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OrtizDupri t1_jea7y8p wrote

Reply to comment by ttd_76 in Mill on MacArthur shoutout on r/mildlyinfuriating by hornhead71

$9.50 is not “higher end” prices

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ttd_76 t1_jeahfub wrote

You're having a bit of an avocado toast moment. A bag of frozen fries at the store is what-- like $1.25 a lb?

If a school cafeteria were serving $9.50 fries with cheese, bacon, and gravy we would all be throwing a fit that they are serving unaffordable and unhealthy food.

You are paying extra money for your fries to be extra fucking tasty and unhealthy, and not have to do the work of cooking bacon and gravy and cleaning all of that up, so you can sit down and enjoy life and friends for an hour or so.

That is not corporations driving up the prices of inputs. That's demand from people who have both the money and time to savor a nice, long, relaxing, extra tasty meal and maybe some Mimosas. The Mill is filling that demand.

It's not like The Mill is ripping people off. If you want a fine French Fry experience while hopefully also paying their staff living wage, it's gonna cost an amount of money that only the relatively wealthy can afford.

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OrtizDupri t1_jeahubs wrote

?

I mean I'm not a loaded fries person, but $9.50 is about what I would expect to pay at literally any bar or diner in most of the country for loaded fries. Bowlero, a bowling alley, charges like $15 for the same thing.

It's not high end.

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ttd_76 t1_jeavqk1 wrote

Yeah, but Bowlero is kind of the same thing. At Bowlero you are also paying for the bowling, and the disco lights, and the arcade, and whatever else they got going on. It's not the food, it's the experience.

I miss old school bowling alleys where you just went there mainly to bowl. We used to bowl league at the old AMF by the airport and it was like $3.00 a game and half the time they'd let you bowl cheaper and sometimes for free.

But there wasn't a demand for cheap bowling anymore. That's why AMF had to rebrand themselves as Bowlero and bring out the loud music, blacklights, bars, DJ's and 40 lane entertainment complexes. I remember they had that "Bowling is just the beginning" ad line, which is really just another way of saying "No one wants to just bowl anymore."

The Mills is not particularly "high end" as far as Richmond brunch-ish places go. But Richmond brunch-y places are inherently somewhat high end. Everything is, nowadays. Bars, restaurants, movies, even strip clubs are trying to upscale in their own weird way.

There are no working middle class-ish entertainment options because the working middle class has been steadily drying up in this country in a way that is unsustainable.

You can definitely see that in Richmond. We used to laugh about how the Richmond scene was just Greek/Italian and burgers. There used to be like 20 places in the Fan that would serve you a ridiculously oversized plate of baked spaghetti for $10. Most of them have closed. But now there are 20 breweries in Scott's Addition where you can buy $20 four packs.

Things are gonna go back to being cheaper, shittier, and probably more corporate. But not because corporations are driving prices up, but because big corporations can keep prices down. The local economy in Richmond is an upper-middle class boutique economy mostly dealing in luxury goods and services.

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OrtizDupri t1_jeb1eba wrote

The Bowleros around here are just rebranded whatevers - they might have one night a week that they do black lights, but 99% of the time they're just a regular boring old bowling alley. Just went the other night (Tuesday) and paid $3 a game and had the same regular bowling experience as back in the old days. Still have league nights where everyone shows up and drinks cheap beer and all the regular lights are on, etc.

Good nachos though.

> There are no working middle class-ish entertainment options because the working middle class has been steadily drying up in this country in a way that is unsustainable.

I generally do agree with this, but I also wonder if our definitions of middle class differ (I would say based on The Mill's menu that it is firmly a middle class establishment).

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