Summer brings to Wolfeboro cars that cost more than your house, and people who can afford several of them. It also brings the brief visit of a television personality who has developed a strong affection for the place.
I used to check out the Forbes 400 every year, to see how our "locals" were doing, but I haven't checked the scores yet this year. The billionaires list is updated to 2019, but the latest 400 I can find is from 2018. No matter. It's just like bird watching. "Oh look, there's a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. And there's a Market Manipulating Cash Amasser." You don't really need to know. It's just a hobby.
Earlier this week, a woman from one of the lakefront houses called to ask if we sell electric bicycles. I explained why we don't, and mentioned a couple of people in the Millionaire Motorbike Club that I thought she could call for more information. I assumed that they already knew each other, because, over the years, I have found out that most of the super rich in the summer population go to the same church. Indeed, the founder of the MMC has been an evangelist for e-bikes, and has gradually converted nearly everyone in the congregation who used to get around by muscle power alone. I figured this latest inquiry was inspired by his efforts.
As it happened, the founder of the MMC showed up to have flat tires on a jogging stroller repaired. I asked casually if he had heard from Mrs. E-curious. Turned out he didn't know her. She hadn't told me this when I had suggested that she call him. I always imagined that the Sewall Road crowd and the wider circle of financial heavyweights along the lake must get together for regular summer socials, to talk about how to keep the help docile, and what each of them is paying for congressmen these days. I guess not.
Jimmy Fallon sightings were reported before the Fourth of July. We haven't had a visit from him in more than ten years. His wife has bought socks from us. The bike shop holds no attraction to the celebrity set. So we listen to the rumors and see the selfies posted by businesses that sell coffee, food, and beer. Again, more bird watching. I joke that the closest we come to a celebrity encounter is when Mitt Romney has another flat tire.
Late yesterday afternoon, in comes Mitt Romney with a flat tire. So that box is checked for the summer. He did look at bikes with El Queso Grande while I was knocking out the flat tire repair. So there may be more trickling. Meanwhile, I have to get to work for just another summer day.
Showing posts with label Jimmy Fallon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Fallon. Show all posts
Saturday, July 06, 2019
Monday, July 10, 2017
Man on vacation buys fried dough
New Hampshire's only television station devoted about 30 seconds to tell the viewing public that comedian Jimmy Fallon had ventured down the lake from Wolfeboro to Weirs Beach, where he purchased fried dough. The hardworking Mr. Fallon has had to singlehandedly support the Lakes Region's summer celebrity needs for the past several years. Everyone has to work harder and take shorter vacations these days.
After 20 years in Wolfeboro, former Massachusetts governor and unsuccessful Presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally found his way into our shop this week, to have a flat tire repaired. The day before that, the shop owner had found himself behind Mr. Romney in the line at the Rite Aid pharmacy. He said that Romney looked comfortable and relaxed, dressed for lakeside recreation, and casually groomed. He did not think it was funny when I suggested that one could say, "Eye witness reports unshaven and disheveled Mitt Romney seen buying drugs!"
When Romney dropped the bike off, I was talking to another customer about building up some wheels. I was all too happy to let upper management handle that check-in. At first glance -- as so often happens -- I wasn't even sure the man was actually The Man. I just thought, "hey, that skinny guy looks kind of like Mitt Romney."
The next morning, Jumper Dude fixed Romney's flat tire and did a few other adjustments before leaving to work on the mountain bike trail he's building on Wolfeboro Conservation Commission land adjacent to the Cotton Valley Trail. He reported that, late in the afternoon, he met Romney on the Cotton Valley Trail. I guess that's that for another 20 years.
I had been totally unaware of the Wolfeboro mystique before I accidentally ended up here in 1988. You really never know who might drift through. Sometimes they do it in groups or close enough succession to make it seem like a regular thing. So it becomes part of the economy, while still not solidly reliable enough to lead to motor coach tours and paparazzi. People walk around with one eye out for possible sightings.
Celebrities have a big responsibility to venture into unlikely places to give as many people as possible the chance to act unimpressed by their presence.
Because so few of the A, B, C, D, E and F lists ride bicycles, my reflexes go mostly untested. And I always wonder whether a public figure is relieved or disappointed when they get treated like anyone else in line. I'm sure it varies from figure to figure and day to day. If they catch me at the right point in the afternoon I'm grumpy and semi-dormant anyway.
