I’m terribly sorry to morally or ethically inconvenience anyone about this. But.Â
There are probably 20,000 service industry workers in San Diego that all appreciate your tip-dollars more-or-less equally.
There are two or three properties in San Diego where your drinking money goes into the pockets of a homophobe who is working against human rights, and using the money he is given from those properties to do so.
It’s a simple decision to make, but it is a decision. Anything else is honestly just rationalizing. I’m not going to be holding a placard outside your hotel room or anything, but there are probably 200 establishments for drinking and congregating within 15 minutes walk of the convention centre. Drinking at any of those probably won’t fund jackholes, and drinking or eating (or, unfortunately, staying) at The Hyatt will.
And you know, when the money goes into his account, I’d wager that the bank doesn’t keep a column next to it for whether it was spent by folks in favour of his actions, or critical of them. It’s all money.
So, your decision. This is the last I have to say on the matter.
– Chris
About three or four years ago, I finally grew tired of the endless schmoozing in San Diego and started making a conscious decision to avoid the big events and instead focus on gathering smaller groups of actual friends to just go to an off-the-beaten-path bar and hangout. It’s made for some of my favorite cons in 20-plus years of attending San Diego. Fuck the Hyatt. I didn’t miss it before learning about this, and I definitely won’t now.
Thanks Eric.
I understand the guy is pretty terrible, but I can’t get upset enough about it to boycott the bar. Like you said, it’s the servers who suffer, and it’s not like the alcohol lobby isn’t terribly evil. If you go to a bar and purchase a drink, guess what else you’re supporting.
Gabe- I at no point said “it’s the servers who suffer”, because I believe that’s fucking nonsense. I did say that there are hundreds of other establishments all with their own servers who will appreciate your money as well.
Also: “This guy doesn’t think gays are people, but I can’t be bothered to care, don’t affect me none.” Why are you reading my blog? Go away.
“There are probably 20,000 service industry workers in San Diego that all appreciate your tip-dollars more-or-less equally.”
Oh sorry, I thought this sentence implied a basic level of human compassion. Guess I shouldn’t have made such a silly assumption.
Bizarro-World Burn!
Gabe- Are you fucking high? What that sentence says is “all other things being equal, which they are, every dollar you spend anywhere is a dollar not spent somewhere else.” I’ve got plenty of human compassion, but you cannot seem to comprehend what you are reading, apparently, so… fuck, your loss I guess. But whatever, you’re done here.
I’m fucking high and even I got it.
Chris,
I completely see the point of what you’re saying, but I do think there are a few other ways of looking at this. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the loss of our (informed, liberal-minded) custom is not going to drive the Hyatt out of business. Are there not, then, some advantages to flooding the establishment with people the owner might find undesirable? He can then either grow accustomed to them as “people” (there’s no better weapon against bigotry than exposure to the people one is bigoted against), be forced to live with the fact that he runs “that kind” of bar & hotel, or toss us all out on our ears, garnering all manner of bad PR. Or, he could simply go on being a dick, which is bound to happen anyway.
I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. I do tend to support boycotts of homophobic organizations and products produced by people or companies that hold abhorrent views and practices. But for something like this, where there’s a matter of where we should or should not publicly gather, boycotting can also have an effect of isolating groups of people from each other, which seems a bit counterproductive.
Shaun- Nice idea, but an utter failure in practice. Jackhole has already said he has no issue taking the money and business of gays and lesbians in his hotels, and it’s pretty clear what he does with that money.
I’m… I’m pretty sure that not giving him money is the best way to make him understand that people won’t give him money if they don’t like what he does. Giving him the money when he does stuff we don’t like might be a… well let’s say mixed message, y’know?
Ha ha. “Jackhole.”
The “you’re hurting the Hyatt waitstaff” argument was old ten years before anyone first made it. Hurting them would be drinking there and not tipping, or holding down the floor and buying nothing so that the waitstaff gets no paying customers in at all.
