Tag: restaurants

Sunday Stealing Goes to the Mall

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week’s meme is inspired by Melanie at This Ain’t New York. We’re indulging in a little retail therapy. Tell us what you would pick up at each stop. Sunday Stealing Goes to the Mall.

Shopping Day. What’s on your shopping list from …

First, let it be known that I HATE most shopping. I remember one winter that my wife was going to buy me a coat. We went to J.C. Penney, and I tried on two coats. The second one fit and looked fine. “I’m ready.” She wondered, “Don’t you want to keep looking?” “NO!” Did I mention that I hate most shopping?

1. Target or Walmart, or other superstore?

My disdain for Walmart is well-documented here from 2013; it’s too big, as I was reminded the last time I went there. It is the largest supercenter in the United States. Target has been subject to a boycott, described here.  A Costco is coming to the area on August 6, and it will have a massive footprint.

2. Dollar Tree or Dollar General, or poundstretcher/99p store?

Dollar stores tend to creep me out, with a bunch of stuff that I don’t really need. If I really need to shop, I’ll go to Lodge’s, a downtown Albany store that’s been around for nearly 160 years! I wrote about it here in 2018. The last time I went there, I bought socks, shirts, and sunglasses.

NOW we’re talkin’!

3. Best Buy or any other electronics/appliance store?

I have gone to Best Buy for electronics and, more pressingly, to get stuff fixed. The last thing I bought there was a boombox with a two-year warranty; it works better than some cheaper ones.

4. Book/music store?

I used to LOVE to go to record stores in Albany. Blue Note, Strawberry’s, World’s Records, et al. Last Vestige is the only one left, as far as I know, because I ain’t going to Walmart et al.

I went to several bookstores as well, but my favorite has long been The Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza. Oh, I was reminded that my good friend Norm Nissen, who worked there and provided great book selections, died ten years ago this very month; I miss him a lot.

Bonus question! Where do you want to stop for lunch? 

There’s a stretch of places less than two blocks from my house:  Junior’s (especially between 11 am and 2 pm),  Cafe Madison, and others. Also, across from the Washington Avenue library, the Iron Gate Cafe.

Why I don’t eat at Cracker Barrel

Steak ‘N’ Shake

I don’t eat at Cracker Barrel. It’s not a function of its “down home” motif. The first time I remember going to one of the restaurants was during one of the Olin Family reunion weekends in Binghamton about 25 years ago. It’s possible that the number of diners overwhelmed the staff because the service was terrible.

The last time was perhaps a decade ago in East Greenbush, near Albany. (Mark Evanier noted that “the Cracker Barrels in the state of New York are in Binghamton, Cicero, Clifton Park, East Greenbush, Fishkill, Horseheads, Rochester, Watertown, and Williamsville. Again, my life has never taken me to any of these cities, and I have no idea where they are.”)

Anyway, the cooking area was arranged so the server couldn’t even suggest how my daughter, who has tree nut and peanut allergies, could have something from the griddle. We found something she could eat, but we never went back.

It was not the only time I left places that seemed incapable of taking the daughter’s allergies seriously. We ended up walking out of an Applebee’s in southern Pennsylvania. By comparison, Friendly’s restaurants—alas, no longer in Albany County—were great regarding allergens. 

Here’s a sad truth: I felt safer taking her to McDonald’s or Wendy’s than some out-of-the-way diner when she would tell them about her allergies, and they seemed unresponsive to what was being said. 

What’s it called again?

Here’s the weird thing about Cracker Barrel: until this controversy, I could never remember the place’s name. Ask my wife or daughter, and I’d say, “You know, the place with the yellow sign.” 

That said, my wife was grousing about a certain Orange man fussing about this. But I noted that it was Steak ‘n Shake that first complained. Their map suggests they are located from Ohio to Texas to Florida. They claimed “Cracker Barrel’s goal with its switch-up was to ‘delete the personality altogether’ by removing the ‘old-timer’ from the signage.”

