March 27, 2017:
People smoke in these fucking places. They're ancient, stooped, they can't walk, they're in wheelchairs, they're pulling oxygen tanks with wheels. Their eyes are glued to dayglo video screens, they're pumping quarters obsessively. They can't breathe, they can't walk, they haven't climbed a flight of stairs in forty years. They're Death's Ancient Angels and they're not insightful enough to know it.
It's interesting that these are the Americans who so hated hippies for their drugs and psychedelics. Now here they are high on nicotine, zoned on glow-in-the-dark. It's an ersatz psychedelia for right-wing geriatrics, and unlike the hippies' idealism it's deliberately manipulative, to keep them pumping quarters with no sense of the passage of time.
The hostesses are underage and bored. The bar tenders don't smile. The concierge is unfriendly, the people frown and smoke and are dying.
How much of America is this?