Premier Rock Forum

Norwich Union
Colman's Mustard
Fly.Be
Delia Smith
British Telecom
DHP

Nike (sweatshop)
Disney (cancelling Ellen, although they might be embracing the gays now that they've realized the market potential)
GAP/Banana Republic/Old Navy (sweatshop)
Eating meat (still wear leather shoes and belts)

Waffle: I still do buy Chuck Taylors, despite knowing that they're made by Nike. I gave them up for three years, but finally caved and bought my fourth pair a couple weeks ago.

The American Apparel thing is tricky. It sucks that dude's a perv around his staff/journalists, but I think in the long run the world is a better place for what he's doing. The workers seem to be doing well and I really like the cut of the clothes. Plus, they offered the last band I was in an amazing wholesale price for tshirts despite talking about a relatively small order. Maybe someone will sue him and he'll finally stop all the gross behavior.

Man I'm really wishy-washy.

I boycott Subway, because they offer nothing that I want.

Nico Adie wrote:Spud-U-Like

I've never heard of this business, but I'm imagining the jingle:

It's just the spud
it's just the spud
the Spud-U-Like!

All of them.

How could I forget?

Behringer

Tesco - they have a really specific and aggressive battle plan for opening new stores. They are in the vanguard of killing off independent retailers. All supermarkets chains are guilty of this, but Tesco's are the biggest and the most ruthless.

Starbucks etc. Partly for the above reasons, but also because their products are bafflingly disgusting. Who wants to sit in that ersatz environment and drink that shit? Also in the UK, the volume of coffee consumed per capita must have at least quadrupled in the last 10-15 years. There used to be occasional cafes, greasy spoons, the odd Spud U Like, now every parade of shops has SB/Cafe Nero/whatever. Are we getting more done as a result?

Boycotting may or may not be ineffective, but in a free market, what you buy and where you buy it is effectively voting. Whose business practices are you going to reward?

I have trouble keeping everyone's bad behavior straight. every corporation probably has a story which would make me not want to deal with them again. I tend to think of spending money as an act of rewarding the vendor for doing something right. ideally it's a mom-and-pop or small producer or vendor, but you can't really do that for cars/gas, utilities, airlines, and financial services.

there's also a lot of shit I just flat-out don't like but I don't think that counts as a boycott. that said, I don't think I would ever buy something at Guitar Center, though it's fun to go and ponder the B.C. Rich guitars, because someone is still buying them, but you never see them do it.

Wal-Mart.
Dominos Pizza (which is painless to boycott, since it isn't very good).
McDonalds (ditto).
Coors products (even more ditto, since I'm on the wagon and they make the worst non-alcoholic beer, bar none).
Pepsi.
Starbucks.
... I strive not to buy clothing with a logo on it (except for T-shirts with artwork from bands or artists I admire and that sort of thing), which means I avoid the Gap, Old Navy, A&F and crap like that.
And Ryan Adams. Definitely Ryan Adams.

Colonel Panic wrote:That show positively reeks of pretense and smugness.

Yeah, in a Decemberists kind of way. I bet Ira Glass listens to the Decemberists.

I boycott the Decemberists.