[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday February 20, 2007 at 10:50pm]
The, what, 48th coincidence?
KARE-11 did a follow up on a City Pages article on the recent loss of three high-end restaurants, Five, Levain, and most notably Auriga.
They was a general air of befuddlement in both pieces. How could this happen? Auriga was fabulous, and if nothing else, should have survived on the business no longer going to Five and Levain.
I guess I need to get out more, as Five was the only one of the three I had heard of, but still, what is going on? We also had the piece in the Wall Street Journal documenting how luxury boxes aren't a pot of gold anymore. Some are being ripped out in fact. Is there just no money in high end entertrainment anymore thanks to campaing finance limits and Sarbanes-Oxley?
The first thing I looked for in the City Pages story is where are these restaurants? The answer was that they were all in Minneapolis. Hmmm.
The second thing I looked for was the words smoke or smoking, as in smoking ban. No mention. Odd. Maybe the food was over-rated or over-priced. Maybe its the crime problem.
Or maybe the smoking ban killed yet another restaurant, maybe two or three. Oh, wait, the hoi polloi don't smoke, you silly blogger! Indeed, the smoking ban if anything should have increasingly appealed to the sophisticated urbanites whom the smoking ban proponents claimed would now be going out more.
And yet, there it is, another business lost within the jurisdiction of our Lifestyle Consultants at Hennepin County and Minneapolis. As Ian Fleming's Goldfinger told James Bond, "once is happenstance, twice a coincidence, the third time its enemy action."
They was a general air of befuddlement in both pieces. How could this happen? Auriga was fabulous, and if nothing else, should have survived on the business no longer going to Five and Levain.
I guess I need to get out more, as Five was the only one of the three I had heard of, but still, what is going on? We also had the piece in the Wall Street Journal documenting how luxury boxes aren't a pot of gold anymore. Some are being ripped out in fact. Is there just no money in high end entertrainment anymore thanks to campaing finance limits and Sarbanes-Oxley?
The first thing I looked for in the City Pages story is where are these restaurants? The answer was that they were all in Minneapolis. Hmmm.
The second thing I looked for was the words smoke or smoking, as in smoking ban. No mention. Odd. Maybe the food was over-rated or over-priced. Maybe its the crime problem.
Or maybe the smoking ban killed yet another restaurant, maybe two or three. Oh, wait, the hoi polloi don't smoke, you silly blogger! Indeed, the smoking ban if anything should have increasingly appealed to the sophisticated urbanites whom the smoking ban proponents claimed would now be going out more.
And yet, there it is, another business lost within the jurisdiction of our Lifestyle Consultants at Hennepin County and Minneapolis. As Ian Fleming's Goldfinger told James Bond, "once is happenstance, twice a coincidence, the third time its enemy action."