Tag: owned

I guess we know who’s vying to be the next Spirit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some friends and I were bullshitting on the topic of how Spirit Airlines is seemingly knocking at death’s door, about how if and when Spirit goes under, who takes their place in the airline pecking order, as the new budget airline that will absorb the lion’s share of ridicule and be the butt of all airline travel jokes?  Surely, one would emerge, seeing as how that’s just the natural order of nature, that if the weakest link of any category were to be cut off and killed, that someone would inevitably become the next in line.

The obvious choice would be Frontier, which is basically just Spirit Airlines but branded in green, as far as being a budget airline that lives on nickel and diming the fuck out of their customers, but for those who play it smart, a fairly serviceable option to get from point A to B.  And as someone who has flown both airlines on multiple occasions before, they really are pretty one and the same, and it would stand to believe that when Spirit goes under, those who already didn’t think Frontier was the ass-end of the airline industry, might not have any choice in the matter.

However, a surprising* contender appears to be emerging, as far as being a strong candidate to be the next Spirit, and that would be the once-reputable, once-universally beloved, once-proclaiming to love their customers, Southwest Airlines.

*or not, given the general direction of the company over the span of the last two years

Over the span of the last 12+ months, Southwest has made a tremendous amount of operational changes, with almost none of them being remotely beneficial to consumers.  First, it was them ceasing the whole open seating policy they had, which, to some was welcome, but to others, a sign of conformity and how they were taking one step closer to becoming another United or American or any other middling airline.  Then, in a move that definitely rose the ire of travelers, was the implementation of baggage fees, when for years prior, they boasted how bags flew free. 

And just over the last few days alone, Southwest has continued moving in conceivably the wrong direction, by announcing a large slew of route cuts, that will adversely affect lots of travelers from having direct options, and even had the audacity to try to spin that layovers were opportunities to see different parts of the country.  For as long as it took them to get their hooks into Atlanta, it looks like they’re already trying to reduce, with supposedly over 50% fewer flights this time next year, departing from ATL.

But one new development that is sure to draw the wrath of the internet as well as many around the country is their redefining of the large passenger policy, which was previously that large passengers could purchase a single seat, and get a second seat por gratis, if the flight could accommodate it, which was polarizingly applauded by many as a firm stance of allyship of inclusion of people of all body shapes and sizes.  Under their new policy, large passengers will have to preemptively purchase two seats if they know they will need them, and refunds of the second seat would be taken into consideration but not guaranteed, presumably on a case-by-case basis.

The latter is still probably better than what most other airlines offer, but it doesn’t take a genius to anticipate that the wrath of the internet is just going to see this as a sign of Southwest hates fat people, and when perception becomes reality, they become just like all the other airlines in the end.

The point is, Southwest is seemingly giving no more fucks about customers, contrary to the general brand reputation of theirs over the last two decades prior.  They’ve made it crystal clear that they are trying to profit in a competitive market, which is white people speak for, we know we’d probably be fine operating like we had been over the last half century, but we want to make more money now, so we’re going to say fuck the people and just do what everyone else is doing in order to achieve that.

I mean ultimately, that is the goal of every business in the world, to make money, but there are ways to do it and keep integrity and respect of the people intact, but that of course, often comes at a cost in itself, and when a bunch of old white guys run all these corporations, integrity and respect quickly fall to the wayside in pursuit of those extra nickels and dimes.

But it is funny how rapidly Southwest is selling their soul in order to go from successful company to asshole-rich successful company.  A part of me begins to wonder if Southwest isn’t deliberately tanking their company in one of those strange-but-typical modus operandi of businesses slashing expenses in a massive manner through liquidation and layoffs, in anticipation of a company sale or merger, and that Southwest is somewhere in a process of selling the company or getting absorbed by another airline.

And if so, a little more to be poured out for the airline industry, because within the guts of Southwest Airlines exists the remnants of AirTran, the budget airline that did succeed, and that I flew the shit out of, because they accomplished absolutely everything I needed out of an airline at reasonable costs.  Spirit and Frontier never could accomplish the things AirTran did, and AirTran did so well, they got assimilated into Southwest, who like Microsoft or Adobe basically did in so in order to kill a competitor.