BOOM! is having a gay party there:
http://www.popsyndicate.com/comics/story/boom_studios_gets_its_gay_on
They’re still going to drink there so he can be skooled on how much money he won’t get next year! Boy, that’ll show him!
I’m not spending money there. I admit this isn’t a difficult decision. I think the bar is dreadful.
I’m glad you said something, Chris.
Here you go, a non-dumb way to show Doug Manchester what he missed by being a bigot: send him your bar tabs from all the places you drank instead of his place:
http://divalea.livejournal.com/567596.html
Thanks to Lisa Jonte for sending me this in email.
I got pointed to this post a few times since I was one of the many who brought up the ‘lost tips’ thing, so I am clarifying.
Obviously, someone who was not going to spent $ at the Hyatt anyway is not costing any of the waitstaff there any tips. My original post on the subject was directed at the people who said they were planning on spending money there, and would have had it not been for the news of Doug Manchester’s donation, and now they are withdrawing that business as a punitive measure. Those are the people I was addressing.
And to comment on Chris’ line about “two or three properties”… in San Diego it’s probably more like two or three hundred if you were to really go digging, but here’s one: the Marriott is owned by active Mormons, and you can be sure they are also firmly in opposition of gay marriage too.
bri
Yeah, whatever guy. We’re all taking theoretical money our of theoretical bartenders’ pockets and theoretical mormons might theoretically disagree with me and might theoretically donate money for this bill at some theoretical point in the future. All the while a real person did something scummy, and the real actions that any of us could take to show our disagreement are the ones that are hurtful… well, whatever. Whatever you’ve gotta say, for whatever reason you feel the need to say it, over and over and over again.
– Chris
Well, I’m certainly not going to change anyone’s mind. Just voicing my feelings on boycotts.
Prop 8 is going to be on the ballot. My efforts will be to get every single Californian I know to vote against it in the fall.
bri
This argument is totally fucking stupid at this point, and fairly pathetic besides, and neither side looks good at this point.
First of all, let’s clear something up: the San Diego Marriott isn’t owned by Mormons, not the way saying so as simply as Brian is implies; it’s owned by a publicly-traded corporation, whose stockholder makeup is unknown to me. The chair of that corporation is one of the Marriotts, Richard. As far as I can tell, he’s Mormon. Even then, it’s more complicated than that. For instance, if you look up Richard’s campaign contribution record, he gave money to Chris Dodd, the first of the candidates in this current election to come out in support of gay marriage way back when. And what little reading I’ve been able to do indicates the gay community in San Diego has held events at the Marriott and feels welcome there.
Still, if one of my industry friends wants to include the Marriott on a list of places that makes them uncomfortable and that they’d like me to consider not patronizing it, I’d be happy to do so. Hasn’t happened yet. If someone would like to object to anything in San Diego along those lines, I’m happy to listen and appreciate the information.
I don’t really understand all the dissembling and bloviating about the effectiveness of boycotts, or not being able to find a 100 percent morally assured place to spend the money or spending the money but putting air quotes around it through a press release or whatever. Who cares about any of that shit? What does it have to do with anything?
Part of the problem is that people taking this matter up on Chris’s behalf have been talking about it in terms of boycotting and political reprisal as if they were rushing to join hands with Dr. King in Montgomery, which is totally fucking childish and near-hubristic and makes me sympathetic to anyone who wants to reject that out of hand. I don’t know enough about California politics to make an informed decision as to the breadth of political consequences of my actions in this case, and I’m guessing neither do 99.99 percent of the people who have characterized their decision that way. And by being arrogant enough to think your taking your two nursed-over gin and tonics and shitty tips elsewhere is going to rock Douglas Manchester’s world, you’ve let people use this as a standard by which to not join you. I mean, people! Come on! God help any cause that gets the moral arm of the comics industry fighting on its side. We’re the Washington Generals of ethical confrontation.
