Running a restaurant is more than just cooking up good food and getting it to the table.
Though many fall short even on that basic task.
There is also service to get right. And decor.
Beyond that, there is filling the role of being a business in a community, with teams to sponsor and charities to support.
All of which Harry Caray's, the landmark steakhouse and Italian restaurant on Kinzie, not to forget its various satellite locations, does exceedingly well.
Or rather, does well when the United States Postal Service manages to deliver their mail.
Pull up a chair.
Tales of the ineptitude of the local branch of the post office are such a Chicago tradition, you hesitate before offering up a new one.
You ask, does it meet the classic standards? The piles of letters found burning under a viaduct? The sacks of undelivered mail discovered in a disturbed postal carrier's home? The bar is very high.
But heck, it's Labor Day weekend. I shouldn't even be working. And while Harry Caray's CEO Grant DePorter certainly plays the media like a conductor directing a well-trained orchestra, and could generate press for a stoplight changing, there is sincere interest here.
I hope.
A stack of letters that Harry Caray's sent exactly 10 years ago was delivered last week, the moldy envelopes arriving to their startled recipients, in some cases, with others returning to the restaurant office.
"People are getting mail all over town, 10 years ago to the date," said DePorter, marveling at a particular return-to-sender letter from Children's Memorial Hospital.
"They said they couldn't locate it," he said. "You would think the post office would know Children's Memorial has moved."
In 2012, from Lincoln Park to Chicago Avenue, changing its name to Lurie Children's Hospital.
Mark V. Reynolds, spokesman for the USPS' Chicago office, said that forwarding instructions are only good for one year, then mail is returned to sender.
From how Grant was talking, I envisioned a burlap sack stuffed with mail moldering in a forgotten corner of some vast postal facility. It turned out we're talking about six letters—one delivered to the Cubs, one delivered to Chris Chelios' charity, and four returned to Harry's.
So far. DePorter worries there are many others he has yet to hear about.
"This is like the Nielsen ratings," he said. "Where one person represents 100 more."
He first learned of the problem last week at Wrigley Field, fittingly.
"Andrea Burke, who works with the Cubs, ran up to us and said, 'You will never believe what I got in the mail,'" said DePorter, "an envelope that was mailed 10 years ago that contained gift certificates for Fan Appreciation Day in 2005,"
At first he thought it was funny.
"Like a time capsule. Then I got the letter from the Restaurant Association."
A letter contained gift certificates for a silent auction.
"They never got my charity stuff and I was the chairman," said DePorter. "I was guy calling people to say, will you donate? You never know the ripple effect. Ernst and Young never got my thank you letter for their event. The letter to Children's Memorial Hospital had a certificate for dinner with Cubs manage Dusty Baker. They could have gotten a lot of money for that, but it never happened because the certificate for the dinner never arrived. There's probably a lot more. This is only the tip of the iceberg."
DePorter speculated the mail was "probably under a table for 10 years."
The post office couldn't offer much light.
"This is a mystery," said Reynolds, vowing to investigate. "We need to know what happened."
Don't hold your breath, though.
"The only person who could tell us what happened to the mail is the mail itself, if it could talk." Reynolds said."This is highly unusually, an anomaly. Mail may be found in equipment we thought was empty. It does happen, unfortunately."
I've known Grant for years, and he is devoted—perhaps even obsessed—with the image of the restaurant. The idea that people were promised something from Harry's and didn't get it horrifies and torments him.
"I think people were too embarrassed to call us out on it," he said. "I didn't know they were mad at us."
So look within. If you harbor any lingering, decade-old resentment against Harry Caray's for not sending that gift certificate they promised, well, maybe they did and it just didn't arrive, for reasons that will probably never be known.
In 2005, the Postal Service handled 211.7 billion pieces of mail. Last year it was 155.4 billion pieces, a 25 percent drop.
"This is why FedEx is doing so well," DePorter said.
Black people can be bigots. Some deny this, but then, bigots always deny their irrational prejudices are motivated by baseless prejudice, preferring instead to pretend they are based on practical experience, solid science, or, when all else fails, religion.
I know this because when the civil rights struggle of our time, the growing acceptance of gay, lesbian, transgender and other assorted folk into the realm of accepted humanity, is called that, sometimes African Americans will complain to me, and vigorously point out that while race is naturally assigned—by God, if they are so inclined—and unchanging either way, that sexuality is a choice, sometime a sinful choice.
That isn't in any way true, but a good try.
The struggles of the civil rights era are evoked in the push for gay rights because they're so relevant. For instance, today, the New York Times ran a story about Kentucky clerk Kim Davis going to jail rather than issue her gay fellow citizens marriage licenses, as the law compels and a court has ordered her to do. It explained how her defiance has rallied American mullahs to press their lost cause of intolerance anew, It mentioned how 13 of the 67 counties in Alabama, like Davis, stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether rather than comply with the law and end discrimination against gay people.
