
A Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar - petethomas
https://www.topic.com/the-story-behind-the-chicago-newspaper-that-bought-a-bar
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pp19dd
Newsrooms and bars are like twin brothers. You pick any newspaper, and there
is always THE watering hole for it, usually the very nearest one.

For the Baltimore Sun, that was the "Midtown Yacht Club" and the joke was in
its name, in that it was nowhere near the water. Anyhow, about a decade or so,
the guy owning it decides to sell the bar and finds a buyer quickly. He starts
liquidating some of the non-related assets and then finds a ream of papers in
the basement he had forgotten about.

The managing editor, who was helping him close the bar that night (though not
in a working capacity) asks him about the ream. Turns out, it was a block of
UPC barcodes the barowner had purchased a decade prior, as a sort of
investment, and forgotten about.

When he bought them, they were a moment's whim to a pushy salesman, and a few
pennies. By the time he was selling the bar, the UPC barcode ecosystem had
gone through a huge growth and the allocated numbers were used up. Prices and
renewals shot up through the roof to where it was prohibitively expensive to
add new products to the market. And he was sitting on a whole block of
addresses.

He ended up selling that contiguous barcode block for far more than the bar
was worth, and retired.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Source? I can't find a single mention of UPC codes and the Midtown Yacht Club
online. [0]

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?dcr=0&q="Midtown+Yacht+Club"+u...](https://www.google.com/search?dcr=0&q="Midtown+Yacht+Club"+upc)

~~~
pp19dd
It never made it as a story.

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sparky_
Fascinating, thanks for the share. For the interested, the full 25 part series
in its original form is available as newspaper scans here:
sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-zay-n-smith-chicago-sun-
times

~~~
dredmorbius
[http://sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-
za...](http://sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-zay-n-smith-
chicago-sun-times)

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djrogers
That is absolutely brilliant. I hope the current fears over the demise of
'real journalism' are overblown, and that we never lose the news outlets who
will back type of work no matter what it costs.

~~~
milesvp
Sadly it's easy to do lots of things "no matter what it costs" when you're
swimming in ad revenue.

The demise of journalism is largely tied to the deep pockets being gone. Gone
are the days of being able to afford to have a reporter working on a single
story for months or years.

If you want this kind of thing, you have to pay for it. Subscribe to
newspapers you think are making a difference.

~~~
digi_owl
More so than swimming in ad revenue, said revenue was funneled first and
foremost to cover journalistic expenses, not dividends for shareholders.

I have seen one too many newspapers be subject to a leveraged buyout, that
then lead to the advertisement division spun off as its own company, and the
rest left to rot.

~~~
dredmorbius
David Simon's lecture, "The Audacity of Despair", addresses this.

Roughly mid-way through, I believe around 40 minutes or so.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw)

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gwbas1c
> I think one of the things that amazed us is that these inspectors sold out
> public safety on the cheap. They were not taking huge amounts. We were told
> to leave $10 for one inspector, and $25 for another inspector.

According to inflation, that's $40.25 and $100.62 in today's dollars. That's
pretty much a joke!

[https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=19770...](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=197707&year2=201708)

~~~
JohnicBoom
It seems like a joke, but the amounts make sense.

It can't be so expensive that all of the inspectors' combined bribes become
too expensive for the least able institution to afford. You don't want the
bribes to be such a burden that someone complains, either. When you're
inspecting possibly multiple businesses in a day, 5 days a week, all those
"cheap" bribes add up to a nice tax-free bonus paycheck on top of what the
government is paying you to do the job.

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samgranieri
Brehon Tap is a fave of mine. I like dropping in.

I have to give Kudos to Pam Zekman and her colleagues for having the massive
courage to pull this off.

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pbrb
Another interesting story about the bar (Brehon) - a guy started a successful
pharma advertising agency out of that bar! They actually used the pay phone as
their phone line. The business is still successful and located about a block
away, called Closerlook.

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monksy
Now the bar is an Irish pub called the Brehon Pub. It doesn't look all that
great inside. But it does have clean beer lines.

~~~
benjaminjackman
Their waffle fries aren't bad either.

~~~
monksy
You're right. Those are freaking great.

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moonka
Very interesting story. I'm also surprised by the $18,000 asking price. Seems
cheap even with inflation.

~~~
gwbas1c
It's $72,448 in today's dollars.

[https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=18%2C000&year1...](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=18%2C000&year1=197707&year2=201708)

I suspect the business itself had issues and the owner just wanted out.

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theyregreat
_and whatever inspector we would have to deal with and we should leave an
envelope with a certain amount of cash, and he told us what the cash amount
should be for each inspector. And how to do it all!

Bill: He was one of those guys, after you shake his hand, you want to go
wash._

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dsfyu404ed
Systemd walks into a newspaper...