I just discovered that the man’s name is Uncle Herschel. Perhaps people were concerned that a fictional character would be unemployed. Whew! We dodged that bullet.

So it’s a “heritage” thing, whatever that means. Except that “Cracker Barrel has always been a simulacrum of rural life, a corporate behemoth masquerading as a mom-and-pop lunch counter,” per David A. Graham in The Atlantic. “No one should confuse a bland interstate chain with a real slice of Americana.” But it wants to show its MAGA bona fides by ditching the webpage “boasting its support for the LGBTQ+ community.”

Kelly is right: the controversy shows we are becoming a stupider nation.

Where do I go when it’s safe?

food and film

a-group-of-opened-cans-of-food-containing-fruits-vegetables-and-legumesKevin, who is from my home county, though I don’t think we met until college, asks what should be a simple question:

Where is the first place you are going when it’s safe to go out?

Of course, not everything will open up at the same time. The thing I miss the most, singing in the choir, is going to take a while longer than other activities. So, it’s a toss-up between going to the movies and going indoors to a sit-down restaurant.

Now there have been some cinemas open around here with a limited capacity. I’m not feeling at all comfortable with attending. Maybe by the time I take my second COVID shot, I’ll feel differently. Yet, watching movies from home is a lesser experience.

I have some HBO channels, though not MAX; Amazon Prime, and Apple TV. So I have the capacity to see films at home. I just don’t have the discipline to treat films at home as I treat movies in a place I have to sit in a dark room with strangers. And it’s been true for over 40 years.

As for restaurants, I’m not doing that indoors either. Or for that matter, outdoors. When the weather was decent, there was a row of outdoor dining options at the end of Madison Avenue, only a couple blocks from here. Not only did I never patronize them, when I needed to go to the local CVS, but I also made a point of walking on the other side of the restaurants.

Now, I did do takeout occasionally, and sometimes I’ve been anxious about buying THAT, depending on the size of the unmasked crowd I had to wade through. Besides, takeout is not sitting in a restaurant, with its ambiance. There’s a huge difference between being served by a waitperson and taking food home in metal containers.

Hometown

Right before the lockdown, I was planning a trip to my hometown of Binghamton, NY in late March. I wanted to see the court transcripts of the trial involving my grandmother Agatha Walker (later, Green), who levied charges against my biological paternal grandfather, Raymond Cone. These records are only available in paper form, not electronically.

Kindness, civility, conscience, injustice, protest

“Restaurant owners routinely deny service to obnoxious Yelpers, noisy children, and even critical restaurant reviewers—this is the norm. These are not protected classes.”

I’m still deciding what to think about the correct responses to injustice.

Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor of Theology and President (1998-2008) of the Chicago Theological Seminary wrote Do Not Tolerate the Intolerable: Public Shaming Can Be a Justice Action. “Jesus of Nazareth publicly shamed those leaders he saw were committing injustice in his time, calling them out (Matt. 23:13). Jesus didn’t hesitate to be confrontational. ‘You hypocrites!’ he cried out.”

She points to Professor Gene Sharp, “often called the ‘grandfather of nonviolent direct action,’ who compiled a list of 198 Tactics for The Politics of Nonviolent Action. “Both publicly ‘taunting’ officials and withholding services are on the list.”

I get that. Still, one has to be strategic in this manner. Some of the suggestions from the Sharp list, such as not voting, I’d oppose in the US in 2018, yet would have supported in Russia, when Putin eliminated any real opposition.

Some actor named Hugo noted, and I agree, that actor Robert DeNiro cursing out some guy during the Tonys was a bad strategy. “Sinking ships aren’t saved by succumbing to anger… Progressive change isn’t brought upon society through verbal abuse. Decency and maturity are more effective — a levelheaded, well planned and swift takedown of a demagogue…”

In that manner, I’ve come to understand the owner of the Red Hen restaurant: “Several… employees are gay, which is one of many groups of people targeted by the Trump administration. They were uncomfortable to see the president’s chief propagandist in their midst, so they called the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, who drove in from home…

“They wanted Sanders to leave. Wilkinson did not attempt to publicly embarrass Sanders. She asked her to step out on the patio, where she explained why she wanted her to leave. The reason… why millions of Americans know about what happened… — is that Sanders used her government Twitter account, which has more than 3 million followers, to try to ruin The Red Hen, which seats 26 people.

