DynamicUno

Thanks for posting this.  Hoping that everyone's Pride celebrations are safe and enjoyable, but it's important to be alert to what's going on around you when in large gatherings.

I think Red Lobster's troubles have more to do with the changes in ownership in the past couple decades than one badly executed promotion.  It's a eye catching headline, sure, but if the business was fundamentally healthy it would be no more than a blip.

To be clear, Red Lobster was a mature brand with a lot of older locations, and a fairly downmarket reputation. It was no longer a growth business, it was the seafood place you went with your boomer (grand)parents after church.  There was a lot more competition from other newer chains, but still, it had a decent level of goodwill.  If it was structurally sound, I think it would be struggling to stay relevant but not going bankrupt.

Red Lobster was owned by Golden Gate Capital for several years last decade.  It's typical for PE firms to saddle their targets with a lot of debt as part of the acquisition.  It's also common for them to sell off the assets like real estate.  They'll take a location where the chain owned the property and sell the lot to a real estate investment firm and execute a long term lease.  They restaurant is still on the hook for any maintenance and upkeep on the property, so the new landlords provide very little service for the rent payments.  So the PE firm gets their aquisition paid off and they leave the business with high debts and more operating expenses than they had before the takeover.

If GCC left Red Lobster with drained assets and high debts, and you add the challenging post-pandemic restaurant environment on top of that, it's little wonder they're struggling to keep up.  It would certainly explain the turnover in their c-suite ever since Thai Union bought them, I can see these executives coming in, getting a real look at the balance sheets and noping out as soon as they could.

That would also explain the sudden move to close a large number of locations. They can stem the bleeding from underperforming locations, and hopefully recover enough value from the assets that get auctioned off to pay down the debts and get to a more stable financial position.  Unfortunately, a bankruptcy will probably still be necessary to force a restructuring of the remaining debt (and hopefully not a liquidation).

Sadly, the chain retaurant industry has been a big target for these firms, and it leaves empty buildings and lost jobs in the wake.  Name any chain that's died or struggled to survive in the past many years and it's a reasonable bet that there's been an leveraged aquisition in the process.  Consumers pay higher prices, employees lose jobs and or better wages, and cities are left with empty storefronts that become a hole in their tax base.  But somehow the blame gets shifted to the middle class because a soccer mom stopped for a latte.

I've never used MisterB&B myself.  I've figured it was roughly the same as AirB&B except you had that you had gay or very gay friendly hosts and some extra search options, but it's very limited unless you're looking in particular cities.  I would be worried about properties being double or triple listed (with AirB&B and VRBO, since the host has to block out the dates on the other sites if they get a booking.  MrB&B would have to handle the fallout if you ended up with a double booked property.  They're smaller so maybe more responsive than the others, but also less resources to handle a situation if things aren't going well.

Yes, it's always helpful if a poster is more specific about what kind of guy and scene they are looking for.  Do they want twinks in Toledo, or muscle studs in Memphis?  Perhaps they're in the mood for bondage in Boston or watersports in Walla Walla.  Is romance in Reno on the menu, or is it fisting in Fresno?  We can always provide better options with just a little more information.

I never cared for how ankle socks feel, so I guess I'll keep doing what I do and Gen Z can find something else to judge my Gen X ass.  I'll judge them on their use of one space after a period and how they don't look over their shoulder when reversing.

This vacation sounds like the perfect setting for one of those locked-room murder mystery movies, the OP can decide which of the in-laws plays the corpse. Perferably Daniel Craig reprises the lead role as Benoit Blanc again (Knives Out).

Pretty damned rude.  It's nice when the trash takes itself out.

Never saw him before, but he's got a really cute smile.

12 hours ago, BenjaminNicholas said:

This is exactly right. 

It's the mental game of pushing past boundaries and exchanging power, usually without what most would call full-on fucking.

The dominant figure always knows where the line is.

A good sub is able to convince himself in the moment that he has zero control.

It's old-fashioned theatrics, but with good actors, it can be a thrill (for those interested).

