Jupiterian Local
Huh, not sure how I feel about that. I'm honestly not much fussed about the animal rights aspect — obviously the animals should be treated well, but I don't think there's anything inherently inhumane about performing elephants. I wonder what the real cause behind their going out of business is. I certainly don't think it's a lack of demand — entertainment is always in demand, and live shows like the circus can't be replaced by digital media or the internet. Seems likely it was either mismanagement or else something on the back end changing that dramatically raised their operating costs (or a combination of both). I'd be interested to hear the story there.
Still, it's a bit sad. Ringling Bros has been an icon for a century — they were basically synonymous with "the circus", and I don't even know if there are any other circus companies still performing. If there are, they certainly aren't as large or have as long a history. I think people are going to miss them when they're gone, even if they weren't interested enough to actually attend performances when they were still around.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
They didn't update their model. <shrugs> When it comes to travelling circuses and shows, you have at least three distinct types which often overlap; 1) games- or kiosk-oriented, 2) "see the exotic critter and the weird" and 3) "see the tumblers; laugh/ get weirded out by the clowns" (be careful about the ratio of entertainment-to-weird mix).
They stuck to a predominance of #1 and#2 in a day and age where #2's increasingly cultural suicide. The Cirque du Soleille can be just as exploitative, but it plugs right into #3 via the huge commedia dell arte back catalogue combined with modern fitness and sports sciences regimes. For now, that's the aspect that gets the big bucks, but B&B either refused to or couldn't culturally shift to a theatrically panto-esque model of the circus arts. <shrugs>
Film and TV cut right into the "see the weird". Video games murder "try your hand". But, "ooooo at the stuff only gymnasts and performers with years of experience can do, with pyrometrics, choreography and very good lighting and sound technicians"? Open for business. 
Give it 75 years: the scene will have changed, again. 
edited 15th Jan '17 10:13:21 AM by Euodiachloris
Barnum and Bailey have always been primarily about animal acts, or at least that's how they've historically presented themselves. They probably ought to have taken a season or so off and worked on rebranding themselves, coming back with a big marketing push. I'd vote for mismanagement, probably coupled with some level of owner apathy. They probably weren't turning enough of a profit to make it worth the owner's wile.
That does make me wonder what travelling circuses (or circuses of any kind) still exist in the US. Does the Shrine Circus (you know, the circus sponsored by the Shriners) still exist? There's one I think is called the Soul Circus (made up of African-American performers) as well. I know there are circus-like shows in Las Vegas, but they obviously aren't of the travelling variety.
edited 15th Jan '17 11:56:24 AM by Robbery
Cirque De Soliel is solely the performing kind, and it travels all over the world. And yeah, the Shriners still exist. There's lots of smaller circuses that still exist in the world, they just don't get much air time on tv.
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
How Boba Became an Integral Part of Asian-American Culture in Los Angeles
In the late '90s, the first dedicated boba tea shop in Los Angeles County opened inside a food court in Arcadia, and by the early 2000s, a slew of shops dedicated to the beverage had opened. Ten Ren, Quickly, Tapioca Express and Lollicup — all owned by immigrants of Taiwanese descent — were among some of the first businesses. They concentrated themselves in the San Gabriel Valley, where there was, and still is, a significant Taiwanese and Chinese community.
Today nearly every block in the valley has a boba shop. “There are five boba shops around me,” says Elton Keung, the owner of Labobatory on Las Tunas Drive in San Gabriel. “They should call this boba block or something.”
Surprisingly, business is not slow. After all, boba is to the youth here as coffee is to the rest of Los Angeles.
“My mom always told me that coffee is not good for you, drink boba instead,” says 20-year-old Pasadena City College student May Van, who has spent her entire life in the San Gabriel Valley.
Invented in the 1980s in Taiwan, the word "boba" refers to the thick black chewy bits nestled at the bottom of a cold, usually milky drink. They are made with sugar and tapioca flour. Tapioca, which is derived from cassava root, is native to South America but was brought over to Taiwan by the Portuguese. It was traditionally served as a sweet gelatinous dessert. One day, someone decided to put it in their tea, and the rest is history.
