Mailbag-Cash/Pickleball/More

RE: PANDEMIC CHANGES

Travel to Europe lately? Essentially cashless with the occasional exception such as a mom and pop convenience store. For years Europe accepted credit cards at the table when tabbing out at a restaurant. What took the U.S. so long? We are not the progressive society we posit to ourselves and the world.

What is laughable is Ralph's does not accept Apple Pay because Kroger has their own mobile payment app…Kroger Pay!?! Have you been to any Farmer's Market lately? If Apple Pay is not accepted, Venmo certainly is. One of the valets in my building that washes my car every two weeks accepts Venmo.

Lol…I never hear anyone mention Samsung Pay. Don't get me started on Android. Give me a break. Apple owns my conveniences and I embrace all of it, thank you very much.

Andrew Paciocco

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just walked two miles to my nearby Ralph's
turns out - they do not take Apple Pay. you need to download "Kroger Pay" instead, which i tried to do (along with two Ralph's employees) but couldn't get it to work, so i left.
having just read your article, i just wanted to yell "But Bob said so!"

love the letter. keep 'em coming!

biff butler

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I just spent a month in Iceland and Norway. Never got a penny of local currency. Tapped my card everywhere, for everything. Makes travel a breeze.

Bob Langlie

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A colleague of mine took her 4 year old daughter to a coffee shop and gave the girl a $10 bill to pay for the drinks. The girl tried to tap the money on top of the credit card reader.

Cash is dead.

Mark McMillan

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Amen, my trip to UK last year and more travel so far this year proved the point about the irrelevance of cash. Quite a few shops in London, Portugal etc. had signs saying 'cash not accepted'. I got used to 'tap and go' and loved it. I don't bother getting Pounds or Euros anymore. I get a better exchange rate with a good credit card. You just have to remember to make sure you have a card that doesn't charge a foreign transaction fee. I didn't realize the first time and ended up with charges of 4 cents for a coffee here and $2.15 for lunch there. It was ridiculous.

John Brodey

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I went to the BOA cash window yesterday. I wanted 60$ in my wallet cause a was gonna fly a friend down to Lawrence, MA to grab breakfast at a place that takes cash only.
I drop in the card, enter my pin and the prompt tells me it only doles out C-notes. I'm like "WTF"? Is this part of inflation or is the state of Maine short on 20 dollar bills?

Seriously?

Will Eggleston

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The problem with not accepting cash, however is that we are now down to where even the mere act of doing anything related to commerce involves a fee, which is just kinda insane on the face of it. Taxes are one thing, but a 7 year old should be able to sell lemonade without incurring credit card fees. I call it the ticketmasterization of society, people are just used to getting jacked for literally everything.

Jeff Gorlechen

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It's totally true.

I no longer use cash at all anymore.

Okay, at the car wash; they love cash. But really, that's it!

It's only Apply Pay, in several different EU countries I travel though regularly.

Cash is pointless. I have numerous cards in AP in several different currencies, and it's super smooth and basically perfect; never fails. They totally nailed it!

And, do I worry about being tracked?

Really!!

Is that even a thing?

And do I really give a shit??

Hmm, they're tracking me anyway, so you know..,

No!

Hiding is a fallacy…

What difference does it make anyway? None

Come on, are you really "at large"??

Of course you're not!

There's way larger issues then that one, really; look around

Maybe that's the point, right??

No, of course it's not!

Who f'n cares, not me. And I'm 60!! Technically inept.

This is reality, this is the future, this is 2022. Just f'n wait!

Five years, tops. Then what??

Oh man, you will see, yes…, all of us will.

Sacha Spindler

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Without cash, we can't buy weed. So, until it's federally legal, cash is necessary. In fact, cash is necessary for most things illegal…

Drew Ferrante

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During the pandemic I was made redundant from my chosen profession and spent some considerable time doing other things before I settled on working for the cinema chain currently in dire straits.

First off, we get a BBC report online long before we hear anything from above in the UK. Y'know, the usual BS, 'everything's fine' 'keep trading' 'we're gonna get thru this' and 'business as usual.'

Of course, we are in the building every day, and it's been dead not just because of the poor fare that's coming out of Hollywood, but because of the weather here these past 6 weeks.

