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  • From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Screen, Guns III - Morman Edition
  • Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:21:21 -0400

Wait a minute. I thought the Inc. article specifically said that Bob opened the gun/video shop because he had tried to run the drive-in full-time but wasn't able to make enough to live on during the winter. That says to me that the gun shop is a secondary business that is nonetheless necessary to keep the whole enterprise afloat.

Let's say I'm a freelance writer, but I don't make enough freelancing to pay my mortgage, so I get a dull retail job for 16 hours/week to have a steady second income. Would you say that my freelancing income was "supporting" my retail job, or the other way around?

The word "support" is certainly a funny/slippery thing in this context, but it seems clear to me that if you're running a gun shop in the concession stand of a drive-in, and you've been on record in multiple places as having been a drive-in nut since you were 12 years old, AND that it's sadly not possible for you to make enough $ to live on year-round from the drive-in, then the gun shop that you start as a secondary business to supplement the drive-in could be said to be "supporting" you in your dream of running a drive-in.

Your "which is supporting which" question is the real disingenuous statement here, Duncan. If I were in the freelance/retail situation that I outline above, I would not hesitate to say "the retail job is merely supporting my real love, writing." Wouldn't you? So why are you pretending that it's impossible to reach a similar conclusion about the Starlite?

Ross

Duncan Murrell wrote:

So after all that kvetching and discussion and name-calling of last week, Morman decides Ruby S. hasn't had enough, and so he throws down on her again in his blog today ( www.monkeytime.org), which at least proves he has some faith in the "semaphore-signs-on-mountaintops" method. What's surprising is that he's still criticizing her "because she didn't seem to know that the gun shop supported the drive-in, rather than the other way around." Not only does the Inc. magazine article he links specifically _not_ say that about the relationship between the gun shop and the drive-in, but it's pretty clear from other articles already posted to this group, as well as from the Save Our Starlite website itself, that the drive-in was Mr. Groves' main source of income, and that it carried the business during the months he could operate it full time (most of the year). If one business supports the whole business 9 months of the year, and another one carries the business for three months, which is supporting which? I've been self-employed for two years, and I do a variety of things (different "businesses", you might say) to make a living. All of them support each other, and I'd be in trouble if any one of them failed, whether it's the business that earns me 60% of my income, or the business that earns me 20%. This meme that that the "gun shop supported the drive-in," coupled with a refusal to acknowledge that the drive-in also supported the gun shop, is disingenuous at best.

(I suppose some folks think that a couple of display cases of handguns sitting in the middle of a concrete wasteland in a relatively isolated part of town is a real profit generator, especially with business hours of 5-10 p.m. only. Come on.)

d

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