The exact tea shop of origin is contentious. Some say Chun Shui Tang Teahouse in central Taiwan was the progenitor. Others are confident that title belongs to Hanlin Tea Room in southern Taiwan.
“When I was young in Taiwan, the drink just had small white tapioca balls. We called it pearls, not boba,” my mom, who grew up in southern Taiwan says. It wasn’t until they changed it to the black balls that we know today that the word boba came into play.
“Boba was slang used to describe women with large breasts,” she explains. “When we were in college and first heard the word, we were embarrassed about it.”
Today, that lewd association has more or less faded. The term boba now exclusively refers to the tapioca we all know and love. It’s cooked in sweet syrup and put in a cup of of cold tea, sugar, and non-dairy creamer (the latter is an industry standard, given that most East Asians are lactose intolerant).
From Taiwan, the boba beverage spread to the Taiwanese enclaves in North America. Boba tea became the de facto terminology in California. Elsewhere, like in Vancouver and New York, the term bubble tea is norm.
As a Taiwanese-American kid growing up in the early 2000s in the San Gabriel Valley, the concoction was an integral part of my social life. We, after all, were the first boba generation.
The beverage became a defining symbol of the SGV, and we cheered, in the form of millions of views, when brothers David and Andrew Fung released a 2012 music video titled Boba Life, perfectly capturing a cross-section of our culture that the mainstream has always ignored.
To put it into context: My high school, Arcadia High School, was more than 80% Asian and nearly all my friends had similar papers: We were children of Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants who made the occasional trip to the ancestral motherland.
As food-obsessed as our subculture is, it wasn’t so much the drink or the tapioca balls that defined our preference for a particular boba store. After all, most of the boba shops have the same distributors. They mostly source their teas from either Tea Ren or Lollicup. Almost all tapioca balls come from Lollicup, which has a giant factory and boba school in Chino.
What mattered was the space and the permanence of the shops.
When I was 22, the guy I was dating took me to Factory Tea Bar, a boba shop in San Gabriel known for its sultry lighting, floor-to-ceiling chalkboard, and low tables. He picked up the communal guitar in the corner and crooned Foo Fighter’s Everlong to me, a honey black tea with boba for me on the side and a passion fruit tea for him. Years later, after we had broken up and the dust had cleared, we had gone back to that same spot and ordered the same drinks. Both the guitar and the feelings were gone, but that boba shop was still there.
Things weren’t always that classy.
In the 2000s, the shops that sold boba had ear-marked board games in the corner, IKEA sofas with crumbs all over, and Asian pop music crooning in the background. Yet we chose these places as our sacred gathering grounds after our long SAT-prep tutoring classes. It was a place where we could grab parental-approved beverages and hang out with our friends during the weekends. It was a place to cram for our important tests, and a spot for dates and for heartbreaks.
Quality didn’t vary as much (it still doesn’t) and we didn’t have as many options either. In Arcadia, it was Tapioca Express with its grab-and-go counter; Quickly, with its cheap Taiwanese lunch specials; AU 79, which was pricier but had, in my opinion, better drinks.
AU 79, for the record, remains my favorite shop of all time. Boba loyalty runs deep.
Eventually, the options began expanding: Honey Boba with its fat boba cups, Half and Half for their cloyingly sweet options, etc, etc.
You could tell what kind of person you were by the type of boba shop you frequented. Back then, if you were cheap, you probably went to Tapioca Express. If you were pretentious about your drink quality, AU 79 was the place. If you wanted to rub elbows with fashionable fresh-from-Taiwan crowd, Half and Half was your best bet.
Note that this is a subculture that’s unique to the States, and strongest in Los Angeles. Sure, the Bay Area might have a decent boba scene by now, but their crowd was heavily influenced by Los Angeles transplants and entrepreneurs.
Yes, boba culture is even stronger in Los Angeles than Taiwan. In Taiwan, while boba shops are still a mainstay, there are few sit-down places dedicated to the drink. In terms of spots catering to the younger generation, Taipei boasts more coffee joints than tea.
This is not true of the San Gabriel Valley.
Boba shops are more alive than ever and if you happen to stroll into one on a Friday evening, the numbers would rival that of a downtown bar, except with tea instead of booze and high school sweatshirts instead of a proper coat. Quality has improved significantly from the '90s and there's more competition than before. Folks are getting creative.