Everybody decided to forgo the cinema and enjoy a very different kind of British Summer. We had a solid month of late 20s and early 30s weather. Honestly, July was a wipe out, cinemas were a ghost town.
So what happens next? Well Cineworld, and the chain the 'local' chain they own, Picturehouse, have quite a few top rented sites in London. And I mean big rents. Many of them were underperforming even before the last month of the heatwave.

Supposed tent pole movies like Nope, Dr Strange and Thor have failed to get the crowds needed to keep paying the bills, we're chronically understaffed, we're still one of the lowest paid sectors in the UK. I could go on…

Remember cinemas rent these movies from distributors. They control the price and they take up to 80% of all ticket prices. Wanna show Thor on first week of release? Good. Distributors take 80% of the ticket price you charge, and you gotta show it an allotted number of times. Also that hard drive with the digital file the distributors send you locks after a week, so you can only show it with the code they send: weekly!

Cinema survived TV when it first popped up, survived VHS and DVD, but it won't survive streaming. It's too expensive, screening rooms are still largely full of morons on their phones, and why spend money on tickets, food and a babysitter when you can stream whatever you want, with the kids tucked up in bed in the next room?

I love cinema and I still love going to see movies, mostly old ones tho, but cinema is taking too many punches, pre and post pandemic to survive

Gary James Clarke

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When I swapped my first iPhone for my 2nd one, many years ago, I did so at a T-Mobile shop because I'm a longtime T-Mobile user (since it was Omnipoint and Voicestream, over 20 years now), but they said they couldn't add AppleCare, I had to do that through Apple (they've since been able to do so more recently). So I drove over to the Apple Store where one of their floating reps offered to help me, and sold me AppleCare and then asked me how I wanted to pay for it. In the Apple Store. I said, "I have ApplePay," to which he sheepishly responded, "oh, right."

I have a $5 bill in my pocket that's been there for weeks. Just in case. I think I've used cash almost exclusively for service-related tips (shuttle van drivers, hotel bellman) for years now.

As for movie theatres, I said two years ago that I wouldn't invest in movie theatre chains but that individual theatres in major cities, mostly probably owned by studios (including Netflix, Amazon, etc), would survive as launch locations for major films, especially big-budget action and comic-based ones, where a live audience can trigger word-of-mouth. Films for adults, script-driven, will primarily launch and live on cable/satellite/streaming.

Speaking of streaming, I think you've said this before, but I'll say it now. Too many separate subscriptions. At least with music it's pretty much all on the major services. But HBO, Paramount, Disney, Discovery, Netflix, etc. Too complicated to manage.

Toby Mamis

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RE: E-MAIL OF THE DAY

My niece's 8-year old son wanted some sort of lizard for a pet, which cost something like $150 at PetSmart. She told him he'd have to earn the money, so the first idea he had was a lemonade stand. He set up in front of their house. She figured he'd learn a little about money, and give up after a short time. He did a little cash business, but when my niece put a picture of him on Instagram and told the story of what he was doing, friends and relatives started Venmo-ing money to her on his behalf and he had his lizard paid for within about 15 minutes, to her astonishment and chagrin! He got his lizard and didn't even have to sell much lemonade.

Mike Blakesley

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Hey, Bob,

For Mike's daughter and all enterprising people out there… we won't need a separate card reader as the emerging technology is "Tap to Pay" as part of Apple Pay. You can transform your phone into a card reading device to accept payments!

Here:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/

I've been in the music and media industry since 16. I'm 41 and transitioned full-time into Tech and start-ups for the past five years. Music is my part-time thing now, my hobby. The Business is elsewhere.

Ciarán O'Toole

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Was just at the Hollywood Bowl tonight, second time since the pandemic (didn't try buying anything the first time). Stacked parking took cash, but inside the bowl Satan's Cashless Society!

Cheers, Mark Southland

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I just wonder when bank cards will be gone! We don't need them in a digital age.

In Sweden we have Swish which is very secure as it is connected to an electronic ID (BankID). When will this happen in US? Like a secure digital SSN approved as an offical ID, just as a passport. We can't use apple ID or facebook or any account as an ID in the digital age

With a digital eID a lot of innovation will happen.
In Sweden Mike's daughter would use Swish to receive payment from 'customers'

Even beggars in the street uses Swish as nobody is carrying cash any longer.

