32 minutes ago, TH3BUDDHA said:

 

https://nypost.com/2019/09/25/vacant-retail-space-has-doubled-in-nyc-over-ten-years/

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/new-york-city-shows-future-american-retail/577114/

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-york-retail-vacancy/572911/

 

It took me about .5 seconds to find articles about Manhattan’s failing retail with countless more.  Look, I’m not even trying to prove you wrong.  I was just saying it’s weird how you just seemingly make up stats and then just say them as truth.  Nothing more.  If you’re gonna try telling me that “all Cincinattians make their beds more” or “all nerds drink less alcohol and avoid cities,” I’m sorry, but I’m gonna question it.

 

 

 

 

Do you think that it might mean something that a city like Lancaster with 40K people has the almost the same number of independent game stores as one with 8.5 million even when controlling for rent costs and extraneous square footage? 

Also, the NYC only having four game stores thing has been true for at least 10 years if not 15. Back then Columbus had even more of these stores, at least 25. You still had Yo Games at Kenny and Henderson, a 3rd one in Grove City, the little computer store next to Micro Center, Games Underground in Grandview, various ones that came and went on campus, plus Magnolia still doing games at the time, two more on the west side, one in Circleville, the one on Sawmill that closed and a couple others that I'm forgetting.

Edited February 27, 20205 yr by GCrites80s

7 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

That may partially explain the Columbus example, but it does nothing for the NYC example considering NYC is a shopping mecca. And there are some cities that are popular with nerds such as Seattle and San Francisco (also Austin to some degree) -- of course the employers in those cities are very tech-centric.

 

The answer for game stores is simple, people there are way more likely to buy digital stuff online.

16 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

 

The information was from a link I can't recall now, but basically the gist of it was "The things that people normally associate with bedbugs, like people 'living dirty' aren't the causes of them at all but rather things like putting backpacks and luggage on your bed and making it every day gives them an opportunity to breed and move around" It's also why hotels have bedbug problems.

 

That does make sense. 

4 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

The answer for game stores is simple, people there are way more likely to buy digital stuff online.

 

Absolutely. But I'm controlling for time frames. More stores were around in 2000s Columbus for sure than today.

10 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

 

Do you think that it might mean something that a city like Lancaster with 40K people has the almost the same number of independent game stores as one with 8.5 million even when controlling for rent costs and extraneous square footage? 

I don't think anything.  Like I said, I'm not trying to make any claim or prove you wrong.  I was just commenting on the fact that you make demographic claims and back then back them up by saying you "feel" a certain way.  This is a pretty data oriented forum where people like to discuss things about population trends, and if you make a claim about demographics, people are probably going to ask you to support it.  I don't think that some game stores closing downtown supports "50 percent of millenials identify as nerds and nerds consume less alcohol and avoid downtown."  So, I just don't think that means much to a conversation about millenial trends just like I didn't think "Cincinattians make their beds more than other cities" meant much to bed bug trends in cities because I definitely don't think there is anything to back that up.  We'll just have to agree to disagree.  I never really intended for this to be so serious and was mainly just making a joke.

johnoh81 has tons of numbers to back up everything he says, and a fantastic website chock full of Columbus data and people still jump on him all the time (usually unfairly).

 

while we're being pedantic... it's spelled "Cincinnati"

Edited February 27, 20205 yr by GCrites80s

GCrites, BUDDHA: Take it to PM if you really want to continue this further.

I think "unsubstantiated claims"/anecdotes/musings are fine for urban bar chit chatting. I have higher standards for the other forums.

23 minutes ago, Cavalier Attitude said:

I think "unsubstantiated claims"/anecdotes/musings are fine for urban bar chit chatting. I have higher standards for the other forums.

 

True, but we still like to have some semblance of topicality even in Urbanbar "chit chat" threads.  (We did let this one go on a while even after it was devolving into just a two-person horns-locking match.)

