Robert “Ratso” Rizzo…
May 20th, 2011‘Tis a mystery indeed.
May 20th, 2011To paraphrase something Hunter S. Thompson never said, “The restaurant business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Take, for example, the strange case of Eric Farber.
Mr. Farber owns (owned?) a place called Plus Four Dining in Georgetown (now closed). Plus Four was on the first floor of a building; the second floor of the building is occupied by the Landmark Tavern, and Landmark’s owner also owns the building itself.
The owner was also trying to evict Mr. Farber, charging default of the lease, insufficient property insurance, and breach of an agreement not to disrupt Landmark’s business…
Farber was appealing the eviction, claiming that Landmark’s customers were too loud for his customers and that the ceiling insulation was inadequate, as well as water leaks and drainage problems in the building. Farber also claims that the owner refused to make repairs and “fabricated the claim that Tenant owed Landlord money for the electric bill.” Farber also apparently filed complaints against the Landmark with TABC.
Sounds like a fairly standard dispute, right? Up until 3:30 AM last week, when Farber was found on the street with a bloody face and no pants.
In a curious coincidence, the police were also called out to a criminal complaint at the Landmark…
Curious. Curious, indeed.
(Hattip: Mom.)
Random notes: May 19, 2011.
May 19th, 2011Things have been kind of slow the past couple of days. Please accept this random collection of crap in lieu of actual content.
Today’s update from our “the street finds its own uses for things” file: “Mexican organized crime groups are using ultralight aircraft to drop marijuana bundles in agricultural fields and desert scrub across the U.S. border.”
Speaking of Neuromancer
Back at the ranch, the City of Austin
I’m a little surprised that they had over 2,000 applicants in this most recent batch. I’m also wondering exactly what those questions were…
I also wanted to touch briefly on our fun city council elections. Yes, we had city council elections last weekend. Three seats (out of a total of six) were up this year. Two of those seats were retained by the incumbents (Chris Riley in place 1, and Laura Morrison in place 4) by pretty large percentages (66 and 73 percent of the votes, respectively.)
Place 3 is held by Randi Shade, who is finishing up her first term on the city council. Shade was initially a favorite to win re-election, but there was a controversy over some emails she sent, one thing led to another…and Shade got her butt kicked, badly, finishing second in a four-way race. Shade just barely managed to get into a runoff with the first-place candiate, Kathie Tovo; Tovo pulled in 46 percent of the vote, and it seems unlikely that the supporters of the other two candidates (former city council member Max Nofziger and Kris Bailey) are going to throw their votes to Shade.
(Tovo was also endorsed by the local alternative weekly; the way I read their endorsement, though, it was a close decision between Tovo and Shade. I’ve been unable to find endorsements from the last election on the alt-weekly’s crummy web site, so I don’t know if they endorsed Shade last time around.)
Tovo’s supporters are already calling on Shade to concede and spare everyone the cost of a runoff. Shade’s response? She’s filed an ethics complaint against Tovo. I’m looking forward to watching this one play out. Note to self: vote early.
This just in: remember the SWAT officer who flipped his cop car and was charged with drunk driving? Yeah, he’s out, pending the decision of the arbitrator. Our buddy Art also suspended six other cops who were supposedly at the party with him. Unclear from the current Statesman article is what the grounds for suspension were, or how long the suspensions were for.
Edited to add 5/20: Here’s a better Statesman article with more details on who was suspended for how long and why.
Chutzpah.
May 18th, 2011The classic definition is, of course, the guy who murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.
I think we may have a new one: the Fiesta Bowl wants their illegal campaign contributions refunded.
Man, that’s hardcore.
May 18th, 2011Writing about this makes me a little uncomfortable, but the weird factor supersedes. I’m not mocking the crucifixion of Christ here, for those of my readers of a religious bent.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself the same question I did (and the same question that came up during a recent dinner). I can see how you’d nail your feet, assuming you’re sufficiently limber, and one hand, but how do you get the other hand?
Uh, yeah.
I’m reminded of a story a certain individual used to tell when he was doing stand-up comedy about the late Henry Marshall. Mr. Marshall was a peripheral figure in the Billie Sol Estes scandal who was found dead one day next to his pickup truck. He’d been shot. Five times. In the chest. With a bolt-action .22 rifle. His death was ruled a suicide.
You’ve really got to want to kill yourself to shoot yourself five times in the chest with a bolt-action .22, or to drill holes in your hands and slip them over nails you’ve already put into the cross. I’d probably be rethinking my strategy shortly after driving a freaking nail through my feet, and certainly long before running a power drill through my hand.
The end of the Sahara.
May 18th, 2011Covered by the Las Vegas Sun. (To the best of my knowledge, it is only the Las Vegas Review-Journal that’s a Righthaven paper. If I’m mistaken, please correct me in comments.)
Hattip: Daring Fireball.
Pour out a fifth for the fourth.
May 18th, 2011First, the Indiana Supreme Court ignores hundreds of years of common law and asserts that there is no right to resist illegal entry by the police. I didn’t write about that decision because it’s been well written about here, here, and here, all by people much smarter than I am.
Next, the United States Supreme Court decides, 8-1 (!), that the police can basically create their own “exigent circumstances” in order to justify entering anyone’s home without a warrant.
And now, the RIAA is pushing for legislation that would allow warrantless searches of CD and DVD manufacturing plants. Apparently, if the police actually had to go to the trouble of getting a warrant, people making bootleg discs would flush them down the toilet…
Say what?