This is called, in the vernacular, "cutting off your nose to spite your face," and evoked a similar practice in the 1960s and 1970s, where small towns in the steamy Deep South would fill in their swimming pools with dirt rather than integrate them. They'd rather no one swim at all then let those black kids in with their white sons and daughters.
They no doubt could quote scripture and science.
I remember that because it was a particular horrible and telling detail, and showed the ultimate self-destructive quality of being a bigot. While prejudice certainly hurts the object of irrational scorn, it also blows back on the prejudiced. Your worldview is skewed and nobody gets to swim. Or gets issued a marriage license.
The more particular hatreds fall into disrepute, the easier it is to see the damage that bigotry causes the bigoted. Regarding race, a person who openly expresses a contemptuous racial prejudice will now suffer more than the minority being condemned. Regarding sexuality, the backwoods religions making a last ditch stand against gay rights are undercutting whatever fig leaf of moral authority they might have had, much more than they are stopping the rapid progress of human rights in this country. Sad that they don't see it, but then if they did, they wouldn't behave the way they do.
When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, voters were uncomfortable with the prospect of being led by somebody who wasn't Protestant, and aired their fears.
Could Kennedy, they wondered, as a Roman Catholic, manage to put the interests of his country ahead of pressures from the Vatican?
Kennedy was forced to repeatedly address these worries. Speaking to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960, he first chided his audience for ignoring issues like poverty and Communism, and instead forcing him to talk about whether he'd take his marching orders from the pope.
"Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this," he said. "So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again — not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me —but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act."
Kennedy was good to his word. In the countless histories of his all-too-brief administration, JFK has been accused of many lapses, but excessive zeal for his Catholic faith and fidelity to its teachings are not among them.
That is not surprising. The idea of divided loyalties is typically a baseless slur, tossed at anyone who is different, suggesting that our country's common interests are being subjugated to some outside loyalty.
The same accusations have been hurled at Jews, after they got a country of their own, Israel. And these insinuations always seemed the same kind of disguised bigotry that Kennedy faced.
Until now.
Look at the Iran deal. Who can say there isn't a segment of American Jews who are , if not exactly following the orders of the Israeli government, then buying its worldview, hook, line and sinker, and passionately opposing American policy for that reason alone?
Here Barack Obama, the president of the United States, has worked out an agreement that he and our five most important allies feel is the best strategy to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, however, believes that any agreement with Iran is worthless and prefers steep economic sanctions leading toward pre-emptive war. He has been trying to undercut the deal, and is aided by a distressingly large cast of allies in the United States, mainly the chorus of Obama's fanatic GOP foes—not one Republican in Congress supports the deal—and that slice of American Jewry who believes that supporting Israel means endorsing anything its government does, no matter how misguided.
Netanyahu might be right, I should add. Or might not. Nobody knows, and those who claim to know are just bluffing. We have only one past, but a multitude of futures, and we can never tell how our actions now will affect what unfolds.
The stunning thing is, in all the discussion of the merits of the deal, the fact that our president supports one side, and the head of another country, even a country as historically friendly as Israel, supports the other, hardly enters the calculus. I'm mentioning it here because I haven't heard anybody mention it. Maybe it's a naive point, but there you go.
At the end of last week it seemed there are enough votes in Congress to keep the deal from being overturned, though the We-Never-Lose-We-Just-Fall-Back-and-Keep-Fighting Republicans are already digging to find creative ways to undercut it.
Tough economic sanctions that isolated Iran certainly didn't keep it from making the progress toward a bomb it already has. And a deal might allow them to continue, aided by renewed economic support. Everyone suggesting the best route are really guessing, based more on their biases and partisanship than any cool analysis of fact. The bottom line is, if Netanyahu embraced the deal, the critics here would fall in line. But he doesn't, so they echo his denunciations.
That isn't good for the future of Jews, already a dwindling minority facing rising anti-Semitism. I'm not saying that we should keep our place; just that we should consider whether throwing in our lot with foreign leaders in fevered opposition—so extreme that the Anti-Defamation League found itself accusing certain Jewish groups of anti-Semitism— is a long-term success strategy.
Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is a blip. But someday a viable Jewish candidate will runs for president, and somebody will raise the question of whether he (or she) will do what's best for our country, or owe special allegiance to Israel. Those critics will wave the bloody shirt of the fierce opposition to the Iran deal as evidence, and who will be able to say there isn't some kernel of truth there? The best defense will be the existence of J Street Jews who did not dance to whatever tune the current administration in Israel is piping. But that is a a nuanced argument, the type all too often lost in the gale of political discourse. Whether the deal will work or not is unknown by anybody. We'll have to find out. But that the debate has undercut the always tentative position of the American Jewish community is a certainty.
