In the old days, cigarettes were cheap. Now, they're $5 or $6 a pack, something like the minimum wage. Just one more way this movie was bull----.
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"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--Dinky Summers
Remember that they stole some cigs in that car?
shareThey stole cigs from cars.
shareCigarettes in 2005 in LA would have been around $4 a pack. However, there's a growing movement of people buying from Indian reservations and online websites where it's only like $1.50 a pack since there's no taxes.
They also stole ciggs in the movie from that car.
Most smokers don't even finish the entirety of their cigarettes nowadays. Desperation can lead to many things- smoking stubs off of the ground can be one of these things. What a habit.
I was trying my hardest to make a Jacques Tati movie.
It's a matter of priorities. If smokes/booze/drugs are more important than rent and food, you'll have money.
Chaos reigns
There are unemployed, homeless heroin addicts who have thousand-dollar-a-week habits that they somehow manage to afford for years through scrounging, begging, and panhandling.
Watch Intervention sometime and you'll realize that people who shouldn't have two nickels to rub together still find a way to spend more on dope than the average American makes in two months.
Addiction is an extremely powerful motivator.
Heroin addicts who are broke and unemployed are probably breaking into houses, steeling cars or robbing people at gun point or hitting them in the head down alleys. You can't make $1,000 a week panhandling if you're the most charming bum in the world.
shareThe women are probably turning tricks as well. Maybe rolling a few of their customers who make the mistake of bringing them home or to a hotel room and leaving theim alone with their wallet. Some whore does that to Chinaski in the book as I recall.
shareOr maybe I'm thinking of one of his poems.
shareThere's always "little cigars", which are basically cigarettes wrapped in brown paper, but aren't classified or taxed as cigarettes. These typically sell for under $2 a pack in most places. Bums who can no longer afford cigarettes buy little cigars instead.
shareI live in an area with a lot of recovering drug addicts [frequently homeless too]. They frequently get money for cigarettes even if they can't afford food.
shareHang on, is this not set in the 70s or 80s like the book? The fact that everyone can smoke indoors should tell you that it isn't modern-day California.
These bastards!