Louis, Louis, LOUIS.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Sunday, July 17th, 2011 11:59am PDT - promote requested by dystopianfuturetoday.

Come on, put them in a playlist instead of spamming part 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3.

*promote because I miss MikesHL13 and I am happy as a calm clam to see her out and about again.

Plus. Louis, ah my Louis.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, July 17th, 2011 6:01pm PDT - promote requested by bareboards2.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Louis, Ck, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbor, loyalty, convenience' to 'Louis Ck, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbor, loyalty, convenience' - edited by xxovercastxx

One of the many reasons a decade ago I moved to the West Coast from the East Coast - fucking chain stores & outlets. God damn that shit. Don't get me wrong all that shit is all around the West Coast too - but it's not as prevalent. I mean, in my neighborhood people fought and won against a fucking American Apparel store going in. People have to wake up and fight back, stop being a bunch of cowards.

There aren't even any Starbucks in my neighborhood but there are tons of great coffee places that sell, really immaculately tasting coffee. To get to a Starbucks you'd have to go far, far away to get to one of those those sellout financial neighborhoods and then there's a Starbucks on ever corner and possibly a couple Starbucks per block. There's only one shitty corporation in this humongous neighborhood and that is a McDonald's. I have no idea how they did it.

It doesn't even make any sense. Yeah, if you want to get fat you could spend $7-8 on a shitty burger and some fries and some shitty sugar water or else you could go to one of the two hundred taquerias where you could get the craziest nachos you've ever seen that you'd be crazy to eat all by yourself for $5.50. And you get chips & salsa for free and dammit people, just drink water. It's also free.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Louis Ck, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbor, loyalty, convenience' to 'Louis Ck, opie and anthony, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbor, loyalty' - edited by xxovercastxx

I agree and disagree with Louis on this.

The supporting the local stores over the small difference in price on goods, but when it comes to the larger chains actually giving you the service you want over the older stores not, then we diverge.

I'm not going to have a worse experience and continue to support a local store purely on the basis of them being a local store, when I could be getting what I want (the latest release movie when I actually want to watch it) from a chain.

Now, the video store is becoming an arcane example, because who the hell actually uses them anymore, but the thought behind it remains. You don't get worse service, lower quality goods, or not the goods you want purely to support a local store.

What local stores have to have is a point of difference, and when he starts talking about book stores, there's a perfect example. The big chain stores have all the 'latest' and 'popular' books, but they don't have a depth of range. Have a store that specializes in a genre (childrens/education, fantasy/sci fi, literature) and then overlay on that a wonderful experience (great feel to the store, reading areas, friendly staff) and you may have to weather an initial drop in sales when the big store comes into town, but I bet it'll come back again when people get over the excitement of the new store and realize that they can't find the books they really want in it. (I know that this 'weathering' time is quite possibly not realistic financially for a lot of stores, and that's a horrible thing).

Supporting a store purely based on it being local is ridiculous. Supporting a store because they provide you with things you can't get at another store (even if that other thing is a 'Hi Bob' when you come into the store) is why you go to shops.

Now, stories like his coffee story make me sad. Because there is a business with a point of difference that didn't make it.

That shits me, people going 'meh, Starbucks is good enough, I'll go there instead of crossing the street'.

Starbucks is shit coffee, they closed most of the stores they opened here in Australia because we like our f*cking coffee (Especially here in Melbourne... man, we sell espresso coffee everywhere, hardware stores, plant nurseries, book shops, clothing stores) and it didn't take that long for most of the Starbucks to close up and die because people realised their coffee was shit. So having a good coffee place closed down by Starbucks definitely speaks to me of consumers who are dumbass shits who will just put up with any old crap over quality just to save a few cents or avoid crossing a street.

Well, fuck them, they deserve the shit they get.

Louis has a rose-tinted view of independent bookstore customer service, here. Hell, Amazon gives me more personal recommendations based on the stuff I like and look at.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Louis Ck, opie and anthony, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbor, loyalty' to 'Louis Ck, opie and anthony, consumers, capitalism, Walmart, neighbour, loyalty' - edited by BoneRemake

I mean I don't really give a shit about bookstores or video stores. I watch most film off of StageVu, so I'm a damn hypocrite. But, if I do get the courage to go into the local video store they have an immense amount of film and it's run by a guy who played in that legendary band Jawbreaker. It's always an amazing time browsing their art film, criterion collection and horrid hard-to-find 80's films. I think I've gone into City Lights once or twice. Seen it, been there, done that. I think I bought an Arthur Rimbaud book from the Beat section, haha. And that is pretty much the only book I will ever need again.

