decadence a way of life

So the season is winding down in Florida and I spent some days in Gainesville where I ate some Skeeters Big Biscuits and picked up a T-shirt; purple with the slogan "DECADENCE A WAY OF LIFE" emblazoned across the chest. Later that summer I went dancing in a club in Portland Maine with G. and the bouncers were bidding on my T.. Needless to say I did not part with it even when the bid hit $40. (this was back around 1980, I had paid $6 for it)
Back on the row, the following season, in the hinterlands of Alabama where the famous white breakfast is the extent of morning choices in the local eateries. White toast, eggs over, grits and biscuits with white gravy. I caved due to my pangs and was in consumption mode when a heavily accented voice was persistently asking for some attention. In an accent you could cut with a chainsaw I hear, hey was' tha' theer Dee-Kay-Dense some kinda cult? So in my most accommodating sonorous voice I replied that no it was not a cult; but that it is a sect of Zoroastrianism. The conversation terminated.