Was looking up a City Pages piece critical of the slant local ABC affiliate KSTP had about how the looming state government shutdown (which is now on since midnight passed without a budget deal or stopgap measure) may force restaurants, such as The Independent in Uptown, to close. These restaurants are late on paying sales taxes on liquor, and if they don't pay within a month, the state tells wholesalers and distributors not to give them any more.
While Kiss Tip didn't not report the facts, these facts -- which would make a more level-headed person conclude that it's the restaurant for being late on paying their taxes -- were downplayed in favor of quotes that conveyed the message that Big, Bad, Dumb Government is screwing over the Little Guy again by making the Small Business Owner shut its doors because it doesn't have its shit together. That's a Republican attitude ... which dovetails perfectly with Channel 5 because they're owned by the Hubbard family, a prominent local dynasty that leans righter than my dick. (You remember the slam piece/miniseries about the Kennedys starring Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes? It was aired on Starz, which is owned by the Hubbards.) I did not see the story myself, but that's because I don't watch Channel 5 anymore because of their conservative bias on reports, which seemed to be on full display in that story.
Anyway, like I usually do, the articles on the website lead me to click on one, then another, then another. The trail I traversed on City Pages, however, was a dark one: I read blog post after blog post about restaurants closing this week. First it was Junbo, which was once named by the paper as the best place to eat Chinese in the area. Too much trouble at the restaurant late at night on the weekends.
Then it was Soul Daddy, which shuttered abruptly this week. This was the place that won the reality show America's Next Great Restaurant. The owner and guy who came up with the concept seemed like a nice guy, but his somewhat-contradictory concept of "healthy soul food" apparently died an extremely quick death; it closed just two months after it was revealed on TV to be the winner and opened in three locations (it canned its stores in New York and Los Angeles a couple weeks ago). The owner Jamawn Woods, planned on moving to Minnesota to concentrate on saving his store at the Megamall, but it was too late. I planned on going to the Mall Of America tomorrow night and was thinking how I could eat at both Soul Daddy and Hooters; I go to the latter because I wanted to see hot chicks in tight clothing as a way to arouse myself so I'm in the right mood when I go to the stripclub later that night. Won't have to worry about that now.
Death comes in threes: If you don't count the "impending" death of The Independent, then the third is probably the Cake Eater Bakery. That itself is kind of different, too; it didn't close this week or recently but will close on the 10th. My God, why all the deaths of these restaurants at the same time? Is this the end of their fiscal years and decided it's easiest to close now for accounting purposes?
My parents owned a restaurant once. From its size, grandeur, and the time they devoted to it, they loved the place. And then it shut down. I think it was my parents' dream, or at least my father's, to run a successful restaurant. I don't know if he's ever been the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment