The world is a bad gag
There was a brief gag from the series The young people in which Balowski enters a shop and says something like, "Good morning, is this a cheese shop?"; "No," replies the shopkeeper. "We've ruined the gag," the first one concludes. It was an absurd and delirious scene, but since we live in times where absurdity and delirium have taken over reality, perhaps it's time to accept that this running gag Life is losing all its charm.
An example:
A new business has just opened on Velázquez Street that has me intrigued.
I couldn't say if it's a café, an ice cream shop, or a laser hair removal center. In any case, the fact that there are treadmills and all kinds of fitness machines makes me suspect that it might be a gym, but I'm not entirely sure either.
They don't exactly make it easy for you. The facade only makes it clear that it's a club, without specifying what kind. The only thing that's obvious is that, to begin with, you're not part of it, because if you were, you'd know what it's all about and you'd probably be a member, and your understanding would be able to process the image of a bar populated by an army of helpful guests and over-motivated hostesses and a couple of tables where single fans who look like expats are with a personal trainer, who also looks like he's theirs. trader, next door.
These kinds of businesses are neither unique nor new: there are cafes that are actually bike shops or yoga studios; there are chocolate shops that look like perfume shops, perfume shops that look like flower shops, and flower shops where they cut your hair; there are ateliers, showrooms, pop-up stores that are none of these things, or only half-heartedly so, or barely so; there's a lot of avocado toast with chia seeds and a lot of specialty coffee circulating through this coworking the giant that the center of Palma has become; but above all there is a simulation ofCosmopolitanism, which is really just the turbo-capitalist steamroller flattening any difference and turning all those supposed experiences it sells you into one, homogenizing the world with ridiculous motivational phrases. But where are Balowski's steel-toed Dr. Martens when we need them?
And in parallel:
Who wants an oven that's just an oven?
A few weeks ago, one of the best in Palma, Fortí, closed because the new owners of the building kicked them out. They made everything good in that oven. Literally: everything. But times demand specialization and guysOtherwise, how can they enlighten us? influencers with his own reelsBlessed are they, for being the answer to the question no one has asked. Some will win. followers And some will make money; and some Swedish investors, some dutifully docile and exploited tenants. Palma will lose yet another piece of the city to foreign capital, but we customers have lost something more: a livable life, or at least a joke with a modicum of sense.