captive markets & their effect on dirt-poor students:
being "the largest city in atlantic canada" (i'm quoting from some guidebook here), halifax is the closest thing to urban for the next several provinces around, & as such is pretty fuckin' isolated from real cities like, oh say, toronto. this means that the local Purveyors of Culture can & do mark up prices to as high as possible without losing too much business... second-hand cds here sell for an average of 12 bucks each whereas back in toronto 10 dollars-or-less is the norm; it's not like the artist is getting paid for their work, so why the hell won't you sell it for less? it's not like you've got no customers... you've got all the customers you could ever need 'cause there's like 5 used-music stores in the whole of halifax & they've got nowhere else to go except to your crampedcrappysmalldusty stores where pop compilations from 5 years ago are the best sellers... your neon signs only serve to make you look pathetic.
i miss my weekly digging-around in sonic boom's 'new arrivals' tables so bad it isn't funny. strange that i miss the City more than i miss my family, but i've never really liked humanity per se. some small (very small) portion of humanity i find tolerable/admirable, but the rest? why, they can go fuck their plugged-in toasters in the shower for all i care.
i'm almost certain that i've bitched about this before, but stuff -- any-/everything -- is hard to find here. one has to Know Beforehand which stores one wants to go to & then one has to fucking COMMUTE there; it's a 40 minute bus ride to the nearest sears.
i paid 5 fuckin' dollars for a tiny roll of copper wire at a beading-supplies store because i don't have the time to take the bus to whichever hardware store it is they're selling it at prices that aren't grossly inflated to reflect 'supply and demand.' back home there were several places within walking distance where i could get spools of the stuff cheap-as-hell. all i can say is that i'm glad i'm taking art because most art supplies are small & therefore eminently shopliftable. (i mean, would you pay 30 bucks for a friggin' paintbrush if the money could be better put towards drowning your sorrows in pints of guinness?)
& they say big cities -- Real Cities -- are the expensive places to live in!
i might be happy enough to fellate a nyc subway pole when i get there.
i miss my weekly digging-around in sonic boom's 'new arrivals' tables so bad it isn't funny. strange that i miss the City more than i miss my family, but i've never really liked humanity per se. some small (very small) portion of humanity i find tolerable/admirable, but the rest? why, they can go fuck their plugged-in toasters in the shower for all i care.
i'm almost certain that i've bitched about this before, but stuff -- any-/everything -- is hard to find here. one has to Know Beforehand which stores one wants to go to & then one has to fucking COMMUTE there; it's a 40 minute bus ride to the nearest sears.
i paid 5 fuckin' dollars for a tiny roll of copper wire at a beading-supplies store because i don't have the time to take the bus to whichever hardware store it is they're selling it at prices that aren't grossly inflated to reflect 'supply and demand.' back home there were several places within walking distance where i could get spools of the stuff cheap-as-hell. all i can say is that i'm glad i'm taking art because most art supplies are small & therefore eminently shopliftable. (i mean, would you pay 30 bucks for a friggin' paintbrush if the money could be better put towards drowning your sorrows in pints of guinness?)
& they say big cities -- Real Cities -- are the expensive places to live in!
i might be happy enough to fellate a nyc subway pole when i get there.
posted by malachi trizec @ 4:39 p.m.
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