Ah, Our Formative Years
The good folks in the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development seem to think the prospect of free tickets to a concert put on by washed-up rockers in a rundown New Hampshire “resort” may be enough to convince Massachusetts business owners to pull up stakes and move to the Granite State.
Or maybe they’re just playing a joke on their southern neighbors.
According to a press release, “A total of 10 Bay State companies considering a move or expansion to New Hampshire are eligible to win tickets to a B-52s concert at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on September 30, complete with a catered dinner and a ceremonial ‘key to the beach.’”
Well then. Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Back in the day, The Teller worked for three summers at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, introducing ourselves to all manner of substances of dubious legality and even more questionable characters.
Now, New Hampshire, on the whole, is a wonderful place, blessed with an enviable geographic mix of shore and mountains, and populated by hardworking Yankees.
But Hampton Beach might as well be a different planet.
It’s a honky-tonk cesspool of disgusting restaurants and filthy drinking establishments, interspersed with scams loosely disguised as parlor games and trinket shops.
If the overwhelming odor of garbage and desperation doesn’t immediately repulse those Massachusetts businessmen, the prospect of spending an entire evening sweating alongside scantily clad, tattooed, overweight, hirsute, middle-aged yahoos fresh off their ill-repaired Harley or heavily modified Chevy certainly will.
And in the center of it all is the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom itself. Don’t let the grandiose images of either a casino or a ballroom fool you – this place is neither. Rather, it’s a dark, dank, wood-framed bandbox that’s a throwback to everything not grand about the roaring twenties. It’s hot, expensive, loud and full of, well … Hampton Beach folk.
In the past, Massachusetts business development officials have complained about their New Hampshire peers’ practice of brazenly driving across the border and tempting businesses to switch sides.
But to those rubes foolish enough to fall prey to this latest attempt at luring businesses north, we say good riddance. That kind of gullibility isn’t welcome in our bastion of intelligence, style and moderation anyway.
After all, have you been to Revere Beach lately? Now there’s class.