Br
Mikael Codiqo

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RE: PICKLEBALL

That is not to say pickleball is easy, potentially. Like badminton. It's based on progressing IF you have the desire to improve. Then it becomes a matter of reaching one level and then learning a whole other set of strategies and skills to take you up. Everybody's max is different. You can also, just stay at the same level if you desire.

Think about all the public tennis courts sitting mostly idle. Up here we converted two private tennis courts into six pickleball courts. So in the same space, instead of maxing out with 8 tennis players (doubles), with PB you can have 24 playing at the same time. Shorter games=more people can have court time. Inner cities need to think about this. It is exploding. I play 5 or 6 days a week. In the last three years, our club membership has gone from 55 to 205. It's more social than tennis and people kibbitz have fun etc. I'm not surprised this woman invited you. That's the nature of the game. I'm a 3.5 player and addicted.

John Brodey

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This is my 5th summer and first year of full Pickleball play. The sport has changed a bit since the pandemic, but is still very social. The bigger issue is the "fight" coming from tennis in a resort town like Park City. There is limited space left to put in recreation facilities and tennis is putting up a huge stink about Pickleball lines on their courts, or even converting less used tennis courts to Pickleball courts.

While I don't share the sentiment that tennis will die, it will certainly wane in popularity. Anecdotally in Summit County (where Park City is located) most of the surrounding areas can't build enough courts fast enough. Just outside of Park City there's a venue where 2 tennis courts were converted to 8 Pickleball courts; every morning (when there isn't snow or rain) the courts are packed 8 courts full and usually about a 6 courts of players waiting to rotate on after each game. In the afternoons it's usually very similar. While the two other tennis courts at that venue that still exist are rarely if ever used.

One venue in town is now exploring putting up acoustic fence covering to help mitigate some of the sound. As a musician and sound engineer I've been helping with that process. When playing indoors in an untreated space I will wear my custom Westone earplugs to help me stay focused on my court of play. But outdoors I don't have an issue.

The Park City Pickleball club started with about 25 members 3 years ago. It now has a membership of over 1,000. The sport has definitely exploded in popularity. I believe it is due to the social aspect of the game and that a player can find any level of game from beginner to 5.0 and enjoy it. For more advanced players there is definitely a skill factor and high speed pace that keeps the game interesting. I view Pickleball like Othello. It's pretty easy to learn, but can be hard to master.

The fun part for me is getting to an advanced level and much like music, some companies start taking notice and endorse or sponsor players. I might be the first career musician with a Pickleball sponsorship, which is pretty exciting - much like the first music endorsements I got in my music career. It's a fun game and chances are it will hit the olympics soon.

Jody Whitesides

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A month ago, I was visiting my hometown of Memphis and drove through an affluent, old-money neighborhood and what I saw shocked me. Two of the houses had Pickleball courts IN THEIR FRONT YARD! The landscaping around one of them was beautiful. There were chairs and benches all around the courts. It looked like it could have been on the cover of Garden & Gun. The other one was nice but not like the other house. I was aware of the game before, but seeing these courts was the moment I realized how big it is. Some of my fondest memories from youth were playing soccer and football in the front yard during the fall. It was the social hub of the neighborhood. I can see the allure of the neighbors walking up and hanging out around the court in the front yard, drinking mint juleps, smoking cannabis, and playing Pickleball.

Michael Patterson

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Bob, people have no idea what is coming with Pickleball. I took tennis lessons and the courts were empty and a few hundred feet away 20 Pickleball courts were constantly full. My wife and I joined 1,500 other Pickleball members in our community in 2018 and have not looked back. 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Tournaments twice a month. Many of our friends are people we met playing Pickleball.

And now we have these awesome new facilities in Maricopa County like Bell Bank Park - 41 courts including a 2,500 seat center court for televised tournaments. Both the PPA and APP play there. You can play in the same tournament the pros play in, they'll be playing on the court next to you and will stop and talk to you between matches. Not many other sports offer you that opportunity. And the pros remember your name - when they see you six months later they remember you.

You can become a reasonable Pickleball player with a month of effort - not a great player but one who can keep points going and have fun with many peers with comparable skills. All for a $200 paddle and some court shoes.