Regardless of what happens to Southwest’s business in the future, if there was ever a bigger red flag of how they could become the next Spirit, look no further than the terminal incident out of Orlando, where a Southwest passenger went ballistic, and assaulted a terminal worker, as well as smashed up some monitors.  It’s funny because if this were actually Spirit, the lady would have been tazed and arrested within moments of the first aggression, but it’s like Southwest still has a lot to learn about unruly passengers, and she went unchecked for a while before presumably getting dealt with long after the cameras stopped rolling.

But if Southwest continues down this downward spiral, anticipate way more of this bullshit, and their gates will become the future places to meander to when you have a long wait before your flight after Spirit is gone, with hopes that you might see a street fight or a massive hot mess passenger meltdown.

Cracker Barrel’s rebrand: the question stands

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

USA Today: Cracker Barrel unveils a new logo; the internet is unsurprisingly not impressed

When the day is over, I have no skin in the game of the existence of Cracker Barrel.  Full disclosure, I haven’t been to a Cracker Barrel since I lived on the south side of the city, when they opened a brand new Cracker Barrel not far (relatively) from my old place, and upon going there, all the big wigs and managers and trainers were there, so everyone was on their best behavior and it was actually a decent experience.

But no matter if people hate the new logo or people love it, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it one way or the other, and can only really share opinions and thoughts based on the creative direction of it, as well as relish in some of the less tasteful jokes that the internet is particularly known for generating about anything and everything in existence.

But my first blush impression and my knee-jerk reaction upon seeing the new Cracker Barrel logo was that of unsurprise at the fact that they removed both the man and the barrel, and have homogenized it down to an uninspired shape.  However, I am surprised at the fact that they did manage to keep the general wordmark of the text mostly intact, instead of just typing out “cracker barrel” in a variation of Helvetica Neue or Myriad, like so many companies inevitably do, as if they’re determined to not pay anyone for a font, and are completely at peace with just writing it out in system default fonts.

So it’s kind of a push in the sense that they did murder all the character and uniqueness of the logo by removing both the man and the barrel, as well as the unsymmetrical shape in which the wordmark was housed, but still managed to preserve some sense of character, familiarity and recognition by at least keeping the wordmark mostly the same.

A hexagon with rounded corners isn’t a vanilla rhombus or oval like so many brands have boiled down to in this modern business space, and at least they appear to have kept their primary color intact; however, it appears they’ve cheapened up by swapping out their brown for a black, thus making future production simplified in that they technically only need one additional color outside of black and white.

Honestly, the container looks a little too large for the wordmark, and in the event like creating signage and advertising materials, the general proportion of it compared to the Cracker Barrel name is might end up looking comical, or lead to some comically large signs in order to compensate.

But like I said, when the day is over, I do not care one iota about this rebrand, beyond the obvious joke that was made in the shown screen grab – why DID they get rid of both the cracker and the barrel??  Considering the brand is kind of synonymous for being a white people eatery, not entirely sure why they’d go to the lengths of alienating them by removing paw-paw from the logo, but whatever.  As far a corporate rebrands go, this one is far from the worst, and it’s not going to suddenly make me want to deal with the shitty parking situations enough to want to actually go to a Cracker Barrel again any time soon.

LOL Dodgers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

LA Times: Los Angeles Angels of Orange County, Anaheim, California sweep the Los Angeles Dodgers, completing a 6-0 season sweep; also Dodgers fall out of first place, also Shohei Ohtani hits into a triple play lmao

I said it before earlier in the season when the Angels marched into Dodger Stadium and took all three games, the Dodgers will probably be fine, probably still win the division and are probably still the odds-on favorites to win the World Series, but it was still hilarious to see them get bounced so badly, not only at home, but to the crosstown rivals in the Angels, who are not really a good team.

So it bears repeating that it is again hilarious that the Angels have swept the Dodgers for the second time in the same season, but this time at their own home in Angel Stadium, because a lot of the circumstances have not really changed, but somehow, neither did the result. 