However:
What I *do* know is that 1) deciding where I want to plant my fat ass to drink and shake hands is not something worth spending a lot of energy defending in the light of 2) my fellow industry members feeling deeply uncomfortable about a place of business and asking me to consider doing something elsewhere until this situation shakes out.
Let me put it to you like this. If you were in a group of people walking towards the Hyatt and saw a hetero girl or an African-American dude or a gay person you know from the industry sitting near that parking garage upset as all hell because he/she was made to feel totally uncomfortable in the Hyatt bar, I have to think every single person that I know in the comics industry would go, “Well, fuck going there! Does anyone know if the Marriott has a decent place open?”
I doubt it would be put in terms of a boycott, or the political expediency of it would be debated, or any of the rest of the stupidity that’s been floated or asserted over the last few days.
I’m about to spend a weekend paying attention to the latest bleatings from any number of exploitative companies where men get six-figure bonuses for spending 7 minutes a month shepherding movies based on properties created by people who can’t afford to make the trip in the middle of an orgy of unnecessary spending six blocks from a barrio in an atmosphere of rank stupidity and childish wallowing seemingly designed to turn the entire Western World into something that much fucking dumber than they were last year this time.
So I can’t take the moral high ground on, well, anything.
But you know, I bumped into this guy Chris on my way up to the Hyatt — he’s a guy I work with — and that place makes him feel really uncomfortable and unwelcome and now I’m going to take a few seconds here on this sidewalk and decide what I’m going to do.
Tom, you’re absolutely right in your “let me put it to you like this” example. And after seeing Chris’s words to me above, I sincerely hope that anything I’ve said on the subject of boycotts over on The Beat doesn’t lead anyone to think that I wouldn’t want someone, who is experiencing hurt or discomfort about this Doug Manchester situation, to not feel like they have options.
And like you, I can’t take the moral high ground either… not just because the room DC is paying for me to stay in is in the Hyatt, but because of any number of the goods and services supplied by “evil” corporations I’ll be consuming just GETTING to this convention. It’s the world we live in, but everyone has their line they need to draw, and I respect that.
bri
If there’s three guys I put to the front of the line in terms of “guys I listen to and respect,” it’s Chris, Tom and Brian. Well said, all. And God bless everyone.
In protest, I intend to marry Chip Zdarsky in San Diego this weekend.
Sorry, Scott. I’m boycotting San Diego.
In that case, I intend to marry Ramon Perez this weekend. You snooze you lose, Zdarsky!
Seriously, though, I just came back from vacation and am getting caught up with all this Hyatt business. I don’t think that the owner of the Hyatt gives a damn whether or not I drink there this weekend. And I certainly don’t intend to start researching the political contributions/beliefs of the owners of every bar, retaurant, or hotel I walk into. All that said, though, I think Tom hit the nail on the head: while I wouldn’t be uncomfortable drinking at the Hyatt, the fact that friends of mine obviously would be is something I have to respect.
So, no Hyatt for me.
In that case, I intend to marry Ramon Perez this weekend. You snooze you lose, Zdarsky!
Seriously, though, I just came back from vacation and am getting caught up with all this Hyatt business. I don’t think that the owner of the Hyatt gives a damn whether or not I drink there this weekend. And I certainly don’t intend to start researching the political contributions/beliefs of the owners of every bar, retaurant, or hotel I walk into. All that said, though, I think Tom hit the nail on the head: while I wouldn’t be uncomfortable drinking at the Hyatt, the fact that friends of mine obviously would be is something I have to respect.
So, no Hyatt for me.
Geez, why is everyone screaming at each other? God, you turn your back on the internet for one weekend and look what happens.
I hope that whichever bar I wind up in has Brian Wood in it because he’s the least likely to yell, “Are you fucking high you fucking useless fuckshot?!” if he disagrees with me on something.
I’m backing a ballot initiative to recognize the awesomeness of the word “fuckshot.”
I’m boycotting the San Diego Hyatt but still marrying Zdarsky!