16 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Why does suburban Columbus have 18 independent video game stores while interior Columbus only 4? Why does NYC only have 4 of them to Lancaster's 3?

 

This is easy to answer. These types of stores are low-margin and tend to locate where rent is cheap. 

 

The town I grew up in has 1,700 people and 10 hair salons. That's one hair salon for every 170 people. NYC has about 2,100 hair salons, or one for every 4,100 people. 

 

Now, is it logical to say that this is proof that people in the town I grew up in get their hair done 24 times more than people in NYC? Of course not. We all know that's silly. 

 

BUT rent is a heck of a lot cheaper in my hometown and there's not a lot of demand for higher end retail. The same can be said of Lancaster, OH and suburbs outside the urban core of Columbus.

Then you would also want to know if the salons in NYC averaged more chairs and/or had longer hours to compensate for the higher rent and higher population per location.

Oh and of course, the price of the services at the salon. Price is variable by location with services but you don't get to charge that much more for hard goods such as video games, Magic cards etc. in once place vs. the other.

2 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Then you would also want to know if the salons in NYC averaged more chairs and/or had longer hours to compensate for the higher rent and higher population per location.

 

Right. But this applies to any business. Which again, makes my point. You cannot draw any conclusions about where so-called "nerds" live (we still haven't really defined that) based on number of video game stores. There are a million variables at play. No one is saying you're wrong, we're just interested in the evidence and it doesn't seem like you have any. 

Edited February 27, 20205 yr by DEPACincy

It appears this hasn't been as well-studied as I expected, as far as publicly-available materials go. I feel that internal studies made by marketing people and used at companies would back me up on my assertions though. Maybe not to the 1% level, but in the spirit of them.

5 hours ago, Gramarye said:

GCrites, BUDDHA: Take it to PM if you really want to continue this further.

It's TH3 BUDDHA. (sorry, as an OSU alum, I had to)

16 hours ago, TH3BUDDHA said:

It's TH3 BUDDHA. (sorry, as an OSU alum, I had to)

 

54D 7R0MB0N3.

Millennials are killing design trends:

 

The Tyranny of Terrazzo

Will the millennial aesthetic ever end?

 

[...] All that pink. All those plants. All that white. It’s so clean! Everything’s fun, but not too much fun. And there, in the round mirror above the couch: It’s you. You know where you are. Or do you? [...]

 

More below:

https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/will-the-millennial-aesthetic-ever-end.html#_ga=2.230814559.1393447940.1583672298-783319526.1583672298

^ Hahahaha. My gf is an artist, and a millennial....and I'll be damned if that's not her exact same aesthetic. 

I actually have a lot of thoughts on that article/aesthetic:

 

In the '70s, '80s and '90s there was this insult that was quite prolific: "Generic." You still hear it a bit now, usually applied to low-quality real estate developments or something that is intentionally trying to maintain a low profile. But back then the term "generic" hit with the force of a sledgehammer. In a much more classist time such as the late 20th century (especially the '80s), people of even moderate means did not want to be seen with the cheap version of something, no matter if it was a car, apparel, home goods, food, drink. The packaging and marketing of "Normal" things looked vastly different than cheap things such as store brands and generic products. "Normal" things used things like handmade art, photographs, logotypes and a wide palette of colors. Cheap things featured fonts and solid themes usually dominated by a single color, especially white. This started to change during the late '80s.

 

One example of this change was the 3rd generation Camaro. Debuting in 1982, the top model of this line for '82 was the Z28 with engines ranging from 150-175 horsepower and fairly narrow tires for a performance car. The visual flair was massive though, with the top paint job being a 2-3 tone one with three additional saturated colors separating them. And the top interiors (the Lear Siegler versions) were four-tone with black accents. By the late '80s, though a 240hp engine was available in the now top-of-the line IROC-Z with much wider tires and stiffer suspension. All paint was monochromatic and interiors were also. The most desired colors were usually white and black. This car was taken far more seriously than the '82 Z28 as we headed into the dead-serious '90s.

