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“I think overall it’s good for business, I really do. It’s those little instances you have that make the weekend look bad.”

Ah, America. The head of the Myrtle Beach Merchants Association, gearing up for this year’s Memorial Day crowd, touches delicately on last year, when “three people died and seven were injured in eight shootings.” And still those little things remain

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Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. The Spinnaker Club in Panama City Beach. These places, and whatever place this year’s melees in Myrtle Beach will choose, are emerging as icons of a peculiar form of capitalism — the form you get when you combine a society of the spectacle with guns and a totally unhinged profit motive.

It’s odd. The rhetoric of these massive motorcycle rallies is one of personal freedom, yet the events instantly turn their locales into police states. Read the details of the security presence and restriction of movement in Myrtle Beach.

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People are starting to notice the same thing at university football games. Because the drunken crowd is so nasty, everyone’s under heavy surveillance.

Margaret Soltan, May 19, 2015 9:03AM
Posted in: guns, sport

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5 Responses to ““I think overall it’s good for business, I really do. It’s those little instances you have that make the weekend look bad.””

  1. Van L. Hayhow Says:

    What a tone-deaf thing to say.

  2. dmf Says:

    sounds like the makings of reality-tv gold…

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    dmf: absolutely.

  4. JND Says:

    “Atlantic Beach Bikefest, which began in 1980 as a rally for black motorcyclists”

    I was at Coastal Carolina in 03-04 and again in 07-08. There was a lot to like there, but the beach ethic was really strong.

    At the time, the Atlantic Beach Bikefest was informally known as Black Bike Week. I don’t know if that moniker is current.

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Yes – that’s the name:

    http://www.blackbikeweek.us/

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