Keung of Labobatory says he sets himself apart with ingredient-minded drinks. For example, real fruit chunks instead of fruit syrup. It makes a big difference, he notes, especially in a space where everyone is selling virtually the same products.
Though I still live in Arcadia, I can barely keep up. The scene, after all, belongs to the younger kids, those who go to school here and don’t necessarily have that option to drive out for craft coffee downtown or sip farm-to-table cocktails.
The truth is, at a certain point, you graduate from boba life.
Your friends no longer debate the merits of a good cup because you realize it’s all the same. You begin to have more beverage options. That one old friend of yours gives up on quantifying boba shops with his spreadsheet of who serves the best boba and at what time. He is now a neurosurgeon and has better things to do.
But while boba may no longer be a daily part of your life, it’s still a part of you because it is the backdrop in where you meet up with your childhood friends. In your teens, it was daily. Then in college, monthly. Now it’s annually, if you’re lucky.
No matter where you are in the world, eventually you will come back home to visit.
I can’t wait for that moment when one day, my generation is gray, and we all come back to our respective, favorite boba shops. A cup in hand, we will begin telling the story of our lives and how this was where it all started.
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
...Not gonna lie, I thought that was about Boba Fett at first.
I feel silly...
Oh God! Natural light!
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
That makes two of us, then.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
B & B should have created a theme park, with an animal sanctuary next door.
Theme parks and animal sanctuaries are expensive as hell to run, dude. AND there's no guarantee that such a theme park would have been successful enough to save it. (They also take a hell of a long time to build.)
Sad fact is, closing down is just going to mean no way to provide for those animals, anyway.
Charities will have to be set up. :/ That, or a lot of euthanasia. Which costs, too. <_<
Which is a pity when it comes to the endangered species: there's little space in the wild for the few who could adapt. -_-
edited 18th Jan '17 7:58:24 AM by Euodiachloris
Yeah, I was going to say, however expensive it might have been, it would have a better chance to make money than closing down completely.
rollin' on dubs
@Age of Consent laws: I'm surprise nobody remembered US Romeo and Juliet laws. To wit - if an 18 year old is in relations with a 16-17 year old the law bends a little to make it a less harsh (e.g. probation and conviction of a misdemeanor instead of a felony). A lot of DA's will look at cases where the couple is close in age and just tell them to cut it out. Now if the age difference is large (a famous case where an 18 year old high school student had relations with a 14 year old freshman), yeah the DA will throw the book at'em. In Texas, an age difference less than 3 years can be used as a defense (along with some other conditions).
Yes a lot of District Attorneys are elected but many are also appointed. We've just come off that "zero tolerance" fad and many DA's would rather the families sort it out if the age difference is less than 3 years.
The problem is that many laws are written- Exact Words - to have the parties be "male" and "female". Guess that happens when the two lovebirds in the courtroom are LGBT. Yeah, DA's become a Blood Knight where they would otherwise let two opposite sex cis-gender teens off the hook or plea bargin. We're getting better, but states like Texas still allow this legal gay bashing.
Until someone takes the law to the Supreme Court that is...
@Ringling Brothers - meh I don't care. The circus is an anachronism. Back in the 20th century most Americans rarely saw animals like lions, tigers and elephants outside of zoos and the circus. And people didn't care that animals were mistreated.
America has run out of pop-cultural monocles to pop -wanna see an elephant or a lion? Google it. Wanna see feats of strenght? Youtube.
Now CNN has an article that talks about how many circuses are getting smaller but more in touch with the culture.
The massive circus is a thing of the past. I feel bad for the performers who lost their jobs. But even Vaudeville had to end.
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Close-in-age/"Romeo and Juliet" laws were indeed mentioned multiple times in the age of consent discussion, I personally posted about them twice on the previous page. I even already brought up the bit about discrimination in said laws against same-sex couples.
edited 18th Jan '17 10:41:58 PM by Sixthhokage1
Well, these laws were mentioned but they apparently aren't as widespread as one would assume from how high some US AOCs are.
The thing about homophobia in enforcing them is something I know. When I was mentioning Florida I was thinking of some cases where such homophobia was at play. Although if memory serves, Florida like California does not have any closed in age exemption.
