It’s the end of 2024 (or even the beginning of 2025, depending on when I get this finished; I’m starting to write it on the 29th, but this thing often takes me a few days to cobble together. To sum up my 2024 briefly: it was a strange year, not really great but not all that bad either, at least personally. But it was a year where I spent an awful lot of time feeling like I was somehow in between places I needed to be. Strange feelings, this year. Almost like an identity crisis, or maybe it’s a mid-life thing going on–which seems a bit odd, since I’m 53 now and I should be beyond the mid-life thing, shouldn’t I?
Anyway, more on the year that was below. First, my usual roster of pieces I wrote here that I enjoyed. I was wondering how to best indicate which posts in this list are more photo-centric than others, since 2024 saw me dig even deeper into photography as an artistic and creative outlet, and I have decided that I will indicate those posts with italics.
Scenes from downtown Buffalo and Canalside
If God had meant for us to shovel snow, we’d have shovels instead of hands
Remembering when I saw The Amazing Kreskin (who died just a short while ago)
Two Musicals: Eurovision and La La Land (I loved both)
On Character: Schindler’s List
Let the River Run (photos of water)
About Town
The trains don’t run anymore
Astro
The worst shopping center ever built
The Eclipse of 2024
At the Gardens
Thoughts on Nixon, 30 years gone
On the romance of old maps
Phil! (Rosenthal, that is)
Sometimes, ya never know
Aurora
Serendipity, part one
Serendipity, part two
Anti-serendipity
At the Pierce-Arrow Museum
People Looking At Art
In which I am made to feel older than dirt
Dispatches from the Faire
I scream, you scream…a quiz about ice cream
An abstraction from nature
Round and round and round: on roundabouts
Little Quinn, twenty years later
Lights and dogs and blurred motion!
Am I still a writer?
Scenes from the Snowy 716
So much depends on a red cableknit sweater
What is “value”? Thoughts on MVP awards
Go Bills, except….
I’m slightly embarrassed by this: I started two posts in January, one for capsule reviews of each book I read in 2024, and the other with the same idea but for movies. And I did fine for half the year! Here’s the post for books though July 1, and here’s the movies post. Then…I dropped the ball on this badly for the second half, to the point that I’m not even going to attempt recreating them at this point. I’m going to try again this coming year. We’ll see. I’m honestly annoyed at myself for this, because I read and watched some really good stuff in the back half of this year, quite a bit of which should have had notice in this space.
I am going to make a separate post containing favorite photos of mine from the year gone by, but that’s going to be separate. Otherwise you’d be here scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
So now, on with the annual quiz:
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.” To this I have added: “Take lots of photos!” Which is something I’ve always done, but I need to reflect my new focus on photography.
So, how did I do? Not bad, in terms of reading and photography. Writing, though…this was tough. 2024 was a struggle for me as a writer, to the point that I struggled with my actual identity as a writer. It wasn’t Writers Block, it was…do I still even want to do this? I delved more into those thoughts and feelings in a post linked above.
Where am I now? Well, I think now it’s a matter of finding some balance in all this stuff as not just a writer, not just a photographer, but as a content creator. I think that’s where I’m heading, and I’m going to lean hard into this in 2025. I’m not getting any younger, after all. I did start making video content in 2024 (check out my YouTube channel!), though I didn’t get as much done there as I wanted to; one thing I’m doing now is putting together a strategy for that sort of thing in 2025.
As far as eating healthier, enh…maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. There’s always room to improve there, I suppose.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
Did anyone close to you die?
No.
But…with Mom dying in November of 2023, it still feels like someone close to me died in 2024. It was a hard year, with that hanging over me the entire time.
And…well. Dad is…not gone yet.
What countries did you visit?
Just America. Here’s hoping we still can leave the country in the future.
What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?
A better sense of who I am right now. I think I’m starting to figure it out. Seems awfully late in life for a midlife crisis, but here we are.
Also, another year gone by without getting hit in the face with a pie. What am I doing!!!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Developing my photography skills. This was the real goal I had for this year, and I most certainly got that done. In fact, that’s going to have a post of its own, sometime in the first week of 2025. In a year when a lot felt…off, somehow, including my literary work, photography is the one thing that felt absolutely right.
I also did start doing video work, though my efforts were halting…but they were there. I did some of the work. I got a bit more comfortable doing my thing in front of the camera, which is huge. I have high hopes for more consistency in that realm in 2025.
Oh, and I started using Lightroom for photo editing.
What was your biggest failure?