The Dodgers were in first place in the NL West going into this series, and the Angels were many games under .500, and nowhere near contention in the AL West much less a wild card spot.  And yet, when the smoke cleared on Wednesday night, it was the Angels who rattled off their sixth straight win against the Dodgers this season, completing the series sweep of the year; and in doing so, knocking them out of first place in the NL West, dropping them a game behind the San Diego Padres.

I like to imagine that the amount salt bubbling up amid the legions of lifetime front-running fairweather Dodgers fans since 2024 is massive, delicious and of course loud as shit because there’s no more sore winners than Dodger fans these days, which means they’re somehow even more butthurt when they’re losing.

To me, the best part about this whole embarrassing flop was the fact that it was kind of punctuated, when Shohei Ohtani lined into an extremely rare triple play, which was on the verge of being unassisted, had the runner at first not had the brakes and turn when he did.  Even the most valuable and popular baseball player on the face of the planet was not immune to colossal failure, and I like to facetiously throw in the face of sports communities to be on the lookout for yet another FIRST TIME EVER statistic to solely attribute to Ohtani, like being the FIRST EVER player with 250+ career home runs and an ERA under 3 to hit into a triple play at Angel Stadium on a night game – and it’s Shohei Ohtani. That’s it.

Like I’ve said many times, I don’t dislike Shohei Ohtani, I think he’s a rather pleasant guy who hasn’t let his superstardom really to his head too much.  He’s too Japanese to have such a flagrant ego.  It’s just I dislike that the media can’t get off his nuts and have forced his existence down the throats of sports people, to where I’m left with no choice but defiance and playa-hatin’.   And by proxy, the Dodgers, which is awkward because I still love Freddie Freeman more than I care about any of the current Braves roster, but it all boils down to the fact that I enjoy seeing the Dodgers lose.

Regardless, I still maintain that the Dodgers will be fine, and their predicted success at the end of the year hasn’t changed.  They’ll still make the playoffs, and they’re still a high-probability pick to win the World Series.  But anything short of glory, and snarky fans like myself can all call back to these two specific series in the season as symbolic foretelling to why they failed.

lol, get owned Dodgers

Gunther treating the WWE like a day job makes me like him more

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During an appearance, former WWE world champion Gunther was met by a fan who proclaimed to have driven nine hours in order to meet him.  Usually a lot of workers, regardless of if they’re a face or a heel would probably say something along the lines of ehhh that’s an honor or ehhh I really appreciate that or at the very least, thank you. 

I mean, I’m pretty self-deprecating and am really uncomfortable when any sort of praise is lavished onto me, but even I’d probably say something to express my gratitude and how humbled I am that anyone would want to travel a great distance to see me, and of course, thank you.

But nah, Gunther claims to have told this fan:

Do something better with your time.  Do something that actually benefits you.

And the thing is, I don’t get the impression that he’s playing the heel that he is supposed to be in the WWE character alignment chart.  I genuinely feel like that that’s precisely how he felt about the information, regardless of how well-intentioned it was.  Sure, there’s some murky waters on where this quote is coming from, but if I’m a betting man, I’d wager that this is the real Walter Hahn coming through, and that it’s not that he’s probably not appreciative and grateful that people want to see him, but he genuinely believes that there are more beneficial things out there for people to want to do with their time rather than seek him out for a quick meet and greet.

I’ve read/watched some interviews with him in the past, and if there’s one thing that has remained consistent is how often he has voluntarily opined that he was always dubious that he and the WWE would pair together, because he makes no secret that the general WWE style and his style didn’t necessarily align in the past.  He always credits Japan, specifically strong style as being more of an inspiration to him than anyone in the WWE ecosystem, but he seems intelligent enough to know that for the sake of his future and future well-being, there’s no better place to go than the WWE.

