There is one thing in Hanover that confuses me more than anything else. More than the Sun God. More than the inclusion of that extra ingredient in Collis baked goods. More than any other Dartmouth culture reference that I can pull out. The thing that confuses me the most is Michael's.
What is Michael's? Michael's is an audio/video store located on Allen Street, in between Stinson's and Bagel Basement, two of Hanover's finest establishments. Michael's is clearly not a store. It is supposed to sell audio and video equipment, but the items for sale in the windows are Discmen. Haven't seen that word in a while, have you? It looks like the scientific name for something dirty.
Discmen.
"Hey man, you'll never believe what happened last night. Cindy showed me her Discmen!"
Discmen were Sony's follow-up to their amazingly successful portable tape player, the Walkman. The Discman (plural Discmen) played CDs, and was portable. So I think you can follow my train of thought for how it isn't a store, since there isn't really a bull market for portable CD players right now.
But the quality of drugs in Hanover, according to various drug users on campus, is terrible. This leads me to my main source of confusion, since my immediate assumption was that Michael's is some giant drug front, manipulating the Hanover market and selling ounces of cocaine inside every one of the boxy TVs that they still somehow market.
The presence of a major drug front in Hanover would certainly drive the quality up, right? I mean, a solid monopoly on the market would eventually lead to jacked-up prices and lower quality, but first Michael's would have to box out all the competition by offering unbeatable quality and price. I took Econ 2. I know what I'm talking about. That initial benefit to the consumer of ruthless competition never happened.
And if Michael's were a drug front, then people would find out about it. Nothing at this school stays secret. Nothing. Nothing at all. The only thing that I've ever seen stay secret is the identity of the girl who blitzed out the "Out of Control" song. Seriously, who was that? Besides her, I can't think of anything that stayed under wraps. Take this as a tiny piece of advice: don't cheat, don't lie, don't think your Dragon tattoo is subtle. Nothing stays secret. So Michael's can't be a drug front, unless the "Out of Control" girl is running it. But there aren't many girls named Michael, so that brings us back to the drawing board.
So what, then? The possible options are getting more and more ridiculous. There's the black market for black North Faces, but everybody knows that the North Face Store on South Main Street just sends clerks to frat parties to steal back jackets and resell them. Maybe all the S&S officers on campus pool together the money from parking tickets and use the back room of Michael's as a place to hang out and smoke cigars and play poker, giving the store owners a cut in exchange for stinking up their store with the smells of tobacco and high horses. But I don't think that's it. I've got nothing left.
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL is that Burger Bar at Bagel Basement got discontinued.