After 20 years in Wolfeboro, former Massachusetts governor and unsuccessful Presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally found his way into our shop this week, to have a flat tire repaired. The day before that, the shop owner had found himself behind Mr. Romney in the line at the Rite Aid pharmacy. He said that Romney looked comfortable and relaxed, dressed for lakeside recreation, and casually groomed. He did not think it was funny when I suggested that one could say, "Eye witness reports unshaven and disheveled Mitt Romney seen buying drugs!"
When Romney dropped the bike off, I was talking to another customer about building up some wheels. I was all too happy to let upper management handle that check-in. At first glance -- as so often happens -- I wasn't even sure the man was actually The Man. I just thought, "hey, that skinny guy looks kind of like Mitt Romney."
The next morning, Jumper Dude fixed Romney's flat tire and did a few other adjustments before leaving to work on the mountain bike trail he's building on Wolfeboro Conservation Commission land adjacent to the Cotton Valley Trail. He reported that, late in the afternoon, he met Romney on the Cotton Valley Trail. I guess that's that for another 20 years.
I had been totally unaware of the Wolfeboro mystique before I accidentally ended up here in 1988. You really never know who might drift through. Sometimes they do it in groups or close enough succession to make it seem like a regular thing. So it becomes part of the economy, while still not solidly reliable enough to lead to motor coach tours and paparazzi. People walk around with one eye out for possible sightings.
Celebrities have a big responsibility to venture into unlikely places to give as many people as possible the chance to act unimpressed by their presence.
Because so few of the A, B, C, D, E and F lists ride bicycles, my reflexes go mostly untested. And I always wonder whether a public figure is relieved or disappointed when they get treated like anyone else in line. I'm sure it varies from figure to figure and day to day. If they catch me at the right point in the afternoon I'm grumpy and semi-dormant anyway.
Monday, August 24, 2015
All or Nothing Town
Summer resort towns survive on the frantic seasonal surge. The residents hope that the blur of activity leaves enough cash behind to weather the many months in which the whole outside world forgets we exist, except for the occasional mention on the Tonight Show.
Wolfeboro squeezes a bit more income out of fall foliage and winter tourism, but summer is the big money maker. All. Then nothing.
We're teetering at the edge of that drop into nothing right now. The only reason the shop has seemed busy is that we are running with two people most of the time, and never more than three. We used to need a daily staff of three, with four or five on busy weekends and holidays.
Why do people ask, "How's business?" When I start to tell them, their eyes glaze, they fidget, and they change the subject.
Your obvious capitalist high roller types look delightfully uneasy when some shop clerk starts to lay out detailed observations about the vanishing middle class.
From now on, when someone asks, "How's business?" I'm going to say, "What are you, an economist?" Or I'll just say "F#&k off!"
When Wolfeboro was really booming, in the 1980s and '90s, the resident middle class was mostly land pimps and contractors. It was filled out by school district employees, some professionals, and the few small business owners who were actually generating some profit. There was also a smattering of super-commuters driving to Concord, southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts every work day. All this so their children could be raised in the small town fantasy of a cultural backwater devoid of real opportunity. But it's pretty, and there's virtually no street crime.
Young adults drive any economy, and they can't thrive here. When the boom was big, young adults were servicing it. They raised their families and spent optimistically. But now the kids are grown, the young adults are aging and the money seems harder to get, and wiser to hold, if you can.
The same aging has taken down the seasonal residents. Extended families used to come here for weeks. They might come and go during the summer, but there always seemed to be a contingent around. As age and economics attack those numbers, fewer people come. Some families even sell the lake place. The new buyers don't seem to have the mindset or the finances to fill the region with hustle and bustle from the end of May to early September. The town is turning more and more into a retirement area. The third world economics of the region help a little, just as they do in foreign countries renowned for affordable retirement fortresses. Just keep the poor folks outside the compound and you'll be fine. New Hampshire may cost a little more money, but you're still a tad less likely to get carjacked or invaded here than in some banana republic. Between the residents who remain unwilling to give up basic courtesy, and the ones who still believe in "job creators," most of them will touch a forelock or at least nod pleasantly to the silver-haired benefactors who dribble out a bit of their investment income in return for a secure place to lay their heads.
Even Jimmy Fallon, for all his enthusiastic lip service, really only shows up for Fourth of July weekend. This year he didn't even do that, because he was having his finger sewn back on. I'm not sure if Mitt was around. They're not where the money is made, anyway. The rare birds just provide some color and excitement for those inclined to be excited by such things. The anonymous masses with moderate means used to bring the real lifeblood. Big flocks of quail provide more meat than a handful of eagles. A lot more.