The point is, it’s as if he treats his WWE career like a day job, where sure, he will give his best efforts to the company, do whatever it is that he’s told in order to make as much money as he can in the time that his body can perform, but when the day is over, he will not bleed WWE and be the kind of guy that will be synonymous with the company, ten or twenty years down the line.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a high on Gunther, and I admit that I was not on board when he first showed up in NXT UK, as Walter, looking all doughy and with man tits, and I was not on board with him ending Pete Dunne’s UK championship reign.  I thought his style was excessively stiff, and I couldn’t get over the physical eye test, that this guy was being booked as such hot shit as he was.

But then he had matches with Tyler Bate, carried the fuck out of Joe Coffey, and then the match with Ilja Dragunov in an empty COVID-era BT studios, changed my mind, at just how talented of a worker he was.  He showed up to NXT in America and had great matches with Tommaso Ciampa, and then eventually passed the torch to Dragunov in the highly anticipated rematch.  Then he arrived on the main roster, but in much better shape, and over the months, would improve physically as well as find his groove working main roster.  He won the Intercontinental blet, held it for over 600 days, and proved that he could have a good match with pretty much anyone and I was already a fan by now, and has further ascended in the company hierarchy, where he’s just barely removed from having lost the World heavyweight championship for the second time.

And the whole time, he’s been treating it like a day job, and absolutely nothing more than that, and I really love that that’s the vibe he gives me, because for some reason, I really appreciate guys who operate like that.

One commenter, than more commenters as the story began to circulate, said one thing that stuck with me, and served as the impetus to this whole post, was along the lines of how Gunther was the WWE’s equivalent to Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets’ wunder center, whom it’s so obvious that the NBA is his day job, and that he wants nothing more than to be home in Serbia, raising his horses.  A ton of jokes were had within the last two weeks where footage of him sobbing with happiness at one of his horses winning a race, compared to when he won the NBA championship for the Nuggets, and then basically asked at the press conference when he could go home.

Andrew Luck is another guy that treated his career, as an NFL quarterback, as a tedious day job, that I loved the way he conducted business.  He clearly sat down with mom and dad with a tall glass of milk at the kitchen table, and drew Venn diagrams and wrote down career pros and cons lists and landed on NFL quarterback at being the most fiscally beneficial for the long term.  Otherwise, when not playing football, he was far the fuck away from the sport.

But yeah, Gunther is totally just like Jokic and Luck in the sense that he might be an outstanding wrestler and does give his full effort to the business, but when the day is over, it’s not his passion, it’s not his end-all, and he probably has some interests he’s way more into than wrestling.

A while back, I remember seeing a video of Gunther dancing at his wedding, doing an Indian dance (Bhangra?); of course an athlete of his talent is probably doing it correctly and not looking like an idiot, but the most notable thing about it is the massive smile on his face.  Now I’ve seen a lot of Gunther over the last few years, and he’s had some heel-ish smirks and smiles in his promo work, but there ain’t ever been an instance where he’s had such a genuine or happy looking look on his face as he is dancing with his new bride. 

Man didn’t give in to any sense of elation at winning the NXT UK championship, or when he won the Intercontinental championship, or even when he defeated Damian Priest for his first WWE World title.

WWE Superstar truly is his day job, and the fact that this attitude bleeds out into how he interacts with fans, I fucking love it.  This whole mentality of his only serves to make me like and appreciate him more, and I can imagine that he’s definitely going to be one of those guys that retires way earlier than he would be physically capable of doing, and we will absolutely not see him again, except during his Hall of Fame induction, or any overseas shows where you also know the E had forked over a hefty fee in order to entice him to show up.

So if we are Gunther fans, aside from the fact that we should probably be doing some more productive things with our lives, we should probably appreciate him to the fullest while we have him, because I have a feeling he’s definitely going to retire earlier than lots of balls-to-the-wall professional wrestlers will.

MLB Speedway Classic: great success not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FTW: MLB’s Speedway Classic at Bristol Motor Speedway featuring the Atlanta Braves vs. Cincinnati Reds turns out to be massive failure for attendees, sparking comparisons to Fyre Festival

There was a moment on Saturday with the weather being all wet and crappy, where I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be ownage if the Speedway Classic got rained on and the game couldn’t take place?

