Conspicuous Consumption/Advertising

Back in the early 1990s, as Lithuania was emerging from socialist dominance by Russia, two colleagues and I visited there to present a series  of seminars on tax policy and on bankruptcy law.

While we were there it became apparent to me that the high-end restaurants were brightly lit -- lights on everywhere. Meanwhile, the offbeat dens and lower-scale establishments were often quite dark, with a few dim lights and possibly several candles to provide the lighting. It all seemed backwards from what we were used to in North America, where the fancy-schmancy places have dimmed lights, and the mom-and-pop eateries have bright lights.

As we talked about it, we realized that the high-end places were advertising their affluence and quality by using a lot of very expensive electricity to light their restaurants. The lower-end eateries simply could not afford to pay for the electricity to keep their places well-lit.

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A couple of years ago, I ran across a similar phenomenon while visiting Chester, England, with our friend "The Chauffeur". We were there on an extremely hot day. As we looked for a place to sit, rest, and have a cool drink, I said,

"Let's make sure we go to a place with the doors closed -- it will be air-conditioned. They keep the doors closed to preserve the air-conditioning."

I was wrong. The first place we entered with closed doors had no air conditioning; they were trying to preserve what little cool air they had left from overnight, but it was still stiflingly hot. So we left and continued our search.

 As we walked past Piccolino, their windows were opened. I said,

"We don't want to go in here. They have the windows open, trying to cool the place off."

 Again, I was wrong: cool air was rushing out onto the sidewalk. It was great advertising, even though it was extremely expensive: we felt the cool air, knew they were air-conditioned, and stopped to go in.

It was a fascinating day in Chester (Piccolino is on the right in the above photo) -- lots of history and interesting sites, including some ongoing archeological digs (see photo below). And the food and service at Piccolino were excellent.

And we didn't even visit the outlet mall described in Le Deal.