“wholesale fish dealers”?
Obit watch: May 17, 2011.
May 17th, 2011Harmon Killebrew. (What a great name. Why don’t parents give their kids names like “Harmon” any more?)
Yet another public service announcement.
May 17th, 2011Once again, our friends at TXDOT are closing I-35 at Ben White this weekend.
Fortunately, we’ve already picked our SDC venue, and it is almost as far away from that mess as we could get.
Sold!
May 17th, 2011Sorry, not really much to say beyond that.
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#21 in a series)
May 16th, 2011The LAT has a short, but interesting, article (tied to a book
I swear, I think I saw something very much like the Druzhba Sanatorium being used as the bad guy’s hideout in a James Bond film. As for the Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics…wow.
Meanwhile, by way of Popehat, I discovered this MSNBC article summarizing a study by some folks at Muhlenberg College (in Pennsylvania) involving…well, let’s just say it involves the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. I’ll leave it to the curious reader to click through for more details.
Sunday morning photo tinkering.
May 15th, 2011Messing around a little, so I decided to catch up on a couple of things I’d been intending to blog.
That was my present to myself for maintaing a 4.0 average: a Ruger .22/45. This should make a nice practice gun, and I got a good deal at Tex-Guns. There’s already a older Mark II in the family gun safe, but I like the idea of having a Ruger .22 pistol of my own. Also, I understand the .22/45 is a very hackable gun…
Also pictured: two things to make liberals angry. Left front, a 22-round .40 S&W magazine for my Glock 35. Right front, a 33-round 9mm Glock magazine. I don’t have a 9mm Glock at the moment, but I decided to go ahead and pick up one of each after the unfortunate events earlier this year. I placed the order on January 12th. It shipped April 27th.
Speaking of timing: I’d been hearing horror stories about how long renewals take through DPS. I sent in the paperwork for my CHL renewal on April 11th. My new license was in my PO box when I checked it on May 12th. (I’d previously checked it the Saturday before.) So that’s right around a month to process the renewal. And, except for the actual class, the process was relatively painless. I filled out the renewal completely online, TX DPS sent me a receipt page with a barcode, a list of paperwork I’d need, and a note “Send this in with the paperwork.” That’s all there was to it (except, again, taking the renewal class). Nice job, DPS.
Roadtrip!
May 14th, 2011Yesterday was the 2011 installment of the annual BBQ Road Trip. (Previously.) This year’s edition went out to Texas Pride Barbecue in Adkins, near San Antonio. (Sorry about the auto-play video on that website; I don’t like it any more than you do.) After the jump, photos and commentary.
Read the rest of this entry »
How many bags of Tostitos will a million dollars buy?
May 12th, 2011The BCS oversight committee has rendered their decision in the case of the Fiesta Bowl. (See previous blog posts here, here, and here.)
And the decision is…the Fiesta Bowl stays in the BCS, but pays a one million dollar fine.
Also, there’s a bunch of happy horses–t about hiring outside auditors, doing an annual audit, “cut[ing] ties with board members who engaged in inappropriate behavior”. You know, the usual load of crap.
In other news, Captain Renault is shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on.
(Hattip: NRO‘s “Right Field” blog.)
Investigative reporting!
May 11th, 2011We were planning to try out Dominick’s Italian Restaurant in Lakeway this weekend. Dominick’s was formerly known as Ciola’s, but last year the Ciola family sold the restaurant. Lawrence was going to call ahead for reservations, but told me this afternoon that he didn’t get any answer when he called the phone seemed to be disconnected.
We had not seen this report from Rob Balon’s web site:
And I was in kind of a foul mood (for reasons unrelated to dining) and figured a drive out to Lakeway and dinner at Pao’s would help. (It didn’t, much.) Since Dominick’s was on the way, I could see for myself what was going on.
What was going on was that there was a lockout notice on the door, dated May 6, 2011, from a lawyer who apparently represents the former owners. It looks like Dominick’s was subleasing the space from the owners of Ciola’s (who, one can assume, are making their own lease payments to the owners of the space), and were locked out because they owed the following:
- $6,015.63 for May 2011 rent.
- $645.82 for April 2011 water bill.
- $2,882.64 as payment on a promissory note for April 2010.
- $6,382.64 as payment on a promissory note for May 2010.
- $278,420.16 as payment on a promissory note for July 2010 (!)
So apparently, Dominick’s has owed over a quarter of a million dollars for close to a year (according to Balon, the sale took place in July of 2010), Ciola’s let the money go this long, and finally moved to shut them down on one of the busiest dining out nights of the week. Interesting.
Also interesting is the amount of money. $275,000+ is a lot of money. As Lawrence put it, “Christ, for a quarter-million you should be able to easily open up your own restaurant just about anyplace but downtown Manhattan…”. I’ll admit to not being an expert on the restaurant business, but certainly $250,000 seems like it should be enough to open a restaurant, especially if you’re using an existing restaurant space (one that doesn’t need to be renovated to be brought up to code). And that’s just the amounts that were not paid; we have no idea how much money changed hands before signatures were affixed to contracts.
I’m not blogging this because I want to poke fun at either the new or old owners; I have some sympathy for both parties. But I think this is blog worthy for the insight it provides into restaurant economics. $6,000 a month for a moderately sized space in Lakeway? $650 a month just for water? How much spaghetti do you have to sell to bring in that kind of money?
(Oh, yeah: the new owners never bothered to change the large sign out in front of the center that said “Ciola’s”, though they did change the name on the awning in front of the building.)