I don’t think it was a failure, really, but I had to do a lot of grappling and introspection around my identity as a writer. There was a lot to work through. I only think of this as a “failure” inasmuch as an awful lot of time got spent not writing that could have been spent actually writing. But sometimes you have to spend the time the way the time needs to be spent.
What was the best thing you bought?
If you really want to get technical, it’s not a thing I bought in 2024; it was a Christmas present for The Wife and myself in 2023. But 2024 is when we started using it: a Contributing membership in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Not only is the museum itself an amazing place and we love going there, but this level of membership gives us free admission to other museums all over the country and even other countries. We’ve taken advantage of that benefit just a little, but just you wait, folks. Just you wait.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Sigh. A year ago I wrote this in answer to this very question: American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Let me just say that this year has not left me in a celebratory mood. I have said a number of times that I’m bullish on humanity, but I am much less so on America, and nothing I saw in 2024 gives me pause to reconsider that stance.
So let me cite one thing that has brought unvarnished joy to Buffalo, at least: Josh Allen. It boggles my mind to think that there are people walking the earth who dislike this man.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I’ve been saying “Republicans” for years now, but this year? It’s the American people. Everything that is about to happen will do so because we collectively decided that it should.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, booze, and honestly? That’s about it! Paying down bills, too. This was not a big year for consumption. I bought very few books in 2024, because my focus was on reading some of my huge library for once (and supporting my local huge library). I did buy some overalls this year, because hey, I’m still a collector.
What did you get really excited about?
Photography. I had some amazing days spent doing photography this year, and the art has started to really shift and impact how I look at the world.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I don’t know. I’m definitely calmer, though. That’s something.
Thinner or fatter?
I’m pretty sure I gained a bit of weight. Not a lot, but just enough that I know it’s time to get some focus going in the other direction.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, but not by a lot. I have hopes and goals, though.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Even more photography! And I went through a lengthy reading slump in late summer and early fall. That wasn’t fun.
And zero pies in my face. I have got to get some of that scheduled for 2025.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating junk food. There were times when it was way too easy.
How did you spend Christmas?
Just the three of us: myself, The Wife, and The Daughter.
It was actually our second Christmas since Mom died, but she died in November of 2023. The feelings were still fresh and raw, and the activities were still going on, and everything was still a whirlwind last year. This year is the first one where the reality has had a chance to settle in: the traditions are just memories now, the voices and the laughter are only in my mind. I thought about that a lot this year.
Did you fall in love in 2024?
I wonder what the official count is on times I looked over at The Wife this year and thought, “Wow….”
How many one-night stands?
I always think I should just delete this question, and yet, here it is, every year.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop marches on. We also attended upon the newest season of Bridgerton, and we found ourselves caught up in the flannel-clad soap opera of Virgin River, which is a lot of fun if you want a flannel-clad soap opera. (Nobody in it wears overalls, though! This I do not get.)
Food shows continue to make us happy: chief among those are Somebody Feed Phil and Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, which are both food-based travel shows (or are they travel-based food shows?). Both approach the world with wonder and love, and the Ramsay show is especially terrific because he ventures to places that aren’t the “usual suspects” of the food world. He did an amazing episode in the most recent season in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and now I actually want to go there.
It just occurred to me that I should mention YouTubers that I like in this space, but I think I’ll save that for another post, or maybe the Substack.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
If you’re a Republican who supported the incoming President, and I learned your name this year, guess what.
What was the best book you read?
I’m on Goodreads, by the way, if you want to see my actual reading rosters for this (or any other) year! I know that mostly we’re down on Goodreads, and many are moving to something else, but I’m lazy and Goodreads works for me. All I want is something where I can look up if I’ve read a book (if I don’t remember it) and see a little of what I thought of it. My “reviews” there aren’t really even reviews, honestly; other readers looking at my blurbs to see if they might like a book might not find me terribly useful as a resource.
But here are a few books I liked a great deal:
Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created NANCY, Bill Griffith
The Innocent Wayfaring, Margaret Chute
Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane
Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century, Saul Austerlitz
The Sun Over The Mountains: A Story of Hope, Healing and Restoration, Suzie Fletcher
I also started reading through the Ian Fleming James Bond novels (part of a possible future project) and a Guy Gavriel Kay re-read, of which I have thus far only re-read The Fionavar Tapestry.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
I’ve known about The Killers for years, but this year I really started listening to them. (And I did so before “Mr. Brightside” became an improbable stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills.)
What did you want and get?
Time shooting photos.
What did you want and not get?
A nation where fascism is not a tolerable option for the majority of voters.
What were your favorite films of this year?
