Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 1999)
No bars, bar none Downtown night life could benefit from a little entrepreneurial ingenuity J.J. HARDER is a senior broadcasting and political science major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist The weekend is rapidly approaching, and everyone is busily readying their plans for the hustle and bustle of the night life. Some will go to the movies, others to plays or concerts, and still others will trav el out of town. But, chances are, a large portion of you are planning to take part in the bar scene. Downtown is always hopping Thursday through Saturday nights with scantily clad, overly made-up girls and stumbling, speech-slurring men. Ah, the glories of visiting your favorite proprietor of alcohol. What else are you hoping to find there? A good band? Maybe. Some good ol’ friends? Sure. Definitely a social aspect exists in this college practice, to a certain extent. New people? Perhaps. But are you really going to meet others and establish long-term relationships with them? Hardly. Lei s get down to tne core ot tne entire process. People go to the bars to consume alcohol with the general intent to get intoxicated and in hope of meeting a member of the opposite sex with whom to engage in a short term sexual relationship. When it comes down to it, the bars are about drunkenness and sex. So doesn’t the whole system seem very inefficient? If getting drunk and having sex are the goals, why spend so much time and effort on getting ready to go out? And why spend $20 or $30 a night to buy alco hol from a usually unkempt and uncouth establishment? There has to be a better way. Warehouse of luuuv My proposal is directed at those with keen business sense and entre preneurial savvy. If you have the col lateral to get off the ground, then say hello to the warehouse bar concept. Now, it won’t actually be a “bar” per se, but it will serve to reach the aforementioned goals: drunkenness and sex. You’ll find a centrally located site and build a very large building. It will have to be able to house a few thousand - however many people go downtown on the weekends. At the door, you’ll charge a mea ger entrance fee, say five bucks, and assign numbers to each customer. At j the onset of the evening’s activities, each man and woman will line up in a row, with their numbers pinned to their chests. Then each person can walk down the row and write down their favorite picks from the opposite sex. All of the customers’ choices will be logged at a computer databank, which will make the matches quickly and electronically. In other words, the males and females who pick each other, judging by looks alone, will be hooked up and can take each other home, just like a real meat market. Now the mating can begin. Each “couple” can enter into a snort, mean ingless, solely sexu al relationship right there in the warehouse. This is where i we can really rake in the • 1 1 dough. 9 Some pairs I will be willing « to hit it on the m cold concrete in jl the back, but K for those look- 1 ing for luxury f to go with their § “romance,” we 1 can charge extra for nice beds and curtains. Can’t you just hear that cash register bell ringing? Let’s slow down for a second. The sex is only half of our mission. We’ve still got some serious drunk enness to accomplish. I.V. or nipple? This is where we can save both time and money. The process of get ting drunk appears to take at least a good half hour for the average per son. This is extremely inefficient! We need immediate inebriation, without all the hassles of deciding what to order and waiting to actually get your drink. So before the pairs go off to get it done, they will first pro ceed to a room foil of hospital beds. Each participant will lie down and get ready for a tasty concoction that will not be administered orally, but rather intravenously. By dripping some 200-proof ethyl alcohol direct ly into the bloodstream, intoxication could be almost instant. And while the pairs get their IVs, they could even enter into a little small talk and maybe get to know one another - but they wouldn’t be required to because, remember, this is about sex, not about developing any sort of real relationship. But there will always be those who want to drink not just for the buzz, but also for the taste. For these folks we’ll just fill vats with sweet drinks, say a fuzzy navel or strawber ry daiquiri, to their taste buds’ delight. Each vat will be hung from the ceiling and will feature dozens of teats from which to suck the drink. Just like animals, they can crawl up to the vat and suck a margarita from a nipple. Keep in mind, intoxication is the goal, so we’ll have to mix some extra hard-core alcohol into the brew. After everyone is good and sloshed, they can try to find their chosen mate and stumble to their beds. In the money And there you have it. All of the drunkenness and sex of the bars for the low, low price of five bucks. Time, money and makeup all saved in the name of efficiency. For all you business majors out there dreaming in dollar signs and black ink, just think about the other uses for this warehouse. For wedding receptions, we can cut to the chase, we’ll just pipe in some ’80s music and provide tuxes. Spring break? Haul in the tanning beds. Southern family reunions? A little barbecue. Oh, the possibilities are endless. When you think about it, our entire society revolves around sex and alcohol, so why not harness this untapped monetary potential? It’s a simple plan, really - one that could not only make money but could also make people truly happy. It’s the perfect solution for the perfect society, where people can give their bodies and minds away while others profit from it. That’s America. . Shawn Drapal/DN ..