 

Going back to the study of ordinary consumer products and home interior aesthetics of the age bracket being studied, we can see a stark difference between the consumer world and everyday visual media consumption during the upbringing of Xers and early Millennials versus the mid-late Millennials. The ones born after 1986-7 had little to no exposure to the "generic" aesthetic of the previous years. The totally generic products -- the ones that just said "Beer" "Potato Chips" "Chocolate Chip Cookies" etc. with black text on a plain white background were off the market. Store brands began using package design nearly on par with the name brands. And in advertising, the use of computer based design put everyone on a level playing field. '90s musical acts started dressing in all black, wearing plainclothes or sported their own merch in videos. The flashy outfits of the '60s-'80s were gone. People are less classist and shopping at the thrift store is now cooler than going to the mall.

 

What this did is make the later Millennials less resistant to plain-looking things, fonts or things that look like they could be made in MS-Paint by anyone with any college degree. But I don't think it's going to last long. Other articles on this topic (written by young people) bemoan this phenomenon and and question the longevity of this "fad" which has been going on since the late 2000s at least. More and more things are turning up in the New Retro Wave look with a long nod to the full color '80s-mid '90s design cues, but even that is ripe for replacement; that look has been with us since 2012.

I don't think the impact of vector graphics can be underestimated.  It made it *so* easy to do clean, "Swedish"-type design (and by Swedish we of course mean Sweden-by-way-of-Germany).  Also, thanks to phones and tablets, we now view nearly all images backlit rather than in reflected light, as was the case with books, magazines, and printed photographs. 

 

In the past, an illuminated image was relatively rare.  We used to watch old 16mm films in class and look at Kodachrome slides.  But TV's were dull compared to those, and most of the mediated world was reflected light.  

 

Today is completely different.  I think young people have a hard time reading printed media or paying any attention to a printed photograph. 

 

I don't think that young people are confused by old printed media (including photographs) as much as it simply has no impact.  So hundreds of years of evolution in the typed English language and the printed image of the English-speaking world have been declared null and void and we've had a hard restart.   

 

Young people are trying to make interior design look like it's a screen.  I think the experience of the physical world, as it actually exists, now has a hard divide centered around people who are currently 30-40 years old.  Those older than 40 still see the physical world to some extent the same way that it was seen pre-screen.  Those under 30 know nothing but going back and forth between real world and illuminated screen hundreds of time per day, and prefer the screen. 

My daughter's mom was X-millenial cusp, and she had Ardyn a little older than the norm.   So my kid is right in the middle of the millenials-kids generation.

 

She's very much into glitter and bright colors in most circumstances.   But we just went car shopping and she was very picky, finally informing me that the only acceptable colors were black, white, or grey.   Not even silver was okay.

She definitely prefers screens though.   I'm a convert despite being having always been a bibliophile.   Screens allow one to adjust font size and read in low light.

Edited March 9, 20205 yr by E Rocc

15 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

What this did is make the later Millennials less resistant to plain-looking things, fonts or things that look like they could be made in MS-Paint by anyone with any college degree. But I don't think it's going to last long.

 

The shift away from patterns/textures and towards very simple, clean designs has been happening for a long time. It's hard to believe, but it has already been 13 years since Coke dropped all of the gradients, swirls, shadows, and water droplets from their packaging and moved to the ultra-simple white-logo-on-red-can design that is basically still used today. Apple did something similar in 2013 when they dropped all of the "skeuomorphism" from iOS, moving to a very flat design with very little textures and shadows, and most other tech companies have followed suit. I do see an increasing amount of architecture and fashion that are slightly pushing back and adding more bold patterns (Bonobos comes to mind), but it's still in a "Millennial" way with very "curated" color pallets and imagery. I don't think Millennials are going to be wearing Tommy Bahama stuff anytime soon unless it's done ironically.