A recent story in the New York Times described a new cruise ship that’s being built. It will be christened the Pride of America. It is being built in Germany. It will be an American-flagged vessel. That means it will have the opportunity to cruise between American ports. There’s a law that prohibits foreign-flagged vessels from doing that. So the Pride of America will have a leg up on the others. A few other things to know, however. The Pride of America is owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines. Last I checked, Norway isn’t a U.S. state. But that doesn’t matter much. Norwegian Cruise Lines is owned by Star Cruises. Star is headquartered in Hong Kong. Which isn’t in the U.S., either. But that doesn’t matter because Star Cruises is actually a unit of Genting Berhad. That company is actually based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All of which is beginning to make me feel like I’ve got a bad case of novovirus that’s now seemingly one of the perks of taking a cruise nowadays.
This isn’t about ships. It’s about the fact that an independent record store in my town just closed.