That’s always the inherent risk with an outdoor sport like baseball, and trying to coordinate a singular, special event game; the one absolute thing that cannot be controlled – the weather.  And almost if I prophesized the event, the weather did come into play at the Speedway Classic, and no matter how much MLB tried to stall, delay and wait out the weather, they only managed to get in a single inning of game in before they threw their hands up and suspended the game, proclaiming the game would be resumed the following day; on what was supposed to be a rare Sunday day off for the Braves and Reds, on account of them altering their schedules to accommodate a special event game.

So, owned.

To the fans in attendance who were probably hoping to watch the game, and either skip town and or make a trip of it on Sunday – also owned.

Television rights having to adjust for the unpredictable schedule change – owned.

However, all this ownage aside, on the ground level, as among the alleged 90,000+ attendees who descended onto Bristol Motor Speedway, hoping to be in attendance for a supposed special event of monumental proportions, there was apparently a whole lot more ownage, which as the angst and frustration grew, many were more than eager and willing to vent to the internet.

And as much as I’m the type of fan who loves baseball so much that I hate it, few things make me arrogantly smirk in satisfaction than whenever MLB fucks things up, which is precisely what happened with how they handle the ground operations at the Speedway Classic.

Most notably, the sheer lack of preparedness when it came to handling the event at the stadium level, with countless gripes about there being inadequate or not enough food available to attendees, primarily summed up by a photo montage of nachos without cheese and hot dogs without buns, with there being some very quick comparisons to the photo of a shitty sandwich that became the photographic embodiment of the notorious Fyre Festival shitshow.

Fans who aired out their frustration were immediately combatted by mostly people who weren’t there who for whatever reason feel the need to defend MLB, the event or venue, but it just leads to an absolute clusterfuck where nobody wins and people like me just want to sit back and watch the carnage like the Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif.

But aside from the debacles revolving around food, there were many allegations of them running out of food and merchandise all before the game even got under way, and lots of piling on to the flop of the logistics of an event scheduled well beyond a year ago, despite the fact that it was at a NASCAR venue which holds multiple races a year without breaking a sweat, and the general consensus that it’s massive egg on MLB’s face for such horrendous planning.

Frankly, I don’t even really know why MLB wanted to do this in the first place.  My guess is that it’s a veiled temperature check to see how the region supports MLB, because between Nashville and Raleigh, there’s always rumor about possible MLB expansion, with that general mid-Atlantic region being considered.  But also MLB doesn’t need any reasons for doing anything other than the fact that they’re greedy cocksuckers who are trying to make money by any means necessary, and holding special events seems like an easy cash grab, no matter how poorly they execute it because fans are gullible and easy to manipulate into forking over their dough.

Make no mistake, this was entirely MLB’s fault for such poor planning, and such poor execution.  And I love to see it, especially since I’m so far removed from my baseball fandom that I was nowhere remotely close to experiencing it.  Maybe a decade ago when I was still pretty hard into my fandom, I’d be tempted to be a part of it, but I’m really fucking glad that I’m where I’m at now, and had no interest in it.

And of course, the Braves won the game, in spite of them giving up a run in the one inning they played on Saturday.  Which kind of stinks from the standpoint of that the Braves will hold onto this meaningless win and inject as much meaning into it as possible amidst a horrendous season, and I don’t want them to have any wins to celebrate, because this team will never truly ever get better unless they hit a bottom that really makes them try to rethink the way they operate.

But whatever, massive lol’s on my end, for all the sheer amounts of ownage that was doled out over the weekend on account of MLB’s pathetic fuck ups.

Las Vegas sucks now, plain and simple

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every time I come across posts or articles about the general downward trends of Las Vegas tourism, I just scoff and remind myself to hold my tongue and save it for the brog, because I think I’m in the minority now about my feelings and attitude about Las Vegas.

