Comments
  1. You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • loundytampa2 years ago

      good read & i wouldnt be caught dead at this establishment but i enjoyed reading about it

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      2 years ago

      This has been done so many times (New York-based culture writer goes to chain restaraunt in Time Square, arrives to skewer the place but decides that there's actually a "deeper” story there) but it's still really enjoyable. And this one is particularly thoughtful and rewarding. The digressions about capitalism, work/life balance, Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, etc are on point. Alternately loving and hating that Margaritaville Statue of Liberty is a metaphor for something big that exists in all of us.

      • Karenz
        Scribe
        2 years ago

        Bill, you’re take on this made me laugh because it’s how I felt about it as well! Who thinks up things like the Statue of Liberty holding a margarita—with a light show yet??!! I’m a weird person who mostly resists “being entertained.” I would never go to Time’s Square let alone this resort but I enjoyed reading about the experience.

    • chronotope2 years ago

      What a fascinating perspective on not just this location but even why Margaritaville exists and how it sort of defeats itself.

      The 5 o’Clock Somewhere bar wouldn’t exist if work didn’t end at 5 o’Clock. The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states in Article 24 that “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” This article came after, and seems likely to have been influenced by, labor movements around the world at the turn of the 20th century, as activists campaigned and died for things like a weekend, or the eight hour workday. The concept of leisure, what economist Thorstein Veblen defined as the “non-productive consumption of time,” for anyone but the richest classes, was still new in the 20th century. But by 1948 more people had time for it.