Noah Smith, take you head outta you..
I stopped by my local "redneck" bar in rural PA last night. As I came back from the can, I snapped this shot:
What?! Non-white people in a rural, blue-collar bar? Just look at the white people around them, all in a panic, fleeing into the woods!
Wait: they're chatting with the non-white people, having a good time! In fact, my friend Tito, looking at the camera, is pretty much the most popular guy in the bar. It seems about 90% of the people who come in know him, and walk up and shake his hand when they arrive.
In fact, for most of them, the thing they want to avoid about cities is not non-white people, but slums. And what do you know, that is the very thing Tito was seeking to get away from when he moved into the country. And, I bet, the same thing the black guy sitting next to him moved into the country to avoid. And probably the same thing the black guy who was DJing is living out here to avoid.
What?! Non-white people in a rural, blue-collar bar? Just look at the white people around them, all in a panic, fleeing into the woods!
Wait: they're chatting with the non-white people, having a good time! In fact, my friend Tito, looking at the camera, is pretty much the most popular guy in the bar. It seems about 90% of the people who come in know him, and walk up and shake his hand when they arrive.
In fact, for most of them, the thing they want to avoid about cities is not non-white people, but slums. And what do you know, that is the very thing Tito was seeking to get away from when he moved into the country. And, I bet, the same thing the black guy sitting next to him moved into the country to avoid. And probably the same thing the black guy who was DJing is living out here to avoid.
A redneck bar with a disk jockey? I guess things really are different out east.
ReplyDeleteWell, that is partially the point here. What we have is a bar in rural PA, in a town of 2000 people, frequented mostly by blue collar workers.
DeleteAnd yet it has a DJ and the most popular guy in the bar is Puerto Rican. So rural America is not what Noah Smith thinks it is. At least in many places it is not.