Restaurant Cuts Dinner Hours Due to Highway 40 Closure

The Southside Journal is reporting that Giuseppe’s Ristorante at Grand & Meremac is axing it’s dinner hours starting next week, in anticipation of a drop in business from it’s largely West County clientele.

When the highway reopens, Giuseppe’s could start its evening hours again.”Sixty percent of our customers live in West County,” said Forrest Miller, who owns the restaurant with Eric Stockmann and Mark Manfrede. “You can’t expect people to go through that aggravation.”

While I think that many people on all sides of the construction zone will spend more time nearer their homes, I still think people will venture out for an evening meal to a well-known place they enjoy. The Fox and Symphony will continue. Life will continue, unless places begin to shutter their doors beforehand.

“When they closed the highway last summer, each time they closed it our weekend business was in the tank,” said Miller, who also owns the popular South County banquet hall Royale Orleans at 2801 Telegraph Road with his wife Donna. “We noticed our business was off like 60 percent every weekend.”

“This is a big restaurant,” Miller said. “If you have a bad day, you go in the hole.”

I appreciate that restaurants cannot have food prepared only to send it home with the staff because their business was down. Still, the temporary shut downs that we had were very temporary — a solitary weekend here and there. People were like, “let’s just go some place close tonight.” Well, that is going to wear off very soon.

In January our roads will be a mess. However, I think folks will get into a routine and before long it will seem rather normal. Someone coming for an 8pm Saturday dinner reservation will still manage. They might do well to consider a weekend only evening schedule, say Thursday-Sunday, starting in February. Still, the Feasting Fox across the intersection might pick up some business from people that arrive for dinner only to find the establishment closed.
Forrest Miller spoke at the stop highway 40 closure meeting last week held by Joe Passanise.

The End of the Universe Caused by Starbucks?

Comedian Lewis Black has a funny take on the end of the world, which has says he has seen.  The cause?  A Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9iMgSNrwv4[/youtube]

I’ve been to such a place in Vancouver.  There I was, on one corner of an intersection about to enter a Starbucks and across the street was another Starbucks.

Of course Lewis Black is not alone in making fun of Starbucks.  The excellent mockumentary Best in Show also takes a turn talking about Starbucks:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQKdEdzHnfU [/youtube]

The Simpson’s have also shown Starbucks taking over the Springfield Mall while South Park had a similar gag with a “Harbuck’s” running the local coffee shop out of business.

Christmas With the Conner Family

The Roseanne show was with us for nine TV seasons and in that time many of us became attached to the Conner family. Not since the days of say Good Times had we seen a working family in a sitcom situation, going through real life issues such as living paycheck to paycheck, changing jobs, teen sex, family dynamic, drugs and so on. The show, starring hometown boy John Goodman, made numerous references to St. Louis and Chicago over the years.

Here is a Christmas clip running just under 10 minutes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiDur1jpI3c[/youtube]

Not their best, although it includes the late Shelley Winters as Nana Mary. Winters was born in St. Louis in 1920.

Below is another clip from another seasons with Roseanne playing Santa in the mall. This clip shows the ongoing struggle between Roseanne and Darlene:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmm7kcgLJ7Y[/youtube]

In the end their relationship is still rocky but they’ve had some meaningful communication.  Nothing earth shattering here, I just love the show.

Letting Go of God

The wonderful Julia Sweeney, perhaps best known from “It’s Pat” on SNL, talks about her explorations of her faith and beliefs in the monologue, Letting Go of God. She did an excerpt, just over 16 minutes in length, on TED:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtIyx687ytk[/youtube]

Ms. Sweeney, raised Catholic, is currently on the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition for America:

The Secular Coalition for America is the national lobby for atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheistic Americans. From our office in the nation’s capital, our full-time lobbyist and support staff engage public policy makers and the media to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all.

Her personal journey is a very interesting story.

Christmas Eve Guest on KDHX

I will be a guest on KDHX’s Collateral Damage Monday the 24th from 7pm to 7:30pm.  We will be talking about stories from 2007 and some of the anticipated stories expected in 2008.  You can listed at 88.1FM or online.