I refuse to use drinking fountains. On the rare occasion when I did, I could pretty much always came away from it with a cold or sore throat later in the day or the next day. Yecch.

Simply nothing better than glass as a container.
I no longer like aluminum, too many residuals from the manufacturing process.

Sorry, PLASTICS HAVE TO GO.

I prefer glass for most beverages if possible. Less likely for the container's materials to leech into the drink.

That's why you can't let cheap plastic water bottles sit for too long. The plastic starts contaminating water after a while and makes it taste gross.

Decent reusable plastic bottles are usually fine for a few years, though.

The downside to glass is that it's usually bulkier, heavier, and more expensive.

The efficient system used for drink bottles in the 60's is the standard. Buy a Coke in the bottle, return the empty, get 2 cents.
Return crates in front of gas stations, really everywhere.
Incentives to collect and return.
Bottle washing automation that (mostly) ensured a clean drink.
I really hate plastics, of all kinds though I recognize the benefits in some cases (Medical).

Unless one with a mouse or something slipped through the inspectors.

LTG : )

It is great except for all the fuel it takes to carry heavy glass back and forth.

The best delivery system is the pipes already in every building. Packaged water in any container is stupid.

Heck, I still drink out of the garden hose straight from a well. After 60 + years, I must have built up a good immune system!

Before I recently retired, they remodeled the facility and stuck in something similar so people could fill up water containers with 'clean and filtered' water. And of course....never bothered to change the filter for ages even after the 'change filter' light was lit. That filter was probably a cesspool! Straight out of the tap is fine by me.

“Yeah. OK, well, uh, we found, uh, this mouse in a bottle of YOUR BEER, eh. Like, we was at a party and, uh, a friend of ours - a COP - had some, and HE PUKED. And he said, uh, come here and get free beer or, uh, he'll press charges.”

No, for real. At my Father's arcade every once in a great while we'd find something in a bottle. Usually Mountain Dew, it was easiest to see when loading the pop machine. This would be mid to late 1960's.

I had one with a plastic straw in it I saved. No idea where it ended up. When I lost the house a lot of stuff disappeared.

Those days we didn't think of suing.

LTG : )

I have no problem with a garden hose. 50 people all haven't licked it before I got there.

Great flick! They don’t make em like they used to.....

I find them useful when traveling.

When you're done, you just toss it and don't have to keep carrying it around.

Some places won't let you in with containers/bottles/drinks, so tossing out a plastic bottle isn't going to be any great loss (unlike a refillable bottle).

Otherwise, no, I don't use plastic bottles on a day-to-day basis. I filter my own tap water.

There's all the contaminate from being just brought out of the ground, not being sanitized, no chlorine. A hose that's been setting around for months, setting out in the open? We all seem to survive drinking from an occasional water fountain and eventually die from other issues. Drinking from a water fountain (or hose in my case) is not a real worry w/me.

But no issues about you being worried about other people and water fountains, completely understand your comment. Just not a concern on my end, we all have different priorities in life.

Well sure--I don't think I've used a garden hose in that situation. Usually it's been a hose that's already been watering the garden or cooling people off all summer, so it's already had quite a bit of water flowing through it.

I live out in the boonies. There's probably cow pee and fertilizer to a certain extent coming out of the hose that I drink from! Flowers seem to like it tho!

As someone who traveled by air several times a month for 30+ years, I've used drinking fountains in office buildings, factories and airports thousands of times. Never a problem and I saved thousands of dollars. Even while on an expense account, I treated the money as if it were my own.

I think you're doing drinking fountains wrong. No licking is necessary to obtain the water. I'm sure the fountain appreciates your extra effort though.

I believe the environmental impact between aluminum and glass leans toward aluminum as the [slightly] more efficient option.

However our startup model required us to shy away from glassware, a water refill station was considered. I harbored fears of cross contamination with a refill station, either from splash back or from the lip of a cup contacting a cross-touch surface. Perhaps unfounded, and perhaps cross contamination can be eliminated by devices such as FloWater and the like.

Until we are able to invest in glassware service, I’m fine slanging Death.

LOL

Of course I know that.

I've seen more than a few people put their whole mouth on the faucet. Yuck.

Mostly kids, who have the most germs.

We’ve seen a slowdown in attendance (school season) and a noticeable increase in mask wearing. But still trickling in a good number of guests on most days.

Our ventilation system is still chugging away which is a relief, but we are remaining defensive. If this isn’t Delta peak, we’re pretty close to it and expecting to remain as such until at least mid-October.

Upgraded the fridge. Fun new custom marquee. Also moved the Arnold Palmers to the $2 shelf up top. Mannequins have appeared.

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I'll chime in as well. The Richmond Pinball Collective, this quarter, has the highest number of members we've ever had. Things are doing pretty well on the financial end relative to our pre-pandemic state. We have regular tournaments and leagues. We dropped our mask mandate for a little bit per Covid numbers being down. When delta ramped up, we brought the mask mandate back and have continued it since. Hopefully the numbers will go back down so we can remove the mandate. No one has gotten sick through our club and we trying to keep it that way.

I’m glad everyone is surviving!

We have been crazy busy since the end of September. Fall is huge tourist season. It will slow a bit the second week of January until spring break season starts in March.

Generally Blue Ridge is a mask free zone, probably less than 1 in 20 wear one. Our space gets crowded when we are busy an no one seems freaked out about anything.

Now that the pandemic appears to be finally winding down, most of our arcades survived, and we had at least one new one open up (Cidercade) during the pandemic. Unfortunately, we lost our EightyTwo late last year (October, I think?), which is unfortunate as I was looking forward to it taking off and providing more choices.

I remain optimistic about new locations opening up later in 2022 (we could always use more pinball in a city like Houston) but realistically it's hard to expect much until the pandemic really is completely over.

Every month in 2022 thus far has been a record-breaker in terms of attendance at RPM. Woohoo!

We're keeping our background ventilation system in place until covid mutates into a weaker endemic form, like flu. At which point we will switch to full HEPA filtration (our space is only 3500 sqft so it is affordable to achieve this).

It suffices to say that the Prohibition Era-rule of survival held up: Businesses which survive an industry-wide catastrophe usually become the trendsetters afterward.