If you're capable of intellectual detachment about your plight, you can see that the rich -- who really are better than the rest of us -- only need so many flunkies. Everyone else is just a drain on society's resources. I have operated under the hope that the culling will be gradual rather than cataclysmic, and that I can continue my modest, comfortable life of genteel poverty by scurrying along the baseboards to fetch my crumbs unnoticed. Writing inflammatory crap like this might seem to run counter to that philosophy, but I hardly expect anything I write to go viral. I have the sense not to blow the gig by getting into any pointless arguments with visiting plutocrats. Even though most of our summer plutocrats have taken up the smokeless moped, they still come in and trickle, and their machinery is amusing. I just have to avoid getting a hernia, lifting one of those behemoths onto the work stand. I would rather work on an e-bike than a gasoline-powered moped, so that's something to be thankful for.
Wolfeboro squeezes a bit more income out of fall foliage and winter tourism, but summer is the big money maker. All. Then nothing.
We're teetering at the edge of that drop into nothing right now. The only reason the shop has seemed busy is that we are running with two people most of the time, and never more than three. We used to need a daily staff of three, with four or five on busy weekends and holidays.
Why do people ask, "How's business?" When I start to tell them, their eyes glaze, they fidget, and they change the subject.
Your obvious capitalist high roller types look delightfully uneasy when some shop clerk starts to lay out detailed observations about the vanishing middle class.
From now on, when someone asks, "How's business?" I'm going to say, "What are you, an economist?" Or I'll just say "F#&k off!"
When Wolfeboro was really booming, in the 1980s and '90s, the resident middle class was mostly land pimps and contractors. It was filled out by school district employees, some professionals, and the few small business owners who were actually generating some profit. There was also a smattering of super-commuters driving to Concord, southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts every work day. All this so their children could be raised in the small town fantasy of a cultural backwater devoid of real opportunity. But it's pretty, and there's virtually no street crime.
Young adults drive any economy, and they can't thrive here. When the boom was big, young adults were servicing it. They raised their families and spent optimistically. But now the kids are grown, the young adults are aging and the money seems harder to get, and wiser to hold, if you can.
The same aging has taken down the seasonal residents. Extended families used to come here for weeks. They might come and go during the summer, but there always seemed to be a contingent around. As age and economics attack those numbers, fewer people come. Some families even sell the lake place. The new buyers don't seem to have the mindset or the finances to fill the region with hustle and bustle from the end of May to early September. The town is turning more and more into a retirement area. The third world economics of the region help a little, just as they do in foreign countries renowned for affordable retirement fortresses. Just keep the poor folks outside the compound and you'll be fine. New Hampshire may cost a little more money, but you're still a tad less likely to get carjacked or invaded here than in some banana republic. Between the residents who remain unwilling to give up basic courtesy, and the ones who still believe in "job creators," most of them will touch a forelock or at least nod pleasantly to the silver-haired benefactors who dribble out a bit of their investment income in return for a secure place to lay their heads.
Even Jimmy Fallon, for all his enthusiastic lip service, really only shows up for Fourth of July weekend. This year he didn't even do that, because he was having his finger sewn back on. I'm not sure if Mitt was around. They're not where the money is made, anyway. The rare birds just provide some color and excitement for those inclined to be excited by such things. The anonymous masses with moderate means used to bring the real lifeblood. Big flocks of quail provide more meat than a handful of eagles. A lot more.
If you're capable of intellectual detachment about your plight, you can see that the rich -- who really are better than the rest of us -- only need so many flunkies. Everyone else is just a drain on society's resources. I have operated under the hope that the culling will be gradual rather than cataclysmic, and that I can continue my modest, comfortable life of genteel poverty by scurrying along the baseboards to fetch my crumbs unnoticed. Writing inflammatory crap like this might seem to run counter to that philosophy, but I hardly expect anything I write to go viral. I have the sense not to blow the gig by getting into any pointless arguments with visiting plutocrats. Even though most of our summer plutocrats have taken up the smokeless moped, they still come in and trickle, and their machinery is amusing. I just have to avoid getting a hernia, lifting one of those behemoths onto the work stand. I would rather work on an e-bike than a gasoline-powered moped, so that's something to be thankful for.
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Identify yourself!
In a service business you have to ask for people's names and other information.
For some reason, the question, "what's your name?" has always made me uncomfortable. Maybe it's because I was a rather paranoid child. Why do you want to know my name? What are you going to do with that information?
When a name is not required, I don't ask for it. It feels like prying. I'll be the superhero with the secret identity and you be the anonymous citizen whose bacon I save. We'll share a momentary look of understanding and then I'll mysteriously vanish and you go on with your life.