“Sarah Sanders is a bully. Any discussion about her that raises the issue of civility is nothing but an intellectual exercise by people who aren’t worried enough about the harm her boss, the bully in chief, is inflicting on this country. Trump attacked The Red Hen on Twitter, too. Of course he did.

“Civility requires mutual respect. The Red Hen employees apparently understood this. If someone spends her days making clear her disregard for you and her willingness to harm you by parroting her boss’s bigotry, no one should expect you to act as if it doesn’t matter when she’s not talking into a microphone.”

BTW, I had forgotten when a baker turned away Joe Biden and received praise from conservatives.

An article in GQ notes: “Restaurant owners routinely deny service to obnoxious Yelpers, noisy children, and even critical restaurant reviewers—this is the norm. These are not protected classes, which include race, religion, disability, and gender, under anti-discrimination laws. Just as posting a ‘no shirts, no shoes, no service’ sign is not equivalent to Jim Crow-era ‘white-only’ policies—there is a wide chasm between bad behavior and immutable characteristics.”
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Read this piece from Tucker Fitzgerald, a “straight, white, male. I have a Master of Divinity from a Christian seminary,” who “voted for W both times”. He addresses his own shift in Intolerant Liberals, which should explain to conservatives WHY we protest.

I suppose, at the end of the day, in responding to injustice, as our Congressman Paul Tonko said on July 4, we need to resist, to protest, to protect, and to heal. There will be differences of opinion about what that means. I’m still idealistic enough to hope that it’s done with love in our hearts.

Times Union review re: Cuckoo’s Nest Restaurant

Does the Times Union not understand that there is nothing quaint about the violent and terroristic “rebel” culture that supported slavery and Jim Crow?

I had not yet seen the review of the Cuckoo’s Nest restaurant when I saw it referred to on Facebook. But once I read it, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Below is my buddy Mark Mishler’s response to the review, and the only things I changed were the reference date and adding the reviewer’s name.

As this mostly terrible year comes to a close, a mostly irrelevant article in the December 28 issue of the mostly insignificant Albany Times Union caught my attention as a tiny example of what could charitably be called complete insensitivity to the history of slavery and racism in the US (and, therefore, a neat little coda to a year filled with a resurgence of violent neo-Nazi and racist activity and apologies for it from those in power.)

The article is a review of a new restaurant in Albany, the Cuckoo’s Nest, which apparently has a “Southern” theme, whatever that means. The headline is “Rebel Yell”. Describing this new restaurant (in what used to be a wine bar), the Times Union reviewer, Susie Davidson Powell, writes that the changes to the previous decor serve to “recalibrate the familiar wine bar with antebellum warmth.”

Does the Times Union not understand that there is nothing quaint about the violent and terroristic “rebel” culture that supported slavery and Jim Crow? Or, that there were many, many people – primarily the African-American people who lived there the time – who did not find the antebellum period in the Southern slavocracy states to be filled with cozy “warmth”? How could this nostalgic elegy for the period of slavery pass the eye of the editors at the Times Union?

I should add that I have no idea whether the views of the reviewer reflect the views of the restaurant’s owners. Maybe the reviewer did not do them a positive service by couching the review in these terms. I look forward – though not really optimistically – to a new year in which the horrors of racism and slavery in this country are fully acknowledged and addressed.

I’ve not been to the restaurant, located where the Gingerman used to be on Western Avenue. (I’d been to the Gingerman several times over the years.) Let me reiterate that this is a reflection of the review, not the restaurant.

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