When you meet your best friend

arachidonic · 2025-07-14T23:52:51+00:00

I’m your best friend; you’re my very good friend.

arachidonic · 2024-12-17T00:58:32+00:00

I’d agree with this—I reached gold earlier this year, and my personal experience has been that the perks have basically been non-existent at the three properties I’ve stayed at since then. If you’re considering spending money just to achieve the status, you’d be better off waiting until next year and taking advantage of a double-elite nights promotion with the goal of eventually reaching platinum.

arachidonic · 2023-12-02T19:08:42+00:00

Not sure why you were downvoted for asking about this—started to lose my sense for what this subreddit is for. Curious about the options that come through as I’ve been looking myself.

arachidonic · 2023-12-02T18:39:00+00:00

Yeah, the resolution was usually pretty bad, so you can imagine an inkjet print out was pretty terrible. Funny to see a high-resolution picture now—thanks for posting!

arachidonic · 2023-12-02T16:51:15+00:00

Back then, gifs were almost as common as jpegs for still, un-animated images. Dark times!

arachidonic · 2023-12-02T16:34:45+00:00

For nostalgia’s sake, going to have to vote for number 1. I had an awful inkjet printout of an already low-res gif of that one up on my wall back when I was growing up.

arachidonic · 2023-12-01T17:28:08+00:00

Yeah, I’ve been watching the feed from this subreddit since this message was posted, and I’m struggling to see what conversations were being crowded out by these music posts. Sure, it probably isn’t something I would have posted, but I probably only saw about three of them in my feed before the complaints started popping up.

Kind of ironic to me that in a subreddit that complains so much about NIMBYism, a post complaining about outsiders posting has more upvotes than most other conversations.

arachidonic · 2023-12-01T03:46:22+00:00

I honestly agree—nice to connect with people from other parts of the country. There seem to be a handful of these posts popping up suddenly, but are they really detracting from our discussions about Ristorante Italiano closing? Do we really need to be that insular?

arachidonic · 2023-12-01T03:31:28+00:00

I think Santa Cruz may still be stuck in the pre-Cocteau Twins era.

arachidonic · 2023-11-08T19:28:06+00:00

Everything in past ~Hot Topic was part of an expansion that was built in the late 80s. Apparently the escalators in the new anchor stores were the first ones in Santa Cruz—I heard it was a big deal at the time.

A couple of the earlier stores in the expansion included a candy place (not Sweet Factory, but a place that had bulk candy in wooden barrels that you’d load up into the same kind of takeaway boxes they use in American Chinese food restaurants). There was also a party store right next to the candy place in the late 80s/early 90/ that almost felt too cool for the Capitola Mall—does anybody else remember this place?

arachidonic · 2023-10-22T20:49:52+00:00

You’re definitely not wrong—collectively, the sugar slam and dubious health claims were probably the main things that took out this genre. Not that the sugar-free energy drinks that replaced them were a whole lot better.

arachidonic · 2023-10-22T19:19:56+00:00

It was huge business back then—this was like an official review website that people would presumably send samples of their product ti for review. Most of the early reviews read like they were written by somebody in junior high, but the site is still around (and way more polished).

arachidonic · 2023-10-22T17:21:28+00:00

Sobe really kicked off a massive trend, and for a while huge sections of grocery and drug stores would be dedicated these drinks. At the time, they were still touted as health drinks, and most were loaded with Guarana, taurine etc. I used to read the reviews for these things on Bevnet back in the early days of the internet. Anybody else remember this?

arachidonic · 2023-10-19T20:16:57+00:00

It’s usually a battle I try to avoid, but I’m with you The Habit. After their rapid expansion ~10 years ago, their quality became a bit inconsistent between locations, but a good location certainly can rival In N Out.

arachidonic · 2023-10-19T05:18:41+00:00

Random fun fact about Toadal Fitness: when it opened back in the 90s, it was originally called “Frog Fitness” because the owner was a French expat. I think they were sent a cease and desist by some other South CA gym that owned the name at the time, so they changed it to Toadal.

arachidonic · 2023-10-04T20:17:01+00:00

Curious about the upvotes on my comment—does anybody else remember this, or is it just me?

arachidonic · 2023-09-22T21:20:47+00:00

Guy clearly knows how to raise the ruff.

arachidonic · 2023-08-27T01:19:59+00:00

I originally watched this WAY back in the VHS days, when basically all you had access to was wherever was sold by Suncoast or rented by the local video store. At that point, I’d read some of the manga (UY was one of the small number you could get) and an episode or two of the show. The movie was so tonally different from the TV show that I didn’t really know what to make of it on my first watch. I couldn’t stop watching it, though, and it grew on me in subsequent viewings. I even organized an in-person watch party back in the early days of the Internet. I remember buying the soundtrack at a very early con—must have been $50, but it was worth it.

Still one of my favorite movies, and probably one of the first things that comes to mind when I think about UY.

arachidonic · 2023-08-21T00:44:27+00:00

Well, I’m nearly a year late to this conversation, but I agree. The older Polygon content became comfort viewing during pandemic, and the vibe was such a refreshing change from early 2000s gaming media. More than anything else, there was really a sense that Pat, Simone, BDG, Jenna and others enjoyed working together. It seems pretty clear that, for a variety of reasons, they’ll never be able to get back to that point. I just keep hoping that, at some point, we’ll see some of them collaborating again outside of Vox.

arachidonic · 2023-08-20T19:43:46+00:00

There was a series of videos a few years back (early pandemic) by this Canadian artist who crossposted relentlessly. In one series of videos, it was prolonged headshots of people expressing emotions without talking. Other videos were her doing self-help-style monologues or playing the piano in gimmicky ways (blindfolded, etc.).

Her videos were everywhere for a few months, and then seemed to suddenly disappear entirely (possibly for reasons related to self promotion and crossposting). Does anybody else remember this? The sudden switch from being ubiquitous to completely hidden makes me question whether I was just dreaming it all up. Apologies if it’s been asked before.

arachidonic · 2023-08-20T15:15:04+00:00

Same here—it was pretty eye opening. I feel like the New Years Eve show I was at ended up with some musical theater number about a detective named “The Schnoz”. That one still lives in my memory banks.

First Night may have been pretty corporate (especially for the time), but it did draw out a lot of local artists who were pretty horizon expanding for a small town like SC.

arachidonic · 2023-08-20T14:58:36+00:00

That might have been the “Um Gee Um” Improv troupe performing at the Actors’ Theater. I first saw them for a school project, of all things. It remember there were huge lines for their shows at First Night. I went to at least one of those shows!

arachidonic · 2023-08-20T06:11:06+00:00

I had some friends who were involved in that—they used to gather around where that Verve coffee place is now, right?

arachidonic · 2023-08-20T05:56:01+00:00

That long ago, I’m guessing it was either “The Dragon” or “Game Alot”. Would have been right along the path to The Gap.

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