January 06, 2005
More on Masa
A propos WT's post below on the luxury of now 4-Star Masa, I thought I would link once more to this William Grimes article which I mentioned last June, where he describes dining at Masa's next-door cousin, Bar Masa, and spending $100 per person on a quick bite to eat without drinks or dessert:
I wanted to feel guilt. Honestly, I did. But among the many emotions I experienced as a reviewer -- happiness, annoyance, amusement, boredom, bliss, rage -- guilt never figured. I was more likely to get worked up over the price of parking in a garage than I was at the $150 for a splash of 19th-century Madeira or the $50 extra for a sprinkling of white truffles. Parking garages perform a function, but truffles delight the palate, a much higher calling. ...
In the comments to WT's post, people discuss whether they would pay $1000 for dinner there. My take: If I had enough money (how much is enough?) I very well might, but more for knowledge than straight hedonism. I'd want to know whether it was worth it, and sadly there is only one way to find out.
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Homecomings
Well, I've come home to Baton Rouge for a week to see old friends and eat good food (nothing like Masa; that's not the place of my memories). Home's a good place to go when it's time to make decisions. I've decided to leave and go west to the place that was actually my first home, though I don't count it as such because I have no memories from my time there. Sometimes in casual conversation I'll fudge this over because of the explanation required, but in truth, my passport says Los Angeles.
I'll be out in California until May, working an externship in Pasadena, and living in a house about five blocks from where I lived when I was a year old. This time, though, I'll have an aspiring actor for a roommate. Oh yes. It's all part of the true LA experience, along with an in-depth exploration of LA public transportation. I think I'll take a vacation from blogging, though. Writing feels a bit more different now that I'm back in America.
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In moderate defense of gift cards
[Given that what ensues is a series of potshot criticisms of Daniel Gross's Slate piece against gift cards, I would like to mention at the outset that I'm not wild about them as gifts, both because they are sometimes less fun, and because they make so facially plain exactly how much they are worth. That said:]
Via Paul Goyette (who has some smart criticisms of his own), I come across this Slate piece by Dan Gross, complaining about gift cards. Errors and confusions abound.
1: Gross writes:
Retailers love gift cards most of all. They're high-margin, low-maintenance sales that can be easily conducted online.
An item is usually called "high-margin" when its cost to the retailer is significantly lower than the price that the reatiler charges to you (as in "high profit-margin"). But gift cards' cost to the retailer is just the cost of the merchandise that the consumer buys (except for the interest rate effect Gross discusses elsewhere in the piece and the cost of making and selling the card, both of which are very small for a given transaction). So a gift card's margin is barely greater than the average margin of the goods the customer buys with it. That word should have gone. [UPDATE: A reader points out that it's possible that not all gift cards are redeemed, and that this turns gift cards into a high margin item. It is indeed possible, though Gross adduces no evidence of this, nor does he even allege it, which is odd, if that's what he meant. SECOND UPDATE: Super-reader Karl Bade sends along this estimate, that 10% of gift cards go unredeemed; now we're getting someplace. An article on unredeemed gift cards could have been an interesting moneybox piece. It is unfortunate that Gross didn't write it.]
2: Gross also writes:
Gift cards can seem a wee bit paternalistic and controlling. Gift cards are tailor-made for recipients who are irresponsible or deficient in taste and self-awareness—or who are simply prone to feeling that way. Give your teenager $50 and she might blow it on midriff-baring halter tops at Abercrombie & Fitch. But that J. Crew gift card can be spent only on presentable clothing. Dismayed that your boyfriend's recent reading list extends only as far as Maxim? A Border's gift card could send a message.
I will leave aside the broader point about paternalism for a moment and just deal with Gross's badly chosen examples. J. Crew sells halter tops and other midriff-baring stuff (gasp). Borders sells not just skin magazines, but also Maxim DVDs. If this is paternalism, it is ineffective parenting indeed.
3: Gross also points out that gift cards represent interest-free loans to the companies that sell them. Well, this is true enough. But of course, my checking account is an interest-free loan to the bank, the pile of change that gathers in the Lipton's tin on my bookshelf is also interest free, and so, for that matter, are the books I bought last year but still haven't gotten around to peeking at. I don't mind this, and it's unclear why Gross thinks we should.
[Paul suggests in his post that we might expect gift cards to sell at a slight discount because of this. Interestingly, they sometimes do, sometimes even at a larger discount.-- last time I was at a Lennie's Brewpub in Bloomington they were selling $100 gift cards for $80. I didn't buy one, but not for any economically rational reason, merely because of transaction aversion. A bookstore in the mall used to sell gift certificates without charging sales tax, but then wouldn't charge sales tax when you redeemed it either. I did buy a lot of those gift certificates, but oddly I didn't do it all the time, mostly because I felt vaguely guilty about taking their money.]
4: More generally, Gross's criticisms all can be reduced to the form "gift cards are a worse gift than cash because . . ." or "gift cards are a worse gift than an actual object because . . .", but that's because gift cards are someplace inbetween the two, combining some benefits of each.
I don't happen to like giving gift cards myself, and like Tyler Cowens 1 & 2 I do like to derive some pleasure from picking things for other people, but most of Gross's criticisms miss the mark. (The empirical fact that people spend more money than just the gift card, when they go to the store, is vaguely interesting if unsurprising.)
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