But as the subject of this post says, Las Vegas sucks now, and is a far cry from the place that I used to go to multiple times a year, and it makes me sad to see just how much it’s changed and how I just now have absolutely no desire to go back any time soon.  And like I said, I think I’m in the minority here, especially among my friends who all seem to think the place is still good, regardless of if they acknowledge the changes or not, and as to not be the Debbie Downer, I more often than not, keep my feelings unspoken since I don’t want to be accused of peeing in the pool.

But yeah, Las Vegas sucks now, and I fully understand why their tourism and revenues are trending downwards, and feel little opinion other than the euphemism that this is the bed they made, and they have to lay in it.

Sure, COVID had a lot to do with their state of collapse, as a city so reliant on tourism was absolutely decimated when the whole world was encouraged to stay put, but the whole city didn’t do themselves any favors once things started to return to normalcy.  It’s like the whole place went into this determined recoup-mode, and decided to up the cost of just about everything in sight in order to make up for lost dollars from the pandemic, and as often the case whenever any business raises costs to justify something, once that something has been justified, they grow so used the revenues that they make no attempt to revert or reduce, and as is the case with Vegas, they actually doubled down and kept increasing the cost of everything to further push people to see how much they can get away with.

See, the Vegas I remember and loved, it wasn’t $Fuck you.99 per night to stay anywhere on the Strip, and there weren’t Ticketmaster-amounts of resort fees every night.  Parking was often free, which justified getting a rental car so we didn’t have to get taxis everywhere, and could occasionally explore the city beyond the Strip.  Food, sure, had its upscale joints where you could feel like a baller, but there were also plenty of options where you could get a cheap meal or just enough to satiate hunger, and it not be an automatic $100+ bill.

Every resort had a buffet, and I can say that I’d been to almost all of them at various points of my life, from the Riviera’s, Aladdin’s, MGM’s, Mandalay Bay’s, and my guiltiest of pleasures was the Rio’s Carnival World Buffet, where on two different times, separated by years, I managed to get the same server who had this creepy, Igor-like demeanor, but was still nice and did his job well.  But, they’re all gone now, with to my knowledge, the only ones truly left and worth a damn, being like Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio and Cosmopolitan.

Drinks were plentiful, and thankfully is still the case, free as long as you’re gambling, but for when you weren’t blowing all your money away, a domestic beer didn’t cost $20 plus a tip.

Which brings us to gambling, where across the board, the cost to play has risen to where the last two times I went to Vegas, I was basically done after a single day’s gambling.  I used to be able to bring $500 in cash, and manage to have a pretty fun long weekend; I could be lucky enough to play with some house case from time to time, and when the trips were over, be able to come back with a little left.  Now, $500 can’t get me through a single day, which was almost literal when my last trip was just 24-hours, with gambling time being less than four of those hours.

Casinos hardly bother with fluctuating table minimums anymore, and the lowest on the Strip is like $15, which is a perfectly uneven number to where anyone who wants to play a hundo, has almost no possibly way of playing an exact amount at $15 a hand or spin of anything without having an embarrassing remainder, or need to buy back in, and it makes me think of the New York MTA and how their fares are mathematically strategized so that it’s almost impossible to zero out a fare card, and the city rakes in millions a year on forfeited remainders.

The bottom line is that Las Vegas has completely abandoned even remotely trying to cater to anyone that isn’t at the very least, upper class, or can at least pretend to be for the duration of a trip.  Middle-class and lower schmucks like me can no longer afford to go there comfortably, much less have a good time, when we’re being gauged left and right, having the city wishing they could charge us to breathe.

I’m of the belief that there’s way more money to be made in catering to everyone, and my favorite stories in business are always ones where companies have embarked on such strategies and have found immense amounts of success in doing such, like sports teams that lower their tickets, concessions and accessibility and then they make record profits.  Apps that are released for free, but then rake in millions on ad revenue and in-game micro-transactions.  Look at Wal-Mart, whose last time I checked was #1 on the Fortune 500 for the last 30 years, because they cater to the lower class, and they make fuck numbers of profits every year in doing so.

