Something interesting to me and that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how people exempt corporations and larger and/or similar entities from proscriptions that they happily apply and mis-apply (IMO) to individuals.

For instance, among most falling-in-line type liberals, the vaunted practice of street photography is these days seen as borderline harassment, if not outright harassment, no matter its intent.

However, even most liberal types will either do nothing about pervasive CCTV monitoring in cities, or even outright support it if it assists in their gentrification of a neighborhood or removal of undesirables and the like.

The two are not different. Arguably, the CCTV tracking is a far worse infraction of basic rights.

My thoughts on this aren’t fully-formed, and it is a collective action problem I realize, but I am more interested in the psychological oddness around being tacitly ok with a far-worse infringement of rights that one feels one can’t do anything about. Meanwhile, surveillance by corporations and the government even after Snowden is not-much-discussed outside small corners of the internet.

About my post below, that is an example of gentrification of sorts – the gentrification of cuisine.

My partner actually thought of that idea, and it’s a good one. Real barbecue is cooked for a long time on an open air smoker using (usually) real oak or similar wood.

I guarantee none of those restaurants are doing that. They just could not afford to keep the doors open and do it that way.

What they are selling is yuppie barbecue that is designed to replicate the experience of authentic barbecue in acceptably posh surroundings without having any of the real flavor or essence that makes great barbecue great.

Most yuppies who can afford to eat at those places will have no idea that they’ve been conned, that they aren’t eating anything like real barbecue and might not even like it if they did.

Anyway, here’s what real barbecue made in a real smoker looks like. Notice how the ribs and barbecue in the yuppie restaurants’ photos look absolutely nothing like this, because many of them haven’t actually been smoked and if they were, it was for far too short a time.

Now that’s falling off the bone properly cooked and smoked barbecue. From here.

Ha, what?

Barbecue is like sweet tea in that it’s almost never good outside of the South.

I bet there are 30 better barbecue places in and around Chattanooga alone than the 30 in this entire list.

And any barbecue place that requires or even accepts reservations ain’t no kind of barbecue place I’d ever set foot in.

This list is a damn joke, in other words.

The best barbecue I’ve ever eaten I bought from some dude with a smoker in a parking lot next to a K-Mart in North Carolina that was technically still open but had descended into complete decrepitude and near-desuetude.

I guarantee that none of those listed places are anywhere near that good, since most people primarily “taste” on ambiance and not actual flavor.

For the K-Mart bbq guy, and as it is for most people who make really good barbecue, it’s almost a religion to them. They really care about it. Smoking it for only two hours? Hell no. It’s got to be eight, or it’s not barbecue. They won’t even sell it.

I bet none of those restaurants cook it like it’s really supposed to be cooked. They couldn’t and sell it affordably with all the other overhead they have.

The best barbecue places invariably in my experience are either like that dude on the side of the road, or some place where décor is completely secondary or utterly forgotten. In other words, complete holes-in-the-wall with likely slightly-surly staff who care about the food and little else.