Also, further on Sixthhokage's point some courts have been striking down homophobic rules. Kansas was told a while ago that they can't have an exemption apply solely for opposite-sex couples.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
rollin' on dubs
Okay then
X-posting from the LEO thread:
Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime
Prosecutors in general are a weak link in the US judicial process.
Well, if your point was that AOC laws in the US are poorly written, I fully agree. California's law strikes me as especially questionable, combining two extremes that I don't like. A while ago Le Garcon and Native Jovian said that enforcement practice is considerably more nuanced and thus not as bad, though.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
A new topic from me, if folks are interested.
So I've been reading up on water politics in the southwest US recently, and one think I've seen are proposals to bring water from the Great Lakes, the Columbia River or Alaska down there (either to California or to the Colorado river). For example here, on Reddit and this website by what seem to be Trump supporters. Ignoring for a moment that that specific proposal is nonsense from a geological and engineering perspective, it seems that there has been some serious discussion on this issue (page #14). I wonder what the feasibility of the overall concept would be.
A modern canal system... in some of the most mountainous terrain anybody could be cursed with? Never going to happen without losing a shit-ton of water along every mile. :/ Even trying to lay pipework... nah.
edited 4th Feb '17 7:27:52 AM by Euodiachloris
And politically, the Great Lakes states would never agree.
Aye, water disputes in the western US are hard fought things - some choice words I've seen is "greedy spouses in a messy divorce" (referring to the states in the Colorado River compact) and of course the "California Water Wars" between Los Angeles and the Owens Valley. Moreover, I wonder if pumping water from such large distances requires more or less power than desalinating the same amount of water.
Incidentally, Euodiachloris, there are lots of pipework and canals in the mountains there such as the Colorado River Aqueduct between Los Angeles and Lake Havasu on the Colorado and the California Aqueduct between San Francisco's area and Los Angeles. They all involve open channels, piping and pumping and are also highly earthquake prone, but I don't think that leakage is a common issue.
rollin' on dubs
The problem is the landowners along the pipeline right of way. To this day, families fight tooth and nail against property tax increases and highway extensions.
A pipe to give water to the left coast? No way. The feds would get involved, natch, is this is an interstate issue. Eminent domain would have to be used.
Think the DAPL protests were something? This would make DAPL look like a Sunday picnic.
There would be opposition on security grounds as well. How the hell could the states, the Army Corps of Engineers, all the agencies involved and the local governments keep it safe? A construction project that sizes scream "ISIS ATTACK HERE".
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
You know, I did examine whether it'd be geologically possible to make an aqueduct from Silverwood Lake (->the endpoint of the California Aqueduct, in southern California) to Lake Mead (->the reservoir of the Colorado river), for the case that the latter river should dry up. You'd need a hundred or so kilometres of tunnel, at least one pumping station, a few hydropower plants, but you'd avoid habitated areas and it'd be a net energy source. However, it'd be politically impossible, I believe.
I can't help but notice that water aqueducts don't cause the same disputes as oil pipelines do. Prolly because water is a less dangerous cargo and places where water aqueducts are needed tend to have fewer landowners to begin with. And those who do exist anyway may be less likely to complain if you give them a share of the water.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
rollin' on dubs
The problem is the construction and that LA and the left coast wants that water. It would be smart to show that -yes we can share the water divered from the Great Lakes and the rivers. But "smart" and "large construction projects" tend to part company.
If you take a straight line from the water sources to California (or the great circle route) it's impossible to find a route that isn't a farm or small town or protected lands (tribal lands, wildlife refuges, national parks etc).
Any pipeline would take a jinky-janky route around mountains, tribal lands and all those areas off limits to construction. Towns and communities would fight it.
AS the Reddit thread points out - California, hippy eco-friendly Cali, wastes too much water. The drought is part of a cycle that happens (New Mexico and Texas got hit with one in The '90s). The desalination plant would produce more water at less cost than a pipeline would.
edited 4th Feb '17 1:07:57 PM by TairaMai
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Famed circus Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey is shutting down due to poor ticket sales, last show is May 7th.
edited 14th Jan '17 10:12:30 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."