On repair forms I just hand the customer the clip board and say, "could you just fill out the contact info on the top here while I check a few things on your bike?" This legitimately lets me perform necessary tasks like measuring chain wear and checking tire condition while the customer performs the equally necessary task of giving us a way to get their bike back to them when we've finished with it. We see many people only a few times or for a short period every year, so they might remember a lot about us while we only have a nagging feeling we're supposed to know them. So, big smile, give them the clip board, look busy and they will tell us without having to be asked directly, "who the heck are you, anyway?"
Sales people will ask for a customer's name to try to personalize the process. Really good ones actually do manage to establish a friendly atmosphere. Far too many others just look like they were trained to try to establish a friendly atmosphere. When forced into a selling situation because the shop is busy or shorthanded -- in other words nearly any day -- I will always give the clearest and best information I have. I don't need to know anyone's name. As long as I know what I need to know to fit a person to the product, asking their name just feels like prying or manipulation.
This morning I thought of a new approach to try. Instead of asking, "What's your name?" I'll ask, "What would you like to be called?" That way they can give me their real name or make something up...which they might be doing anyway, but this puts me in the position of opening that door and being super accommodating rather than intrusive and possibly authoritarian ("Show me your papers! What's your business here?") or smarmily friendly. I really don't care who you are. I'm here to do the best job for you that I can. In this context that's all we really need to know about each other.
Over time some relationships deepen. Compatible traits emerge through interaction. Or identity grows from accumulated incidents whether it's friendly or merely cordially businesslike. Because it happens naturally it doesn't have that awkward scripted feeling.
A few of our regular customers are prominent and at least one is an actor with a long resume. Other more transient customers might also work in entertainment. In that case, delivering a line in a stilted fashion feels particularly conspicuous. Better just to smile neutrally and keep everything friendly but impersonal. I did hear that one of them got pestered at the dive shop up the street by people wanting their picture taken. He may even enjoy that. But I would tend to believe that it would be more relaxing to be treated as a person rather than a public facility anyone can go up and jump all over.
So...what would you like to be called?
For some reason, the question, "what's your name?" has always made me uncomfortable. Maybe it's because I was a rather paranoid child. Why do you want to know my name? What are you going to do with that information?
When a name is not required, I don't ask for it. It feels like prying. I'll be the superhero with the secret identity and you be the anonymous citizen whose bacon I save. We'll share a momentary look of understanding and then I'll mysteriously vanish and you go on with your life.
On repair forms I just hand the customer the clip board and say, "could you just fill out the contact info on the top here while I check a few things on your bike?" This legitimately lets me perform necessary tasks like measuring chain wear and checking tire condition while the customer performs the equally necessary task of giving us a way to get their bike back to them when we've finished with it. We see many people only a few times or for a short period every year, so they might remember a lot about us while we only have a nagging feeling we're supposed to know them. So, big smile, give them the clip board, look busy and they will tell us without having to be asked directly, "who the heck are you, anyway?"
Sales people will ask for a customer's name to try to personalize the process. Really good ones actually do manage to establish a friendly atmosphere. Far too many others just look like they were trained to try to establish a friendly atmosphere. When forced into a selling situation because the shop is busy or shorthanded -- in other words nearly any day -- I will always give the clearest and best information I have. I don't need to know anyone's name. As long as I know what I need to know to fit a person to the product, asking their name just feels like prying or manipulation.
This morning I thought of a new approach to try. Instead of asking, "What's your name?" I'll ask, "What would you like to be called?" That way they can give me their real name or make something up...which they might be doing anyway, but this puts me in the position of opening that door and being super accommodating rather than intrusive and possibly authoritarian ("Show me your papers! What's your business here?") or smarmily friendly. I really don't care who you are. I'm here to do the best job for you that I can. In this context that's all we really need to know about each other.
Over time some relationships deepen. Compatible traits emerge through interaction. Or identity grows from accumulated incidents whether it's friendly or merely cordially businesslike. Because it happens naturally it doesn't have that awkward scripted feeling.
A few of our regular customers are prominent and at least one is an actor with a long resume. Other more transient customers might also work in entertainment. In that case, delivering a line in a stilted fashion feels particularly conspicuous. Better just to smile neutrally and keep everything friendly but impersonal. I did hear that one of them got pestered at the dive shop up the street by people wanting their picture taken. He may even enjoy that. But I would tend to believe that it would be more relaxing to be treated as a person rather than a public facility anyone can go up and jump all over.
So...what would you like to be called?
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