And the exercise - my blood pressure improved dramatically playing this sport. Such good exercise.

It's a really fun and social sport. Thank you for mentioning it.

Thanks,
Kevin Hillstrom

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I played pickleball 3x a week for most of 2020 and well into 2021. I could play outdoors with other people and we all wore masks while playing. Doubles is the most popular and the most fun. It does not take a lot of running around, but a skill set is required and one can improve with a reasonable amount of practice. We even set up a net and chalked the court lines in an empty parking lot, while the official courts were closed during lock-down. Its increased popularity is definitely pandemic-induced.

Susan Rosenbluth

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Ha! I play every day. Every. Single. Day.

Great community, lots of laughing, in a word: satisfying. These divisive days, it's great to find a place with zero politics, all fun.

Lesley Bracker

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It's about time you mentioned the worlds fastest growing sport! Thank you!

BTW in pickleball world we say: "I drank the kool-aid".

I'm a total addict and I my mix music and humour with Pickleball (for real....) https://fb.watch/f1moZhTFnt/.

In fact I'm a bit worried about sharing this info so widely but pickleball has brought me a whole new audience.


Anyhow for anyone recently addicted, welcome to the club!


Rachael Chatoor
Pickleball addict and musician/singer/songwriter

www.rachaelchatoor.com

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Don't forget disc golf eventually replacing golf. It has far lower cost to buy equipment, uses less land to play on, fewer resources to maintain each course, can be built in woodlands, and is full of strategy. I got into it after seeing this 250-foot shot to force a playoff at the World Championships getting #1 on Sportscenter Top 10. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-w1TWtMsDus

Extra angles: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOhO7FfVQlE

The more you research the game, the more you realize how absurdly difficult that throw-in was. To be very brief, he basically had to throw against his body for a left to right shot, all while looking into the setting sun. Also, the course's high altitude and temperature made it very challenging to create the needed curve in the shot.

Take care,
Michael Ball
Kensington, MD

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There is an analogy here. As pickelball is to tennis, disc golf is to golf. I believe that disc golf is emerging much like your description here for how pickleball is growing.

They are both easier to learn than the sport they are displacing. They are sports you can take up later in life knowing you will never be great but legitimately recognizing that you can improve a lot with practice. The cost of taking up the sport is low. The cost of setting up new places to play is not significant - especially when you are displacing unused tennis courts or golf courses. Both are social, fun sports where current players are remarkably likely to invite a non-player to give it a try. Neither has any of the pretentiousness of the sport it is displacing.

In my area (the Western Carolinas), forests in public parks that were long neglected have had local players carve you disc golf courses all through them. What follows is that the broader use of a neglected forest that were once filled with litter and garbage are now clean, filled with hiking paths and dog parks all because of what the disc golf course jumpstarted.

The pandemic led to explosive growth for older adults (like me) taking up disc golf. It's an outdoor sport where maintaining distance from other players is easy. I don't know if this applies to pickleball but I bet the pandemic drove growth of that sport too.

Both are growing at a crazy pace but both are unstructured organizations with very little data to document that growth. There is an app called U-Disc where disc golf course managers can easily load their course into the app. Then, anybody with the app can easily keep their own scorecard for every round they play on pretty much every course in the world. 10 years ago, individual disc golf players recorded about 7000 rounds of disc golf using the U-Disc app. In 2022, it is estimated that 17 MILLION rounds of disc golf will be recorded in that same app. Some of that is just about the growth of the app but, nonetheless, it is a remarkable data point for the overall growth of the sport.

Mark McLaughlin

BTW - as far as I can tell, the growth of the U-Disc app is 100% word-of-mouth between players. No marketing, no digital advertising tactics.

Crazy. Crazy good for all of us.

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The soft drink industry used to call their wider competition "share of stomach" that being the gross amount of liquid consumed by the average person each day versus how much of that space their given product filled up.

I wonder if what the music industry is dealing with is "share of ears" - the relative amount of listening time a given consumer allots to music versus podcasts, e-books, etc. Putting aside the relative merits of today's music for the moment, it can be argued that the Beatles never had to compete with This American Life and the like.

Rob Schlyecher
Vancouver BC

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Pickleball, Sport of the Future Injury?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/20/health/pickleball-sports-injury.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

tjlambert


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