I agree with you to a point, especially if the dom is well adjusted and careful not to cross the line into abuse.  I think it's easy for money to let someone rationalize becoming very abusive in this kind of dynamic.  Watching the interview with Mateo, the way he talks about his clients sounds a lot like how relationship scam artists that engage in "pig butchering" scams talk about their victims.  The only difference in his case is his clients do willlingly engage with him as a findom, but it seems like more than an act for him.  Add to that where he claims he needs some form of transaction to be interested in any kind of sex, there just seems to be some of psychopathy driving him.

There were some photos in the interview showing him before his surgeries, and he was genuinely a cute young man.  His alterations are his own business, but I don't think the look he's trying to achieve is going to age well.  I hope has a good exit strategy because I think his ability to keep draining his clients won't last very long as he gets older.

You're trying to infer a negative if a provider doesn't leave a response to a positive review left by another client.  You may as well admit that you're viewing every interaction with a provider as an adversarial encounter.  You're paying a guy to put his hands on your naked body to relax you, but you're getting worked up second guessing his actions from the time you first message him to how he responds to a review well after the session.   You seem to be more worried about getting your ego stroked than your nalgas.

Some mysteries are better left unsolved...

It's probable they set the available flag on their account in case they can get an interested client who is looking at that moment.  After all if they're up and not otherwise occupied, they might get a little extra income out of it.  They could also be outside of your time zone, and showing available at 3am is not so unreasonable in their local time.

I don't see it as a red flag, unless I happen reach out and they're non-responsive.  Some guys prefer to take clients on short notice, others prefer more planning.

It's possible the number is no longer valid if a provider has stopped working and disconnected the line.  If so, the number could be reassigned.  It's advisable to be a little cautious until they've responded and confirmed the number is still theirs.  After that, if he says he's no longer seeing former clients you can delete his number.

I've met a few, unfortunately they've moved away or aren't active now.  I haven't met any currently active Asian providers out of NYC.

To be fair, he didn't say where he was keeping the 38 year old's body.  I'd check under the floor of that murder basement in his photos.

Does anyone else see the irony of questioning the morality of informing friends who are mutual clients of a provider about his criminal history, when everyone who has hired him is has engaged in an illegal (and immoral by most religious interpretations) act?

His ad copy comes off with him being a bit too into himself. How am I going to fuck his ass with his head in the way?

Definately prefer to be with guys that identify as gay or bi.  The dynamic of being with a straight guy often feels off and disconnected.  Worst case is a guy that has to have straight porn playing during the session.  

The site appears to be recovering, if a bit slowly.  Disruptions of adult sites is pretty common due to frequent DDOS type attacks.  It could also have been a problem with the back end databases.  RM appears to use some CDN type services to help avoid disruptions, but mitigating high bandwidth DDOS attacks is expensive.

As far as credit for downtime is concerned, RM doesn't provide any guarantee of uptime in their TOS.  Sections 17, 18, and 19 of the TOS are pretty clear that they do not have any liablity for downtime.  If there was a major outage, any credit for downtime would be at their discretion because there's no contractual requirement.

Whatever gets the congregation to fall on their knees and let their throats give praise!

If the escort was in prison for a violent offense, I would say you should inform your friends. Otherwise, use your discretion.

I've seen some providers set an autoreply in their RM chat where they often provide availability and rates to answer the most common questions up front.  Frequently, I've seen where the autoreply provides instructions to send further contact by text.  I've wondered if the clients tend to follow the instructions, but it seems smart to have the autoreply in place.

Bump!

RM's chat system has a reputation for being unreliable (delivering messages late, dropped alerts, etc), and it doesn't generate native notifications for mobile users which forces users to check the RM page to see if new messages have been received.  Text messaging (SMS or iMessage) or messaging apps like WhatsApp are more robust and natively give notifications when a message is received.  

RM chat's deficiencies are more serious for providers who may be in contact with multiple potential clients at the same time so checking for new message can be more challenging, clients are more likely to follow only one or two conversations at a time.

My personal approach is to message on RM and transition to phone messaging once contact has been made.  That preserves my ability to leave a review, but phone app messaging helps confirm the meeting details more quickly.