I definitely try to buy local, it's much more difficult in smaller towns where the chains already have a chain around the local economies necks. I try to buy from small local grocers, farmer's markets or the co-op. I like the idea of the co-op but truthfully they are really much more expensive. But their workers get huge bonuses at the end of the year $30k+ and they don't have asshole managers). Sometimes I mess up and end up going into Trader Joe's (TWO BUCK CHUCK!!!) but I definitely won't support Safeway and all of their shit biotech-foods.

I definitely think changing America's mind on where they buy their goods from would have an immense impact on the country for the better. The less oil on your food the better. Starting a co-op is a great way to take power back locally and empower local farmers - though, like I said the consumer ends up paying a bit more for food (albeit, really good food).

Interesting concept. I think the internet will save us, though. His point about music is wrong, for starters. I'm sure there were awesome alt-music stores back in the day, but the net has allowed me to broaden my music tastes exponentially. Largely through illegal downloads, admittedly. We used to have to pay through the fucking nose for a cd here in Oz. You had to wait forever to listen to anything at the stores, so you'd often just hit and hope. The kids of today have the whole world of music to access online - I'm jealous of their opportunity. He paints a picture of a youth that doesn't use that opportunity, and I'm not sure I agree from what I've seen.

I take his point about the social dislocation of modern society, though. I bought a house recently, and when I need a tradie I just find one online, regardless of where he's from (ie, not necessarily local). If I need help on the house I get my family from around the country to come visit - I don't really know anyone around well enough to ask for a hand. I'd like to be more engaged with my local community, and maybe the lack of local businesses I use is part of that. I'm not sure what the world really looked like that Louis was describing.

I agree. Wait? We weren't talking about crotch-less panties?

*nsfw

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by brycewi19.

Jeggings?>> ^Lawdeedaw:

I agree. Wait? We weren't talking about crotch-less panties?

@shagen454
i dont know where you were on the east coast but when i lived in brooklyn, walmart was trying to get in and the community came out everytime to protest.outback made it in and closed within a year because NO ONE went out to eat there.
i loved that about brooklyn.
you didnt go to some chain supermarket for your meats,you went to frank and sals.
you got the best bagels from the corner bakery (forgot the name) or if you wanted homemade tiramsau at 4am you headed to ferreros.
all family run businesses spent the money they made right back in to the community,unlike a corporate chain.

and for those talking about corporations and how great their service is?
pffft (fart noise)
heres a story for you kids concerning the altruism of corporations:
in the 90's there were hundreds of family produce businesses catering to local resturaunts.
nobody would buy from sysco(one the largest rest. supplier).so sysco got together with such companies as allied and usfoods and they literally cut their produce by half.
they sandbagged every family operation.
so when you had the price of a case of lettuce at 10-12 bucks from the family,sysco could get it for you for 6-7 bucks.
that was too sweet a deal for the local eateries and within a year those family businesses were DONE.
and lo and behold that 12$ case of lettuce jumped to 35$ when those families were no longer in the competition.
which of course affected everything from prices to quality.
the corporation has the resources and political might to crush any family run business which leaves us all with the tired vanilla cookie cutter sameness and a lame landscape of chain stores and strip malls.an un-originality that drains the soul and sucks all the color out of any kind of uniqueness that once was the family run business.
most people dont even notice until they find their neighborhood unrecognizable.
people never notice until it directly affects them and THEIR tiny little bubble of existence and THEN it becomes a federal case of persecution.

cry me a river you self-centered twat.

"i dont know where you were on the east coast but when i lived in brooklyn, walmart was trying to get in and the community came out everytime to protest."

I used to live in PA. It was chain stores and outlets for hundreds of miles to Pittsburgh, to Philly, to Baltimore, to New Jersey. I remember my parents loved it. They used to take me to SAMs, one of those Costco-esque places and the immense size of those places used to almost give me a panic attack, as I would repeat in my head "this is what is wrong with world". Even creepier when they pretty much got rid of cashiers. I mean even if I had enough money to buy shitloads of stuff - I wouldn't even have enough space to put away the sort of things you could buy at a place like that. I've only room for like 4 boxes of cereal of hopefully different varieties.