And Las Vegas turning their back to those under the upper class line, screams of elitism, catering to the wealthy and those arrogant enough to demand exclusivity, I enjoy reading and seeing things about how their numbers aren’t doing as hot as they probably wish they were doing.  I love reading comments full of shade and criticisms from people who feel similarly to how I do, abandoned and resentful, and pining for a Las Vegas that they once loved so much, they used to “joke” with their friends about exploring looking for a rental property.

Like I said, this is the bed that they made, and it’s what they have to lay in, and I hope that one day, Las Vegas can get back to closer to being the city I once loved and hopefully in time for me to have some more memorable trips with my friends and my family.

Oh, Atlanta #781

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: City of Atlanta unveils new uniforms for APD, cites being for the 2026 FIFA World Cup

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these Oh, Atlanta posts, but I haven’t really expended the time necessary to seek out local news like I used to, and honestly it this wasn’t fed to me via theFacebook, I never would’ve seen it.  But I did, and just like this it triggered my general disdain for this city’s flagrant abuse of taxpayer dollars, and I just know that hizzoner Dickens has some crony in his back pocket who benefitted from this whole ridiculous “redesign” of police uniforms.

Frankly, if there were ever something that never needed a redesign, I’d put police uniforms high up on that list.  It’s like no matter what city you go to, at least in America, cop uniforms are fairly universal.  Black shoes, black slacks, and a shirt that’s either black, white or powder blue.  Like it’s standard issue throughout the entire realm of law enforcement, regardless of it’s in Tukwila, Washington, Omaha, Nebraska, Skaneateles, New York, or, Atlanta, Georgia.

Except Atlanta has decided that they’re special little snowflakes that APD needed to have their own unique police uniforms, and it’s smart that nowhere have I seen any estimated cost that went into these redesigned uniforms, because frankly any number higher than $0 is an overpay and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. 

Like I said, I’ve lived here long enough to know that the mayor knew a guy who did some apparel, and this is a classic you scratch my back, I scratch yours case, in that designer guy gets the APD contract for uniforms, which I’m pretty sure all officers have to purchase their own gear, and the mayor probably gets some sort of kickback, whether it’s monetarily, or an IOU from APD to be redeemed at a later date.  Despite the fact that redesigning unforms probably should cost like $250K to do, it probably has an estimated price of like $1M, with the difference going into someone’s pocket like when you see news of a drug bust and the confiscated haul is anything but a perfectly round number.

Finally, let’s talk about the design themselves; as foolish as they look, I love how the article insinuates that the light blue checker pattern is:

 keeps APD’s signature dark blue base, now accented with a bold, internationally recognized light blue checkered pattern across the chest, sleeves, and pocket trim.”

Internationally recognized, really?  In my mind, the only things that visually represent Atlanta to me are the Coca-Cola ribbon and the Chick-Fil-A chicken-head C.  I definitely don’t envision light blue checkers, and I live here, I can’t imagine anyone in France, Ethiopia or Vietnam to recognize that pattern as immediately being an Atlanta, Georgia, United States thing.

Frankly, the checker pattern immediately makes me think of British police, and when I think of British police, I immediately envision those dorky Bobby helmets that a lot of the fuzz out there wear.  The best part is that when I glanced at the comments on the post about this, it didn’t take more than three comments before someone else made the remark about when the Bobby hats would be included in the kit for APD.

Either way, when it comes to the World Cup passing through Atlanta in 2026, I’m betting the mass amounts of people who will be coming here to watch futbol, probably will want to be as far away from APD officers as they can be throughout their stays, and honestly if the cops want to have any remote chance at blending in and to be effectively inconspicuous in order to deter crime, these uniforms are kind of working against them.

It’s just funny that Mayor Dickens and whomever fashion crony he’s in bed with for this whole bullshit debacle are using the World Cup as a smokescreen in order to push this dumbass agenda through.  We all see through this dumb ploy, and really the only losers in this whole thing are the poor officers of the APD who have to wear these goofy ass rags, and lord help any of the trolls and troglodytes of who tries to clown on a cop already agitated for having to wear goofy checkers on themselves, and end up the recipient of a World Star Hip Hop beatdown.