"Would you like some cucumber with that?" my wife asked, busying over the stove while I read the paper at the kitchen table.
"What, in the eggs?" I said, wincing slightly. She was making eggs before our walk in the Botanic Garden Saturday morning.
"No, on the side."
"Sure!" I said.
It's hard to wait, and a plate of sliced cucumbers was just the thing to nibble on. Healthy, cool, refreshing.
"Cucumbers make a good appetizer," I observed, and she agreed.
We ate our eggs, sipped our coffee, read our papers. I kept working on the cucumber slices. One slice left.
"Would you like the last slice?" I asked.
"No, go ahead," she said. I ate it, reflecting on how much I like cucumber.
"Let me check the computer and we'll go," I said. I like to keep tabs on the blog.
I go upstairs, call up Twitter. This is the first tweet I see: "Woman dies from tainted cucumber, prompting recall in 27 states."
I click on the article and read it carefully. Yes, Illinois is one of the 27 states.
Well, I ate the first part of this particular cucumber ...Wednesday, in a salad. So if it were infected with salmonella, I would have figured it out by now. Whew.
Or so I tried to reassure myself.
Unless, that rebellious part of my brain that likes to cause trouble countered, the end you ate Wednesday wasn't the part with the salmonella. That was the part you and your wife ate just now!
Can there be salmonella on one part and not another? It's just a certain bacteria, right? It can be just on one spot. On the other hand, the woman who died was 99 years old. A bout of salmonella, while unpleasant, probably won't kill me.
What would kill me—what is killing people—is inactivity. Earlier this morning I read an Economist story that inactivity, worldwide, is "the new smoking," and "a silent killer" that is now the fourth leading cause of death, after high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar.
"C'mon, let's go for our walk," I told my wife, heading downstairs after posting this. If I'm going to keel over, I want it to be at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
It's pretty clear what these are: three merry-go-round horses. But where did I see them? A museum perhaps? Or a carnival? But I've said too much.
The person who knows the exact location of these three equine beauties will receive one of my now truly dwindling stock of 2015 blog posters, suitable for framing or thumb-taking up on a wall. Place your guesses below. Good luck.
These are dark days for McDonald's. Sales are down 11 percent this year, profits down 30 percent. Their Asian market is crumbling. The second September in a row when their financial news was grim.
Not
that McDonald's isn't desperately trying to arrest its tailspin,
tossing out qualities that once made it distinctive, experimenting with
radical notions such as letting customers choose what goes on their
burgers. Or, starting next month, serving breakfast all day. McDonald's seems to be back-engineering itself into a real restaurant, a version of
Woody Allen's joke about Noel Coward buying the rights to "My Fair
Lady," removing the songs and lyrics to change it back into "Pygmalion." McDonald's is transforming itself into Denny's with a clown.
It isn't working, judging by a recent survey of American consumer opinion.
"Consumers
don't think the food is high quality, healthy or even that tasty,"
began a scorching piece in Crain's by Peter Frost. "The restaurants seem
dated and unwelcoming. For a fast-food restaurant, it takes too long
for customers to receive their orders. And even accounting for changes
that McDonald's is making or considering, nearly half of Americans say
they wouldn't increase their visits to restaurants operated by the
nation's largest fast-food chain."
I sure wouldn't. I'm sticking
at zero. Why? I could list 50 reasons to despise McDonald's. But, space
being limited, we'll limit ourselves to 10:
Top Ten Reasons McDonald's is Tanking
1. Ambiance.
Ever since the cheery red and white tile drive-ins were replaced by horrible 1970s brown mansard-roofed monstrosities, McDonald's has been
lost, decor-wise. Urban restaurants have a vibe that is half psych ward,
half homeless shelter. Sometimes they display a few relics of the local culture that was, in part, displaced and destroyed by the arrival of McDonald's, which only makes it worse.
2. Omnipresence. Rarity creates value and overabundance erodes it. There
are just too many McDonald's: 32,000 worldwide. The market is glutted. The corporation seems to
realize this, closing 700 McDonald's franchises this year alone, trying
to cut their losses.
3. Ronald. Everyone hates
him. He's frightening. A scary clown. That sex toy mouth. Those leering
eyes. You never see a child holding a Ronald McDonald doll. And if you
did, you'd pity that child. It would be disturbing, like a toddler
cuddling a skinned goat's head.
4. Marketing. Last week, when Burger King challenged McDonald's to join them in creating
a McWhopper for the International Day of Peace, I immediately knew McDonald's would
pass. The behemoth is slow on its feet. Compare the oafish, witless, nearly hysterical
images that McDonald's serves up to, for example, the humor in Geico
commercials. Fifty years of watching McDonald's ads and I couldn't cite
one specifically. Well, maybe that "Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun" drone that nobody wanted rattling around in their brains. The marketing is as bad as the food.
