Probably misgendered, too.
They were ceaselessly harrassed? Hmmm. I just would stop going there. What really happened?
IMO, I’m glad they were harassed (if they actually were). It’s time we started going Alinsky the way the left does. We always play too nicely.
“They were ceaselessly harrassed? Hmmm. I just would stop going there. What really happened?”
Exactly what you said. People stopped going because the restaurant violated Americans civil rights. And once that was out on social media, it was game, set and match.
Essentially, what happened was the business was turning into something different than the owners wanted it to be. This paragraph from their statement provides further details.
Nevertheless, a valuable lesson we have learned is that in trying to juggle everything, nothing gets the attention it’s due. While it’s been fun and sometimes successful to try to do it all, the reality is that we’ve had trouble giving every aspect equal time and work. These unbalanced scales were always exacerbated by Miami’s shockingly high demand for food and the pressure put on us to operate as a restaurant. While we’ve filled paradis with our favorite books and wines, most people really just wanted the pizza. Our food program completely eclipsed every other aspect of the place both in what people usually wanted from the space and in what we had to spend most of our time doing. One of the opening visions of paradis was an attempt to open a food establishment of sorts that shifted the usual rules of service, in which the customer is certainly not always right, and food service workers are treated with their due respect. We genuinely envisioned our food program to be an addendum to the space, where someone who was reading or sharing a bottle with friends could also eat something filling, yummy, and affordable. Despite our intentions, it became increasingly clear that our customers primarily wanted a food-centered experience, and we watched fewer people support us day-to-day as we limited our menu to be more in line with our capacities. In tandem with this demand, came an unacceptable amount of disrespect, all-too-familiar to any seasoned service worker, but ultimately at odds with the alternative project we were proposing. This is not to downplay or disregard all of the wonderful folks who came in for everything paradis had to offer, or to say that we don’t appreciate the love people had for our bread and other food, but rather to clairfy that we never wanted to be the kind of food-service establishment we had become, and to acknowledge that the kind of third space we envisioned may not be fully possible in this place and time.