About Me
This profile is for the friends and staff of the Riptide Lounge, located at 116 Pleasant St. in Marblehead.
All of the profiles on this Friends List are of local people and everyone is 21 or older. We do not automatically accept any and all Friend Requests from weird or hoaxed profiles here on MySpace.
Thanks for visiting. If you're in the neighborhood, please feel free to stop by. We're located right on the main drag and across from the old movie theater. Last call is at 11:30.
It seems that MySpace and some of the other older internet communities have reached a certain stage in their development. Despite their popularity, other concepts are being tested, such as Second Life and its attempt to build a "real" 3-D world. There are some very clever and flashy possibilities being considered these days, but I think many of them are heading in the wrong direction. While Second Life may simulate the physical world better than MySpace, it is still an Internet phenomenon. It doesn't really matter if you're represented by an avatar and a field of text or a walking, talking 3-D animation: you're still dealing with people in a digital world. And this is fine, for what it is. It only gets so good (unless I'm missing something, but I don't think I am.) What people are trying to establish--somehow--is a more effective meshing between the Internet community and the physical community. The environment would be something casual and unstructured: more like a bar.
Bars already have their own small communities and networking systems in place. If these local communities could be tied together through the Internet, that would provide the perfect direction for MySpace to follow. Internet social communities have to become more "real," rather than more digital (such as Second Life,) and neighborhood bars could benefit from the Internet's ability to present people through the Profile format with written descriptions and photographs. The bulletin systems and messaging systems are also more effective at communicating (in certain ways) than e-mails and telephones. Recently there has been an enormous influx of bars representing themselves here on MySpace, and I'm sure that over the next several years there will become a much closer relationship between these two communities.
It is difficult to mention the town of Marblehead and not include a comment on how the town has been changing. While the realtors, developers, and the brain-dead Marblehead Reporter enjoy focsing on the town's physical attractiveness, they make little note of the social changes which have been taking place over the last thirty years. As with many coastal towns these days, skyrocketing property values have dramatically altered the town's demographics. These new homeowners view residency in town as an "investment" and part of a larger game of real estate leap-frog. The consequence is an ever-shifting population of speculators: most of them eager to "move on" to their next big score in the property market. Such social transition creates a community which is forever in flux. People barely get to know each other before they're on their way out of town and into a larger estate somewhere else. Many of Marblehead's new rich are employed in Boston, and after work they tend to eat and socialize in the city. This is the dynamic behind the evolving "bedroom community" and contributes to the further breakdown of traditional society here.
Most people from Marblehead are already very familiar with all of this, so I won't mention it in too much detail, except to say that for many years--and before cell phones and the Internet--the small network of bars and restaurants served as a means of communication and basic social interaction here in Marblehead, just as they did in many other towns. People looking for breaking news or interested simply in town gossip needed only to walk down to their local bar for the information they were looking for. Much of that has changed with the overall social changes which have taken place in Marblehead. In the Bedroom Community, the "Home Entertainment Center" has replaced the frequent stop at the local bar or movie theater. Additionally, people get their news from television, they meet people online, and they can gossip ..-phones. Still, some small bars have managed to survive by catering to a regular, local clientelle, and here in Marblehead The Riptide is recognized as THE local bar in the area. The Riptide has been operated continuously by the same family for longer than any other bar in town and there are no plans for that changing. In a town of ever-shifting demographics and a continually changing business landscape, The Riptide exists as an established constant within the community.
Despite our resistance to change, The Riptide is always in the slow process of absorbing new customers and trying to cater to evolving cultural tastes and attitudes. While we have a strong regular following, there are always new faces stopping by to check out the atmosphere inside. With 110 million people currently on MySpace, and more and more businesses using this site to represent themselves, it made some sense for us to create a profile page here. It was interesting to find ourselves in the company of other well-established local bars, such as The Pig's Eye, The Pickled Onion, and Kitty O'Shea's. MySpace can be a good opportunity for people from other towns to meet regulars at different bars before driving out to visit them. For this reason, we look forward to adding other bars and restaurants to our Friends List and encouraging an "Internet organization" of North Shore-area bars.
Perhaps by utilizing the new technology of the Cyber World, we can regain some of the old network of bars and restaurants which existed years ago.