I loved Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, La La Land, and Woman of the Hour.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?
It’s just all-overalls, all-the-time now. I also added a ballcap to my hat collection, which now numbers…two. Go figure!
What kept you sane?
Long walks with the camera. Petting dogs. Good food and drink. Museums and the Botanical gardens. Reading. Music. I suggest “burying myself in art” is going to be more and more of a thing now.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I already mentioned Josh Allen, so I’ll mention Josh Allen.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2024, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
I’m going to defer this one to my Photography Wrap-up post, which should be along sometime soon.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I mentioned The Killers above as my big “musical discovery” of the year. I tried to–and did!–listen to a lot more new and unfamiliar music this year, but one album I kept returning to was the live album recorded from a Killers concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It just sounds like it was a fantastic show, and I love the band’s sound: optimistic technopop, is how I’d describe it. Or, to quote Mr. Clark, “It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it.”
Anyway, I waffled on which Killers song to mention here. Their biggest hit, I think, is “Mr. Brightside”, which has more recently become an unofficial stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills. They play the song at the stadium and put the lyrics on the SuperJumboTron and the whole stadium sings it. We were out walking the dogs one night (I think it was the Chiefs game), and the weather and the winds were such that it was one of those nights when we can hear the stadium like we’re there, and let me tell you, 70,000 happy Bills fans singing “Mr. Brightside” is a hell of a thing.
But no, I’m going to go with the song that’s something of an anthem for me, personally. It’s the song that leads off that album: “Human”.
I did my best to noticeWhen the call came down the lineUp to the platform of surrenderI was brought, but I was kindAnd sometimes I get nervousWhen I see an open doorClose your eyesClear your heartCut the cordAre we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answerAre we humanOr are we dancer?Pay my respects to grace and virtueSend my condolences to goodGive my regards to soul and romanceThey always did the best they couldAnd so long to devotionYou taught me everything I knowWave goodbyeWish me wellYou’ve gotta let me goAre we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answerAre we humanOr are we dancer?Will your system be alrightWhen you dream of home tonight?There is no message we’re receivingLet me know, is your heart still beating?Are we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answer
Are we humanOr are we dancer.
So, that’s 2024. I don’t have great feelings about 2025, if I’m being totally honest. But there’s going to be plenty of time for that, isn’t there?
“The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.”
–T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Keeping up with the Joneses, and keeping ahead of the Smiths (a repost)
(Note on structure for this post: there is no real “through-line” in terms of my “argument” here. This really is a collection of thoughts, not all of them as closely-intertwined as others.)
After a lot of protesting and virtual “striking”, fast food workers have won a number of victories, most notably the State of New York recommending a raise in the minimum wage in their industry to $15 an hour. Now, there are some provisos that get overlooked in commentary on this: first, that wage is to be phased in over six years, so nobody’s going to be making $15 an hour for making cheeseburgers until 2021, and second, the wage increase only applies to businesses over a certain size threshold (something like thirty locations). So this will hit the McDonald’s and Burger Kings and Subways of the world, but not the small local chains like Tom Wahl’s and Ted’s Hot Dogs.
But it’s a start.
Random thoughts, then:
:: Good for them. I am happy for any worker who benefits from this. I am a firm believer that anything that helps people at the lower end of the economic pool rise up a bit is a good thing.
:: I am also thrilled at the prospect that maybe the pendulum is starting to swing in this country away from what we’ve made our central core of economic priorities since roughly 1980. Our prevailing notion regarding the economy has been to embrace “trickle down”, and we’ve spent nearly 40 years cutting taxes and regulations in an effort to create an economy where virtually all the gains, all the big benefits, all the money are relentlessly funneled to the top. I hope that this minimum wage increase for a specific industry is just the start of something.
:: Of course, for this to be the start of something – the beginning of a swing back toward an economic model where benefits are focused more on the middle and bottom than relentlessly funneled to the top – an awful lot of people have to start looking at things differently. Sadly, this seems to include a lot of people who are in the middle and bottom of the pool. I’m referring here to the constant undercurrent of resentment people seem to feel toward others who are doing better than they are.
We’re all familiar with the concept of “keeping up with the Joneses”, but what I’m noticing now is a kind of insidious reversal of that concept. We all seem to have fewer Joneses with whom we feel we need to keep up, and we feel a constant sense that our grip on what we have is…well, if not exactly weakening, then there’s a sense that what we have could be ripped from our grasp at any moment. So we’re less worried about “keeping up with the Joneses”, and more worried about “keeping ahead of the Smiths”. Each concept is harmful in its own way, but I think the latter might be more dangerous.