•■". •■• ■■-' Pitch in Student life not so bad compared to plight of homeless recycler KASEY KERBER is a senior news-editorial major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. It’s tough to be honest. Because being honest requires slowing down enough to give some thought to the issues you usually don’t give a damn about. We’re too busy running errands. We’re too busy going to meetings we don’t want to be at. We’re too busy bitching about the “massive amount” of schoolwork we have to do, all the while watching three hours of “Pop-Up Video” tele vision. If we were honest with ourselves, we’d see our lives aren’t really that “hard.” Sure, we complain, bitch and pout to get sympathy, but seldom do we look beyond the thick walls of our own selfish existence. If we were honest, we’d see that there are others out there whose greatest concerns aren’t bitching about the movie selection at the Star Ship 9. And you don’t have to look far to find these people. Hell, you don’t need to go farther than a few blocks to find others who pray in the cold to have even a slice of what we bitch about. I There’s a sole individual I have in mind. Maybe you’ve seen him. Avoided eye contact with him. Laughed at him. Ignored him. Pitied him. He gathers aluminum cans from the classrooms we never want to be in. He makes a living off the cylin ders of metal we’re too lazy to even carry over to the trash. And while you’re cursing algebra in a heated room at 10 p.m., he’s in Avery Hall searching for a container of what you only drank half of. I can attest to it -1 see him every Monday night after a night class I can’t stop complaining about. But this semester isn’t the first time I’ve seen him. During my freshman year, this man would often spend time in my residence hall’s lobby just to get out of the cold, watching the Harper Hall television with an emotionless glare. Sometimes security officers would give him a hard time, asking him to leave, then shouting at him to do it. They never understood he was deaf. But they saw he was homeless. Perhaps that’s all they needed to know. That was 314 years ago. Since that time I’d like to think that I’ve grown as a student and per son. This man’s life, on the other hand, has taken a different route. About a year and a half ago, the beverage alliance brought 20-ounce Pepsi bottles to campus wastebas kets. Plastic bottles that don’t mean a cent to an already centless man. You know, bottles with colorful caps we bought because we wanted to see ourselves become “instant winners.” He meanwhile sees too few cans to buy a meal. So this man searches through our trash longer than he used to. If that means he’s in our buildings six hours after we’ve left them, so be it. He goes on living in a soundless world, oblivious to our bitching, hushed whispers or words of pity. You and I really aren’t much dif ferent. We go on with our primarily self-centered lives, invisible to any thing that doesn’t bring us pleasure or rewards in some small way or another. We don’t hear the voices of responsibility. We don’t acknowl edge the.cries of those who suffer far worse than “getting stood up for that big date.” We do occasional charities on a handful of holidays, feeling good about ourselves for maybe five days a year while those we “help” suffer for the other 360. And we continue to talk and bitch loud enough to drown all the other voices out. Maybe it’s time we shut up. Time we stopped sticking our hand and drooling tongue out long enough to realize that there are others who need love, warmth and nourishment more than we do. Not that it’s an easy step. It’s a lot easier to crack a joke at what I’ve written and throw the DN under your desk. I know it’s not a popular concept. Even one of my fellow columnists cracked a joke at this column idea, saying he’d put his can in a place where the homeless man could better get to it. And the room laughed, everyone meanwhile patiently wait ing to vote on who would get a $5 Sunday bonus. But there are no perfect solu tions. Just beginnings. All great innovations, leaders or religions begin with a single step. I’m willing to take mine. And if my sole step is the only one taken on campus, at least I’ll know that I’m five inches closer to a solution. Why does that matter? Because right now there’s a homeless man living in a soundless world filled with our greed, bottom less want, bitching and existences taken for granted.