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  • From: Duncan Murrell <dvmurrell AT nc.rr.com>
  • 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 11:59:47 -0400

You're right that "support" is a slippery word. "Supplement" would be a better one. I'm saying that without the drive-in, Mr. Groves could not run that gun shop as it is now, where it is now. Groves says that all of the businesses drive traffic to each other. Which do you think drives more traffic to which: gun customers who decide to stick around for the movie, or moviegoers who see the display cases and keep it in mind the next time their looking for a 9mm? I'd guess that it's the latter. Without the steady traffic of people coming into the concession stand for munchies, who would know there was a gunshop? But you can't miss the drive-in screen. (Or couldn't, at least.) How many guns would Groves have to sell each month just to pay the property taxes on his 11 acres and cover his inventory costs, if he didn't have income from the drive-in? I'd imagine he'd have to sell a lot more. How much new advertising would he have to buy, now that he didn't have all that walk-in traffic? He doesn't have a prime location for retail. Would he have to take a loan, or sell part of his property, in order to finance an expansion of his business to a size that could support him? And if he had to do all that just because the drive-in was no more, doesn't it follow that the drive-in also supported his gun business?

In your example, could your freelance writer live on the wages of his retail job alone? Or, if his freelance income dried up, would he have to also quit his service job in order to find a better paying gig to cover all his expenses? If it's the latter, then I'd say that the two jobs were mutually supportive. Or mutually supplementary. Whatever.

I'm not pretending that it's impossible to say that the gun shop supports/supplements the drive-in -- of course it does, and Groves says so explicitly. But that wasn't my point at all. I take issue with the idea that the reverse isn't also true, which Groves _does not_ say. (As Todd says, "...rather than the other way around.")The Inc. article (as well as the Triangle Business Journal article, and the Herald-Sun article from July) makes it very clear that all of the businesses are mutually supportive.

My underlying purpose in this is pretty obvious. I get the feeling that people would like to separate their support of the drive-in from their support of the gun shop, and I just think that's impossible. If they have to make that kind of rationalization in order to contribute to Save Our Starlite, I think they're fooling themselves. Why it would matter, I really don't know -- as I've said, if you've already gone to movies at the Starlite, then you've already supported the gun shop.

Anyway, I shouldn't have started this all again. I simply wanted to say that Todd's blog entry was misleading, and since he's made it clear that the proper forum for responding to blogs posts about the Starlite is ch-scene, here I am.

d



On Sep 29, 2004, at 11:21 AM, grady wrote:

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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