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This week, Palo Alto Joe had the distinct opportunity to interview Mac, of Mac's Smoke Shop. Mac's is a cultural landmark, a sign of meaningful life in an increasingly overly yuppiefied downtown area. In my usual easygoing style, I started out with cool simple questions.
PAJ: Mac, you're selling cancer and pornography in here - aren't you afraid that a group of militant enviro-feminist student protestors from Stanford will someday target your store for ugly street protests and picketing? Don't you fear that bra-burning tobacco-hating jack-booted thugs will kick down your door? Mac: Well, for one thing, our door is always open, so it can't be kicked down. Also we are very fortunate that Stanford students rarely leave campus. In the event that an actual student would venture off-campus without parents in tow, we feel that they would be so distraught by the fact that we sell cigars that they wouldn't notice that we also offer a full variety of journals and periodicals.
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PAJ: I see. But aren't you worried that the recent trendiness of cigar smoking, popularized among the yuppie-sheep-class by Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzengger, will bring throngs of students, eager to jump on the bandwagon, right to your very store?
PAJ: Ok, Mac, lets cut to the chase. The word on the street is that this "Smoke Shop" is just a front, a place for you to hide out while you act as information broker for Silicon Valley, selling off software secrets, trading business plans and auctioning off genetic sequences to the highest bidder. Is this true? Mac: No, of course not. I sell cigars and magazines. Soft-drinks and candy too. PAJ: Oh is that so? Well then is it equally not true that once a week Marc Andreesen comes in here to give you the inside scoop on Netscape in exchange for a hefty supply of Cuban cigars and free copies of Barely Legal? Mac: Yes, that is equally not true. PAJ: Ok so we're getting somewhere. Is it of greater, equal or lesser untruth that last week Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and yourself held a secret meeting in your computer magazine section and decided to form a collusive monopoly on the personal cigar, the network cigar and the handheld cigar, also known as PCs, NCs and HCs? Mac: The amount of untruth in that statement is no less than that found in the previous statement. There you have it folks. Palo Alto Joe has uncovered yet another secret. Not only is Mac a tough businessman, as unafraid of femi-eco-Nazi's as he is of Menlo-Nazis, he even maintains deniability in his involvement as a Silicon Valley power broker despite a tortuously complex logical interrogation by Palo Alto Joe. I recommend that this no nonsense, politics-be-damned business approach be adopted as the creed of a New Palo Alto as it enters the second hundred years.
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