Thursday, September 02, 2010

hey look over there

Hey look, there' s a thread on yelp discussing the MidMo "keep Midtown janky" issue.

If you care!

Since it's yelp, it has degenerated a bit, but is pretty reasonable. Only Katie "with club sauce" B. (gotta love those yelp nicknames*)is saying truly annoying things, such as:

to me, i don't care what something looks like on the outside as long as they have whatever it is i need. whether that be cheap/ good drinks, decent food, and a clean toilet. boom!

*actually I hate the yelp nicknames

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try this link instead:

http://www.yelp.com/topic/sacramento-a-blast-from-the-past-keeping-it-janky

A real compelling back-and-forth in the comments, as per the norm.

beckler said...

it never takes long for homeless people to get bashed on yelp, regardless of the thread topic

beckler said...

the snr interviewed bourdain and got him to give a quote on our local food cart policy:

The city of Sacramento is phasing out taco trucks and cracking down on street-food vendors. I wanted to ask you, as somewhat of an authority on street food, if you had to inform the average city councilman about what’s so great about street food, what would you say?


This obviously is Bourdain’s go-to pose.

Who will that leave you with? Chili’s and Wendy’s? Is that preferable? This nasty, generic, unhealthy, characterless food that makes Sacramento look like every other place in the country? A vibrant street-food culture is one of the first indicators of a great culture. Even Singapore has figured out how to do street food and have independent one-dish, one-cook vendors. The most charitable way I can put it is, I would suggest there’s a way to do this and accommodate everybody. On the other hand, I just think it’s shortsighted and stupid and comes from the same kind of mentality that wants to solve all problems in a city by paving over a few streets and creating some hideous pedestrian mall with a bunch of fake-ass T.G.I. Friday’s knockoffs.

There’s a lot of those here. And a lot of chicken Caesar salad, which you describe in Medium Raw as “the chef equivalent of sucking Ron Jeremy’s cock.”

Having good taco trucks and good ethnic eats available quickly and cheaply on the streets puts pressure on the other guys to actually serve something good.

HK said...

I'm having way too much fun reading Katie's posts because they are so ridiculous. Thanks for posting this! It's a good break from my art history paper I'm writing.

Here are some of my fav Katie quotes:

"anyway, that's another reason i refuse to go to Cal Expo- those pompous ass giant solid gold bears out front. it's like WHO DO THEY EFFING THINK THEY ARE?!"

"it's just like that movie, You've Got Mail."

"lol, sorry. i haven't had a go girl yet."

Anonymous said...

Katie B. has been my least favorite yelper forever. She is so so so rude on the Yelp Elite threads.

But I kind of love her at the same time because if she wasn't such and elitist know it all bitch, I wouldn't have as much yelp drama in my life. Which I love.

gbomb

Anonymous said...

I actually ran into the Yelp street team in Vancouver this past week & couldn't help but smirk. Isn't that city directly responsible for Sacramento Yelpers getting upset about no longer being elite?

RE: food trucks, I've been thinking about the quote elsewhere in the N&R about feeling ambivalent about the trend & it possibly helping local taco trucks get the city council off their backs:

If the ordinance gets reversed to accommodate upscale roach coaches, crêpe cars and hipster grilled cheese, then Sacramento—in its time-honored behind-the-curve way—will be doing the right thing for completely wrong reasons. Tasty, convenient classism. But classism all the same

I can see that point, but Bourdain's perspective is probably better that making it possible for the taco trucks and whatever food carts to be able to operate can in turn make the brick and mortar businesses also step up their game. And that's good for everybody.

In regards to the Yelp discussion, could we start a movement to kill the "that's so ghetto/euphemism for poor.LOL." type of comments on the Internet?

Anonymous said...

Katie's typing to brain-speed ratio is not ideal.

nick said...

i like Bourdain's "step up their game" talk in theory, but in practice I just don't see it working. Chili's/Taco Bell's ubiquity makes it unlikely, though neighborhoods and blocks and communities can find their way. So the city should stand down.

That said, Cosmo is right. It's a good thing, this about face, but it came about for all the lamest reasons!

Anonymous said...

I have a personal problem with the term janky that I thought I'd share. My dyslectic and overly hermeneutical brain makes a faulty association between "janky" and "jinkies." When I read the word
"janky," the image of Velma from Scooby-Doo pops into my head.

Velma wears Buddy Holly glasses; many Midtowners wear Buddy Holly glasses. What's the connection? Rationally, I know there isn't one, but the suspicion that I'm missing a cultural reference lingers like an itch I can't scratch.

JM

Patrick J. said...

Bring on the cupcake, banh mi and Foie Gras trucks!