— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Dolores Park Cafe, Faye's, and Chicken John (the self-appointed spokesman for the anti-American Apparel camp in 2009) have come out in force against Blue Bottle in Dolores Park, promoting a petition calling for Rec & Park to “stop commercialization of Dolores Park.” When I first saw the petition last weekend, I figured it was going nowhere thanks to the absurd language used:
To: Recreation and Park Commission of San Francisco, Mayor of San Francisco
McDonald's in Dolores Park?
Why not? Blue Bottle Coffee is a national chain store, and they are in the queue to get a permit to open a “push cart” in OUR Park. Who knows what’s next… (link)
Of course, it is obvious there will never be a MickyDs in the middle of the park, but 883 people took the bait and signed the petition. One Dolores St. crazy even signed thinking a McDonald's was actually being built:
It is unbelivable to think of having McDonald across from my house. It is not enough that we long term homeowners who pay tax, are bothered with your party permit WITHOUT THINKING OF US. NOW MCDONALD!!~
Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the idea of having non-commercial, advertisement-free green spaces in the city, but is propagating the fictitious threat of Dollar Menu-pushing terrorists roaming around our park really the way to go about it?
Comments (6)
Sometimes I think Mr. John would fit in better in the suburbs. Maybe he should move to Atherton and sue over high speed rail.
It’s been pretty enlightening to learn who not to like: Dolores Park Cafe, Faye’s Video, Weird Fish, and now, apparently, Chicken John. As you say, plenty of reasonable objections to the Blue Bottle and La Cocina carts. None which I happen to agree with, but sure: there’s room for healthy debate and disagreement about it.
But to make the rhetoric about “national chains” vs. “local business”? Blue Bottle is based right across the Bay because their roastery is there; their small handful of locations are mostly in San Francisco; their one non-Bay-Area location in Brooklyn is staffed by ex-San Franciscans. The owners even live here!
Anyone who signed that petition is either totally ignorant about the facts or being disingenuous.
And anyone who is pushing that straw-man petition–instead of taking 10 minutes to make a reasonable one–is, if I may borrow the phrase, a cunt.
CJ is just a local boring rich kid.
Thanks for writing this. And kudos also to commenter Donald, who really nailed it.
That petition really pissed me off, for so many reasons. The lowlight is, I think, the fourth line, “The facts are:”, which is followed by a number of bullet points that consist of subjective opinions and falsehoods. So CJ’s ‘facts’ are not actually, you know, factual.
I’ve updated the post to make it more clear that the petition was not authored by CJ, rather, it was just promoted by him.
This weekend I bought a lemonade from a lady who was walking through the park with a tray, selling drinks, and I asked her if she’d heard about the Blue Bottle kerfuffle. She lives a few doors down from the park, hadn’t heard about it, and thought it sounded like a fine idea. Then she went back to selling drinks.