Observing The Well Off White At Borders..

I have always loved bookstores. When I was a kid if it wasn't the Thunderbird it was Books Inc. or Waldon's. I also loved the library starting from when the Monterey Library would park it's "Bookmobile" in front of our house once a week. The idea that I could read about anything that interested me is magic and the idea that everyone does not do this leaves me shaking my head. I've discarded hundreds of books as I began to run out of space in my room and I've had to stash books that I cannot bear to part with in storage containers in my closet. Books about ghosts, the Titanic, Little Big Horn, the KGB/CIA and tons of military-related books make up my personal library. So I need a book fix on a regular basis and God was kind enough to put a Borders in Sand City and that's on my way to and from work. So I will stop into Borders at least twice a week to see what's new.

I began to notice something around 1997.

I was standing in the "New Age" section scanning for new ghost titles when this weaselly little man just leaned right in front of me for a few seconds and then pulled out a book. Since I was in the "New Age" section I blew it off as an encounter with a local weirdo. A few days later I was at the magazine rack and a well dressed woman just shoved her way in front of me to grab a magazine about dogs. I then became aware that people were just cutting people off at one moment while blocking the isle in another. These were all white and wealthy people acting like apes.

[ for those of you who may be confused as to why this bothers me I will bring you up to speed. It's all about manners. When I was nine years old my mother spend a lot of money so that I could attend a dance school. I have no clue as to why she did this because I never had expressed any interest in dancing and I was so traumatized by this that I refuse to dance today, even at gunpoint. However, this dance class was filled with the children of wealthy Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley people. Half the time was spent on etiquette, proper greetings and how to act like young ladies and gentlemen. Later, as I worked in a beauty salon for a couple of summers I was taught further proper manners and learned that these manner pay off in many ways. I also have learned from my Gangsta friends that bad manners will get your ass kicked because they will just assume that if you are a douche then you MUST be looking for a fight. So instead of pushing your way past people you first say "Excuse Me", or "Pardon me" and then allow the person to get out of your way. Also a well mannered person will keep their wits about them so that they don't block people who need to get through. If you insist on living with your head up your ass then you are a douche bag.]

So here I am surrounded by white upper and upper-middle class people who are acting doltish. Once I had become aware of this I began to go to Borders just to watch people just as Jane Goodall watched Chimpanzees. I was amazed at how rude and brutish the upper crust had become. I would focus on the biggest offenders and watch them as they returned to their cars. Sure enough they'd often had Pebble Beach tags or stickers on their windshield indicating a gated community or the City of Carmel.

Many of these people are completely worthless. One of my favorite places to eavesdrop is near the information desk. I only need to be there a few minutes before some twit arrives at the counter to torture the staff with his boundless bafoonery:

Twit: "Yes, I'm looking for a book"
Information: "What's the title?"
Twit: "I don't know, it has a red cover"
Info: "Do you know who the author is?"
Twit: "Yes, that famous guy"

And so on and so on. The twit was so impressed by that famous guy that he ran down to buy the book but not impressed enough to pick up a pen and write the title and the name down. Needless to say that next the twit becomes frustrated by the young girl at the information desk because she has no clue what the hell he's talking about. On a good day, a four-star twit will track down every employee in the store and ask them if they know what book he's talking about.

Then there are the people who either won't hold the door open for you or can't bring themselves to say "Thank You" for holding the door open for them. SAY THANK YOU, it won't cost you a dime. White people are the ONLY people who are this thoughtless. All other ethnic types will say thank you or something else nice. When a person cannot say thank you for a another person's selfless act they need an ass kicking and I fear that one day I will put one of the large on-sale coffee table books that Borders displays near the front door to a more creative use.

Everybody say it with me now: T H A N K Y O U!

Try it, people will think you're the Pope.

Then there are the white people on their cell phones talking real loud as if they are on Iwo Jima in an artillery barrage. Cell phone etiquette is a who other thread but if you don't think that everyone within earshot isn't secretly hoping that the IDF has planted C-4 in your earpiece then you are a lost cause. Again this is an issue almost exclusive to upscale white people. I see other non-white people on their phones but they're usually talking in a normal tone and volume of voice.



Borders selection of on-the-shelf titles is revealing as well. Their "Self-Help" section is four times as large as their "Do it yourself" section. There are almost 200 titles relating to Nazi Germany and Hitler both in the military and European history sections. The Nazis are equalled only by titles in the "Gay Studies" section, which dwarfs the African-American and Native American Studies sections. There are currently 17 titles about Che Guevara but only one on Zapata. U.S. History is dominated by the Civil War, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald. The Science Fiction section is four times as large as the Science section. In fact, there are more books on Witchcraft as there are about Platetechonics. The magazine rack is full of women's magazines, men's fitness magazines, computer magazines, craft magazines, sports magazines, movie magazines, political commentary magazines but only carries a small section of history and news magazines.



The also have a good newspaper selection and even though there is a sign that asks "Please purchase newspapers before reading" you can always find some guy there reading a news paper(usually a large one like the NY Times) and take a wild guess what ethnic background he is! Plus you can always count on the guy to not bother returning the newspaper to a saleable state before he shuffles off to somewhere else. It is remarkable that in a time when newspapers are fighting to survive that a person whole loves to read them cannot bring himself to plunk down .50 cents or $5 for a Sunday edition. When they all eventually fail my guess it will be these white cheapskates who will cry the loudest.

The issue here is the devastation of thoughtlessness that now pollutes the white upper-class . Behavior that in the 1960s that would have been thought oafish, tacky and rude are seemingly acceptable. It's not exclusive to Borders at all, I will chronicle my expeditions into other upper-class white bastions such as Trader Joe's and the bike/walking path. However I won't make you read 20 or 30 posts until I get to my underlying theme. I've always hated the phrase "New Money" because it was mostly used by other "New Money"-types to insult those who's success had opened the door to exclusive places; that said "New Money" best describes the makeup of this hoard of dufuses.

There problem isn't that they're wealthy it's that they're pretending to be something that they are not. They have made money the center of their lives and eschewing the accouterments that once marked the upper class ( etiquette, good taste, patients and reserve). Old-school wealthy folks saw money as a tool or a means to an end but not as the sole point of living. They understood that money comes and goes and that wealth can vanish in an instant. They tended to embrace life and enjoy people whereas today these new types are too self-centered. If you aren't rich then you can't do anything for them and they'll tell you to fuck off. In the old days the old-guard would at the very least offer you a polite smile and a kind word. They'd never judge people by wealth because they were in the unique position to know that wealthy people could be jackasses as well. This new breed is not only lost but they have begun to undermine our social and economic fabric as they exclude undesirables and embrace questionable economic practices.

But that's another post.