As a person who lives in one of this kind of neighborhood, although not in LA, I will say that the only effect such a law would have would be to ensure that the existent businesses will continue to thrive. The local bodegas and fast food businesses will be very pleased, and were probably the real drivers of this ordinance, I’m guessing, if you turn over enough rocks.
Left Hand had it- who gives a fuck what we think? The only thing that matters is if the people in the community think this is a good idea or bad idea. Nobody else should have even the smallest hand in this decision.
And lets keep words like “tribal” outside of serious discourse. Would we use this word to describe a white trailer trash neighborhood? I doubt it. Black, white, whatever, ghettos are just as full of old women, parents trying to make it, little kids playing hopscotch and waiting for their first kiss, immigrant families starting a new life…It’s not just disenfranchised young men.
Well, many are afraid of precedent and that ever-popular slippery slope.
ETA: Oh, and some folks really are concerned about the poor of that specific area and how this would affect them.
If you are going to bitch about “tribal” in a serious discourse, you should also leave out the term “white trailer trash.”
LA is trying to control a lot of food nowadays. They are messing with the taco carts, and now fast food. The land of In-N-Out, Fatburger, Tommies and other wonderful providers of fatty chow is turning on its own.
Damn them all to a salad bar with nothing but iceberg and thousand island dressing.
I’d be interested in finding out if the people pushing this are in any way connected to the existing restaurants in the area. Often this type of market-limiting law is the result of rent-seeking behavior from existing businesses.
If I had a McDonald’s in the area, it would be of great benefit to me to make sure that no other fast-food restaurants are allowed to open and compete for my clientele.
Sam, this is what I mentioned in my post above. And you and I are usually at politically loggerheads!
The guy in Slate seemed offended at the idea of “treating poor people like children” (his characterization). I think that’s a bit unfair.
How about this: Can we treat them like poor people? I think we need to acknowledge that poor people often have transportation difficulties, & would benefit more from diversity of options than more of the same. A few poor people may feel “out of place” in rich neighborhoods even when they can get there.
I’m not saying Whole Foods is going to work well in those locations at its current pricing structure. But encouraging someone to find a model that’s not McGreaseburger sounds potentially helpful to me.
Obviously the community wants fast food. If they didn’t, fast food companies wouldn’t open there or they would fail, rendering the measure moot.
How about if we treat them like adult citizens, who are capable of deciding for themselves what to have for dinner?
I think that is a good bit of what is so offensive about this. There does not seem to be any aspect of life that the government does not feel entitled to enforce their opinions on. I would really appreciate if there were some part of my day where I could fold my arms and tell the government to go mind its own fucking business.
The LA City Council should be tactfully told to go shove a tofu burger up its politically correct ass. Maybe that would save some poor child from the heartbreak of obesity.
Regards,
Shodan
Um, that’s a really bourgeois answer. Do you think being an adult automatically means all options are at your fingertips? The city’s not driving out existing fast food joints, it’s just preventing further proliferation of them in an already developed area. Doesn’t a variety of kinds of establishment give these adult citizens more options than 17 variations on ground pig lips & lard-fried potatoes?
No, I think being an adult automatically means that I can make up my own mind about what to eat, and that I don’t require input from the LA fucking City Council on the subject.
When I was a little child, my mother nagged me to eat my vegetables. Now I am an adult, and she has mostly stopped. The only question remaining is how to get the city council to extend the same courtesy. What’s next, a city ordinance requiring me to brush my teeth and wash behind my ears?
If the community wants a restaurant that serves exclusively free range granola, then they can patronize it. If they want Happy Meals[sup]TM[/sup] three times a day, then they can eat that. And the City Council can go back to passing resolutions outlawing nuclear war, or whatever it was.
Regards,
Shodan
If restaurants or stores that offer healthy food could make a decent profit in these areas, they would have flocked there to begin with. Maybe there’s too little demand; a poor area will prefer inferior goods. Maybe the security costs are prohibitive. As mentioned above, the legislation benefits no one but existing fast food joints.
Alcohol is strictly controlled in all states – here in Colorado the local city council, sitting as a liquor control board, gets to decide what neighborhoods get liquor stores and which ones don’t. In other states, the state itself owns the liquor stores and wine-annd-beer licenses are parceled out according to what the local authority thinks is good for the community. Cities, counties and states have zoning regulations to control what kind of businesses go where, according to what’s best for the citizenry. Indeed, ruling on what is best for its citizens is the charge of a city council, from gun shops and car dealerships to bars and strip clubs. If you can successfully argue that liquor stores and gun shops should be tightly regulated because alcoholism and gunfire can kill people, why not burger joints and pizza parlors? I mean, have you seen “Super-size Me”? Have you seen the latest TV news report on obesity and diabetes? There’s a new one at least once a week! Bottom line: If banning McDonald’s is bad, why isn’t turning down a liquor license application just as bad?
It’s a very stupid idea with good intentions.
But the best they’ll accomplish is making people drive 10 miles to get their double chili cheeseburger with cheesy fries and vanilla milkshake.
That’s a big if there, buddy.
For one thing, at least gunfire and drunk driving can kill people other than the one using the guns and alcohol. However, I still believe that those of us against the fast food ban are also against most if not all alcohol and gun controls.
Telling people what they can and can’t buy (and when and where and how much and at what price) never helps anything. It just makes common people criminals, breeds black markets and aggravates us as we must contort our lives and scheme to get around the law.
About the only thing we can be sure won’t change if this law is enacted is the eating habits of poor fat people.
I remember when people said smoking bans at work would lead to bans in restaurants and bars. Not only was it not hyperbolic it has extended itself to apartments, condo’s and cars in some places.
Beyond the obvious legal challenges that will probably negate such laws I wonder if the legislators have ever been in a grocery store. You can buy White Castle hamburgers along with a host of other fast food products in the frozen food section. Beyond that there is an unlimited amount of cheap pizzas and other low nutrition foods. I can by 59 cent 2 liter bottles of pop and $1 pizza’s all day long. And there is nothing stopping me from making a meal of Slim Jims and M&M’s with Twinkies for desert. How about a can of refried beens and some cheese on a plate of chips and chili? The time spent driving to a fast food joint can just as easily be spent in front of a microwave.
Round up the poor and put them in “re-education” camps. There, they would be taught how to prepare healthy meals-the kids would eat vegetables and granola, and no fast food would be allowed. Those who were obese would be put on special diets, and brought down to a healthy weight. Think of the money we would save: diabetes could be eliminated, and obesity-related disease eliminated.
Seems like a good idea to me!
Nice strawman you’ve got there, ralph. Maybe we can find you a brain to go with it.
Brains aren’t required if you accept a government that tells you where you can and cannot eat.
From where I stand it looks like the camp counselor has already spoken.
I’m focusing on this statement as pure bullshit. Fast food as a cause of poverty is a joke. If you want to reverse the unbroken cycle consider that 80% of families that make less than $15,000 per year do not have two parents at home. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest damn near 100% of families with children eat at MacDonalds.
As far as the link is concerned, it makes my blood boil. If anything, I can picture stressed out minimum wage single mom who worked her ass off all day and needs some respite from a hot kitchen without AC and kids clamouring to eat out, having to board them on the bus with several connections to get to another community so the entire family can enjoy some semblance of eating out like the middle class people. Fuck me.