5. Employees.
Harried cogs, desperately lunging to serve up the slop. Their
"Guh-
morn welkamtuh'm'donal" has the emotional heft of "Order 'n'
geh-out!" This is not to besmirch the employees themselves — no doubt
decent folk plunged into an impossible nightmare of minimum wage
slavery, fighting to keep a shred of humanity intact while endlessly
repeating some mechanical functions. Does Amnesty International know
about this?
6. Blandness. Nothing in McDonald's
is spicy. Even their attempt at a burrito tasted like a pot of paste. McDonald's idea of acknowledging our nation's rich ethnic diversity
in their fare is offering green shakes at St. Patrick's Day.
7. Happy Meals.
Anyone who has ever had kids loathes McDonald's for reaching over our
heads and luring our precious children into their trap with cheap
trinkets. They're drug dealers, hooking the young on heavily breaded
processed chicken.
8. McRib Sandwiches. No more need be said. Those responsible should stand trial at The Hague.
9. Competitors.
Just as Detroit never got off its fat and satisfied posteriors until
Japanese carmakers swept in and ate their lunch, so McDonald's was
satisfied with futile half measures — look, we've got muffins! — until
Five Guys and Red Robin and all sorts of good-burger-at-a-good-price
joints came along. The spell was broken and people suddenly realized,
"Wait. I'm eating this garbage when I could be eating actual food?!"
10. The food.
Last and least. The burgers are predigested mash. The fries are
sugared. The shakes, frozen gray gruel. Believe me, I ate my share. No
more. Now, if I enter a Metra car where someone is eating McDonalds, I
have to hold my breath and hurry to the next car.
Don't get your
hopes up. McDonald still took in $27 billion last year, going
gangbusters with those who don't know any better.The amazing thing isn't that McDonald's is in trouble; the amazing thing is it has lasted this long, and no doubt will go forward, for years, beccause many people can't stop themselves from eating it. Even I do, when abroad. Once I was in Vilnius,
and thought I'd visit the local McDonald's — an ironic tradition of
mine. I've eaten at Mickey D's in Tokyo, in Paris, out of anthropological curiosity, perhaps mixed with an unrecognized homesickness. But the one in Lithuania was so jammed I
could not get in the door. A mass of frenzied customers. Not that I was disappointed
to go elsewhere.
So let's see where we stand.
Rowan County clerk Kim Davis can't issue Kentucky marriage licenses to gays, even though that is her job requires it and a court has ordered her to, because God is against gays getting married, in her estimation, and being party to it would put her soul in peril.
"This is a heaven and hell issue for me and for every Christian who believes," she said, dragging a whole lot of people unwillingly into her God-made-me-intolerant camp. "I weighed the cost and I'm prepared to go to jail. I sure am."
So here is my question:
If God Himself wants her not to issue marriage licenses to gays, and she isn't doing so, to save herself from eternal perdition, then why isn't that something worth quitting your job over?
People quit their jobs over all sorts of lesser reasons: to get a higher paying job, because they were slighted when it came to raises and promotions, because they clash with a boss.
Having a duty you are ordered to perform that conflicts with the desires of the Lord God Almighty—in your own narrow, antique, fucked up notion of what religion means, that is—seems like a really good reason to turn in your resignation.
But she doesn't. Because she isn't really trying to pay respect to her own notions of faith, but to mess with the lives of people she hates. She could have been released by promising, not to issue the licenses herself, but just to refrain from stopping the other clerks, one of whom is her son, from doing so. Religion inspires many people to selfless acts of kindness, of charity, of good works, even to people different than themselves.
While to others, it's just a twist on solipsism, one more reflective surface in the hall of mirrors that is their lives. She isn't hurting innocent Kentuckians who just want to get married. She is the vessel of God, like Joan of Arc.
Now, like Joan, she is jailed. Making her a martyr for all the halfwit haters who believe right along with her. Even if she spends one night, it is the equivalent of the pyre in Rouen, at the center of the Place du Vieux-Marche. The smoke rises, the faithful are put to the test.
“Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country," Mike Huckabee, one of the throng of Republican presidential candidates, tweeted. "We must defend #ReligiousLiberty!”
Madness. We in the fact-based world must keep foremost in mind that religious factionalism is what makes so much of the planet a blood-soaked hell. If every official enforced the law based on his, or her, own perception of divine will, the world would be anarchy. That GOP leaders are cravenly backing her is near-treason, undermining our nation of laws in favor of faith-fueled anarchy.
To be a martyr, one needs to suffer. A night in jail, or two, is little cost for the leap in station Kim Davis, hero to the cause, is about to experience. The crowdfunding. The best-selling God is My Co-Pilot ghost-written autobiography recounting her Golgotha, her sufferings for her beliefs. The made-for-Christian-cable TV special. The high-paid speeches. It would seem impossible, but the Lord works in mysterious ways.
