door."
I'm pretty sure I've had my ID checked at the door by petite women who got the job because they projected something quite different than the treat of violence. If they weren't checking IDs, they were stamping hands or taking money.
I assume in these situations if some actually had to be barred from entering, they would just call the real bouncers. Sometimes the real bouncers were standing behind them already looking surly, but not actually helping out.
No, usually they use statuesque women for the treat of violence.
19.1: Sex and violence are substitutes as far as entertainment goes.
21: And singing!
Sex scenes, fight scenes, and music scenes play very similar roles in the overall flow of a movie, and you can use similar criteria to evaluate them. Do they show you something about the characters Is it something new, or reinforcing an old theme? Does it advance the plot? Does it work as a stand alone scene? Are the actors doing something extraordinary, or are you just being bamboozled by fancy editing?
I think its a shame that movies are required to specialize in sex scenes, fight scenes or movie scenes. Bollywood is good at mixing singing and fighting, but they won't even let people kiss.
5.3: Unless that comic is suggesting that the only men who will sleep with you are your male friends who joke about having sex with you, then I think it's a good example of how illustrating set theory in Venn Diagram form is more likely to mislead people than enlighten them.
18: Yeah, I haven't heard many people refer to the person checking IDs as a "bouncer" around here. Back at my old job, we had a rotating crew of people working the door, and if we were concerned about rowdiness, we got the guys who could get people headed out with the minimum of fuss. The guy who came closest to being a real bouncer was actually fairly compactly built -- 5' 8", 190 lbs or so. He just had a real knack for knowing how to approach each type of undesirable patron.
Of all the places I go, it's only the diviest dive bar where I'd expect to hear the doorman referred to as a bouncer. That's the place with a whole wall full of notes from the staff about who has been 86'd.
He just had a real knack for knowing how to approach each type of undesirable patron.
Just like dating.
I met a guy who is a former linebacker for a major SEC team, aspiring actor, whose day job is serving as a bouncer on call for various fraternities at USC. This sounds like just about the worst job on the planet -- pulling entitled drunken 19 year olds out of rooms, wading through pools of vomit, etc. Apparently it pays quite well for not that many hours.
Four of my friends, when I was in late teens, worked doors and did festivals as security. I don't think they really had to get heavy very often, although three out of the four could really 'bring it' if they'd had to.* One friend gave it up after a riot at, iirc the 'Phoenix' festival in '95. Not because he got hurt, but because he had to -- on pain of his own severe injury -- hurt others. He was really shaken up by it.
* my mate F once got attacked -- he'd looked at their pint funny, or something -- by a couple of the main guys from the efiF nataS sevalS. So he beat the shit out of them. Two weeks later, the same guys came after him, one of them armed with a chain, and the other,iirc, with a wrench/spanner. So he took the weapons off them, beat one of them up, and hospitalised the other with, iirc, two broken arms. After that they left him.
OT: What do you guys make of this article?
28: Apparently, we can't handle the truth...
Actually, Epstein has long trolled the corridors of conspiracy having got his start with the Kennedy Assassination way, way back in the day. He has been one of the "saner" of that crowd (he wrote a thorough debunking of Stone's JFK for instance) but he is still firmly within that genre. The article is apparently causing a stir in France.