Every year I take my daughter to Shea Stadium for her birthday.
Every year I take out a second mortgage to take my daughter to Shea Stadium for her birthday.
Grrrrr.
Next year I’m taking her to Shea Stadium, but I’m just going to point it out as we drive past. Much more economical that way.
We don’t even get souvenirs! Just the tickets, and food clean us out. $3.50 for a rotten scorecard! $5.75 for a rotten beer!
My dad was such a cheap, evil bastard he used to take us to county fairs so we could watch people go on rides. Honest to God.
Starbucks Coffee and bottled water!
Till recently bottled water cost more than gas! Lemme see…spend millions on geologists searching for oil deposits, spend millions more building drilling rigs in the middle of nowhere, spend a few more million shipping it half-way around the world, maybe a few hundred million on a refinery and then pay someone hazard wages to truck explosive fuel around OR stick a hose in the nearest stream to get one of the most abundant things on the planet, squish it through a filter and ship. I can see how that should cost more! (NOT!)
Better still, soak some ground-up beans in the water for a few minutes costing you $0.25 and raise the price another $3.00. Definitely fair.
Guess I can’t blame them though. If I could charge people a $1 a glass for my tap water I’d probably do it to. (FYI: It costs $1.50 for bathroom tap water since it’s always colder for some reason.)
Another FYI: An upscale restaurant in Chicago held a water tasting contest with 30+ different waters. The winner? Chicago tap water (no joke).
Bottled water is a rip off…
Gasoline prices lag behind the curve for consumer product price increases. But they are much more volatile than the price of, oh, say, dresses. If you look at the long term price (and completely ignore the situation in the rest of the world, where prices are much, much higher), you’ll realize that what you were paying for gasoline 8 months ago was the nominal 1973 price. What you’re paying now is the 2000 price, which lags behind almost any other consumer product you can name. What did a pack of cigarettes costs in 1980? How about now?
On a positive note, I went to Subway the other day and ordered avocado, which cost 50 cents. Now, for some messed up reason avocados here in sunny LA are $1.99 each. I watched the server cut it, and she gave me a quarter of the fruit. I actually got 50 cents worth of avocado! I was shocked!