The music venue Discoteca enjoyed a year-long existence between January 2010 and January 2011, being Chattanooga’s “all analogue bar” which only allowed vinyl records or cassettes to be played and featuring notable indie music acts such as Will Oldham, Lambchop, and Monotonix.
At a press conference yesterday afternoon, the proprietors of Discoteca have unveiled a new business called Megoteca based on a similar concept, allowing customers to access the Internet only by using outdated, slow analog technology, including land-line phones, acoustic-coupler modems, and dial-up phone numbers.
Co-owner Dewey Blackwell explained, “Listening to your favorite album on vinyl can’t be beat, for all the warmth and richness of that analog format. Similarly, nothing compares to surfing the Internet the retro, old-school way, using dial-up connections and 300-baud acoustic modems. Who can forget the thrill of anticipation of slowly loading up in Netscape a grainy .GIF file of Cindy Margolis in a bikini?”
“‘Gig City’ my ass,” continued Blackwell, referring to the nickname bestowed upon Chattanooga due to the one-gigabit-per-second fiber-optic Internet service provided by competitor EPB. “This is Meg City! We are talking about some sweet-ass Internet, here.”
Subscribers to Megoteca’s Internet service will receive a starter kit with installation software on a 5.25-inch floppy disk (compatible with Windows 3.1), a free Megoteca email account with a 5 MB storage limit, and a free Geocities web page.