“Keeping ahead of the Smiths” leads to jealousy and envy. It leads to literal resentment of when someone else has something that we feel they don’t deserve, and it seems to be an even stronger impulse when it’s something we don’t have that they suddenly do. I don’t know where or when this odd impulse became so engrained in the American psyche, but I definitely believe it’s there. I see this impulse at work whenever voters spread vicious rhetoric about how awful public school teachers are to make the money they make, and I certainly see it at work now.
“Maybe I should go apply at McDonald’s,” I hear a lot these days. Or “Gee, I’ve never made fifteen bucks an hour.” The latter is often coupled with a description of the jobs one has done, obviously intended to make clear that my work should pay more than theirs. And these sentiments aren’t brand new, either, born of shock that burgerflippers (said with appropriate voice filled with disdain) are going to make that kind of money. I once heard a counter clerk at a store complain bitterly that her husband made twice what she did at his union job, even though all he did was [insert menial task here]. I find such sentiments irritating, because first of all, I myself have never been angry that someone else makes more than me at a certain job.
Seriously, I’ve never understood that point. These things are inherently unfair. Minimum wage when I started working at my very first summer job, when I was 17 years old, was $3.35 an hour. It went up to $5.25 a few years later, and there it stayed for a good, long time. When I started moving into management with Pizza Hut, the highest wage I attained was somewhere around $6.50 an hour. So what?
Also, I remember what happened every time the minimum wage went up. The already-existing employees who were making less than the new minimum would get brought up to the new minimum, while employees already above the minimum would get a raise of some sort. However, this always resulted in complaints: “Why am I only getting a raise of fifty cents an hour? I’m making a buck fifty more than minimum now, and after this I’ll only be making seventy-five cents more!” These arguments always struck me as odd. Your pay was going up, wasn’t it? Did it really matter that you stayed ahead of the minimum by the same margin as before? Was “keeping ahead of the Smiths” really that important?
Ultimately, though, this whole issue reveals just how completely Labor in this country has allowed itself to be trampled, and how thoroughly everyone, from the cashier at Home Depot all the way up, has bought into the concept that our companies must be willing to pay no more than what they determine we are worth. That is mind-boggling to me. We’ve completely bought into the idea that the key economic factor holding everyone back from ultimate prosperity is taxes. Every time a tax increase is proposed, well, get ready for some fur to fly. I invariably hear commentary from someone saying “I haven’t had a raise in three years, but now I gotta pay more in taxes!” Setting aside the amount of the new tax levy itself, doesn’t it ever occur to anyone to say, “Hey! How come I haven’t had a raise in three years?”
To my way of thinking, as I look at the numbers that demonstrate a wildly growing level of inequality in America, our economic self-perception is seriously out of whack. We have bought completely into the notion that the Free Markets are the best engine for all this, and never mind that throughout history the most “Free Market”-dedicated eras resulted in massive inequality of the type we’re seeing now. We have bought completely into the idea that the market will eventually bring its benefits upon us, and that it’s taxes that are the big problem. After nearly forty years of unending tax-cutting and deregulating, however, all we have to show for it is wages that are stuck in neutral and money flowing ever, ever, ever upward in a pattern that can only be described as redistributive (albeit in the exact opposite way that that term is usually deployed by libertarian-types). The biggest problem most Americans face, economically, is not what the government is taking out of our paychecks. It is what our employers are not putting into them in the first place.
So why, then, so much resentment toward a group of workers who banded together and through various means of legal redress seem to have won a kind of victory for themselves? Why are so many people so eager to see in this another screwing of themselves by the system, instead of an example of what might be done elsewhere? If you’re so convinced that your line of work is deserving of better pay, than why not band together and do your own self-advocation?
Well, I’m not really sure. Part of it, I suppose, has to do with America’s infatuation with the Individual, and the idea that we are singularly capable of, and ultimately responsible for, achieving things. That’s probably at least partly why I hear so much “I never made fifteen bucks, why should they?” My answer to that is, “Why didn’t you, and why shouldn’t they?” That’s why I always hear so much condemnation of public schoolteachers, and it’s also why we always manage to denigrate factory workers for striking for more money (or for keeping the money they make) even while we complain about the sorry state of American manufacturing.
We do too much worrying in this country of keeping up with the Joneses and ahead of the Smiths. There’s this creepy undercurrent of American thought that tells us that someone doing better than we are really shouldn’t be, and that’s a pretty lousy way to look at life. Maybe we should stop viewing our lives through the prism of how the Joneses and Smiths are doing, and maybe start admitting that if the Joneses and Smiths all do well, maybe it will help us.
:: Side issue: I’ve also seen some rejoinders along the lines that now companies will simply automate more. There’s a picture-meme-thing going around Facebook of what is apparently a McDonald’s someplace where there are no order takers, just a bank of self-order kiosks. “See! They’ll just replace you with machines! Maybe you should have been happy with your $7.25 an hour!!!”
This is simply dumb, of course. Anyone who thinks that such automation isn’t coming down the pike already, because McDonald’s is perfectly happy to pay $7.25 but feels their hand is forced at $15, is simply delusional. And that brings up my biggest worry for the future, which just manages to push Global Warming into the second spot.
Eventually, there simply isn’t going to be enough work for humans to do. We are going to get so good at automating things that there simply will not be enough jobs to be filled by humans. I am nowhere near good enough a futurist, in terms of imagination, to see what kind of society this will lead us to create, but I truly believe that our entire economic way of life, based on work, is going to end somehow. Either we’ll start inventing work, literal “busy work”, just to prop up the idea that we’re all supposed to work jobs for money and then buy the stuff we need, or we’ll move into some sort of post-work economy. I have no idea what that’s going to look like, and the notion of that transition scares me, because it doesn’t seem to me that we make such transitions easily.
It will also be interesting to see what happens specifically to the American psyche once we start settling into a post-work world, when there isn’t enough work to go around. Our country is built to what often seems to me an absurd degree on the idea that it’s our work that makes us who we are. Americans work harder for less, and take less time off than anybody else, and somehow we’ve elevated that aspect of our character to a particular spot of pride. This always strikes me as deeply odd, but I don’t think we’re going to shake off that “Work! Work! WORK!” mentality of ours, in which we’re still expected to be available and answer e-mails on the few vacations we take, and in which we wear the number of hours we work over 40 as a badge of honor, until the ongoing march of technological innovation forces us to do so.
This is another reason why I reject Libertarianism so strenuously. In a world where so much of the work is automated that an ever-shrinking number of people are paid to do what’s left, the idea that the unfettered functioning of a market will be the best way to accomplish anything at all is downright silly. It’s also for that reason that I think that things like single-payer healthcare are going to have to happen, eventually. We won’t have a choice in the matter, if we want people to have healthcare. (And yes, we will want people to have healthcare.)
:: By the way, “hard work” has entirely too strong a grip on our collective imagination. It’s utterly absurd that the United States is one of just a handful of countries in the world, and virtually alone amongst large industrial countries, that doesn’t mandate paid vacation time. Other countries that are not the most affluent nation in the history of the planet have made this happen, but somehow we always manage to claim poverty when the idea is floated here.
:: In fact, this is yet another example of our ongoing national failure to allow the experiences of other countries to inform our own policy choices. Other countries have figured out how to have better healthcare for all citizens than we provide, and pay less to do it; other countries have figured out how to have a significantly higher minimum wage than we do, and yet not have burgers cost the equivalent of twenty bucks; other countries have figured out how to have better national transportation and better this and better that. We’re always told that these things can’t possibly work here, for reasons that never make any sense to me; the USA simply cannot be an outlier on everything, so much so that ideas that work elsewhere are doomed to failure here. And I’m roundly sick to death of any argument against something that boils down to some odd, abstract, almost-metaphysical appeal to “freedom”.
:: Every time some kind of regulation like this comes along, companies and industry groups start screaming “Poverty!” and trotting out the exact same objections. It will destroy their industry, it will destroy jobs, it will crush entire economies in its wake. We hear this every single time the minimum wage is increased at all. We heard this when the ADA was passed. We heard it when the ACA was passed. Hell, we heard it from restaurant and bar owners as cities and states nationwide passed rigorous anti-smoking laws, and we heard it from the direct marketing people when the government created its Do Not Call List. We hear this objections every time out, and never do they come true. At all. So I will not be listening to any such protestations in the future. Business America has gone to that well a few too many times for me.
Of course, there will be some business closures that are cited as examples why this matter of policy is a bad idea. But guess what? There are always business closures – or, at least, business decisions that adversely affect consumers or employees – that are blamed on some new policy or other, such as how every medical insurance company has been able, the last few years, to cite the ACA for raising prices. My general view is that companies are going to do what they plan to do anyway, and if some government regulation comes down the pike that they can blame, so be it.
So yes, McDonald’s may decide that because of this wage increase, locations that have been underperforming will be closed. In general, though, those locations were likely doomed anyway.