But, our family will not be coming back to Bluephies**
Dear Bluephies,
I’ve been meaning to write to you all week. I had the best brunch of my life ever last Sunday morning at Bluephies. We stayed for four hours or so, having a great time eating great food, and talking progressive politics in a progressive neighborhood.
When I left, I told my dining companions that I was going to get a Bluephies tattoo, and suggest that you use my ink-laden beating heart as an advertisement, but I realized that you guys are so good that you don’t even really need to advertise. Kudos to you!
Kudos, also, to Elphaba*, who was our server that morning. I can’t recall ever having such a wonderful bonding experience with a restaurant employee who had such charm and personality, and was warm, and understanding. I’m a thrifty treasurer, but Sunday was my money, and while I’m also a thrifty human being, I don’t like to skimp when it comes to people. We took up far too much table time when Elphaba* could have been earning more money in tips, to put food on her own table, so I made a point of making sure the tip was closer to 50% than to 20%. Good people deserve fair compensation, I think.
Which is why I am actually getting around to writing to you this morning. I’ve been busy all week, as I have been for months, fighting the proposed privatization of Overture, so I haven’t gotten around to sending my love letter yet.
Unfortunately, I was told last night that Food Fight Inc, which is your parent organization, is the proposed privateer of the Food Operations at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at the UW Madison. As an AFSCME member (AFSCME Local 60 has north of 2,200 members), and an IATSE member (IATSE Local 251 has about 125 members), I have to strongly object to Food Fight’s infiltration into the Public Sector by attempting to circumvent the fair wages, benefits, and working conditions that have been negotiated by AFSCME Local 171 at the UW, and by various AFSCME, IATSE, and other Unions across the country.
If not for my union negotiated wages and benefits, I could not afford to eat at your restaurant, and I would not have been able to be so generous with my tip to Elphaba*. Many people can’t see the forest for the trees, and I’m concerned that Food Fight might have gotten lost when it went Into The Woods.
Food Fight, if what I was told is correct, is not just participating in the vicious downward spiral of wages and benefits in America, you’re trying to exacerbate it by privatizing Government jobs.
It has occurred to me recently that restaurant owners don’t care about human capital the way governments do. Government employees are career employees who keep improving, work hard, and bring a wide breadth of skills to the table. Waitstaff in restaurants, or bus’boys’ are a whole other genre. They’re not likely to be career employees there, as they can’t afford to be. Elphaba* told me that she was going into medicine (cardiac ultrasound technician), and she said it was ironic, because the American Sign Language ‘name sign’ that we came up for her involved the letter “e” (from Elphaba*) being placed over the heart, because our interaction with her told us she had a great heart (and my mother, who was with us, is deaf, so we needed a name-sign, as finger-spelling Elphaba* over and over can be cumbersome).
Elphaba* is not a career server at Bluephies, but her heart is in the right place. She knows she can’t make a career there, and it’s a shame that you can’t provide her with the fulfillment and fair compensation that could keep her working there. She’s a rock star, and she’s moving on to bigger and better things. Before Food Fight gets too far along in the privatization discussion at the UW, I think that you all should think long and hard about what your Government would look like if it was run by college students who were merely killing time before moving on to their ‘real job.’
Many people have an unrealistic perspective on Government employment and Unionized work-forces. Government employees are not lazy, and Unionized work-forces are only overpaid if they’ve negotiated with fools. Bargaining is at the heart and soul of fairness, and Food Fight apparently is not interested in allowing government workers to bargain for their wages and benefits and working conditions. I’m one of them, I’ll remind you, and my family is big (we’re still Organizing our Union Census).
Our family will not be coming back to Bluephies**, unfortunately. The food was to die for, but the political realities of your Corporate disregard for the welfare of the larger community leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, and it doesn’t sound like that bitter aftertaste is going away any time soon..
I’d appreciate it if you could forward this message to the top brass at Food Fight, for me. I’ve Blind Carbon Copied my two unions, and the various supporters that we’ve lined up, and I presume they’ll be forwarding this message to their friends and neighbors as well. I want the world to know how much I love Bluephies**. I’ve been told to distill my message, so the Tattoo won’t say that. It will say ‘I Heart Bluephies**,’ which is more letters, if you use letters, but I was going to use the graphic image of a heart…a big bold, warm beating unionized heart. I thought it would be symbolic.
Thanks for a great brunch, and thanks for the memories! If you’d like, I can send a photo of the four of us on our way out the door for the last time. Another one of your great staff took it for us. We were smiling then, because we didn’t know better.
Davin Pickell
Treasurer
IATSE Local 251
*Elphaba was not her real name.
**Bluephies, towards the end there, should be read to mean “ANY FOOD FIGHT Restaurant including, but not limited to: Bluephies Restaurant & Vodkatorium | The Coopers Tavern | Eldorado Grill | Fresco Rooftop Restaurant & Lounge | Hubbard Avenue Diner| Johnny Delmonico’s Steakhouse | Market Street Diner and Bakery | Monty’s Blue Plate Diner | Ocean Grill | Tex Tubb’s Taco Palace | Tex’s Cadillac Ranch |Carl’s Cakes | Hubbard Avenue Confections | Fresco Catering | Catering a Fresco at Overture Center for the Arts | The Eldorado Smokehouse”
I wish Mr. Pickell would drop the act and just get to the point. Between his Overture e-mail brigade and now this, it’s time to lose the fanfare and sarcasm and just say what you have to say. Burying the lede doesn’t help anyone. Your message is getting muddled in antics.
I always find it interesting when people attack the messenger or their style instead of what they say.
Brian,
Big scheme of things, I’m incredibly grateful that you took the time to comment on my writing. A little introspection can be a beautiful thing, and I think we should all introspect more often.
I might contact the inventor of Yoga and suggest they name a new position called ‘introspecting human being.’
Having taken two minutes for my own introspection, I can’t help but lament the fact that I remind myself of the Tea Party in some tiny respects, but for my lack of a lack of vision.
I’m sorry I muddied my simple political message with entertainment. Let’s all promise never to do it again, if at all possible, unless we think it works, or unless we think it doesn’t.
Have a great weekend Brian! I respect you as a fellow human being and only wish the best for you.
You, too, Brenda. We miss your dose of reality on the Common Council.
It sounds like Brian is a victim of information overload and has the pleasure of fine writing which leads to pleasure for which there is no other alloy.
The well written piece moved with suspense surprising me an avid reader who does not suffer from information overload and I though the speaker in the piece was moving away.
My heart sank at the betrayal. I thought, “Well, I won’t return to Hubbard Avenue” once the FBI let’s me get a job I can keep without harassment. Too much information, Brian? Crooked people count on people with information overload. Negative Ads thrive on the low information reader, the ads get to the point. I won’t go to any of them because what they are doing to these union workers is what they say Corporate Foodies do to them, you know, chain restaurants will go in to a community take a loss run the above type restaurants out, according to them hence, the name, Foodfight.
There was a day when we as a people stood by doing the right thing and saw unions and labor as a way to keep people honest.
And now we see Truth as information overload and the result is Ron Johnson winning on short sentences.
Food Fight Restaurants served up a spoiled dish this time.
I guess I’d like to say that we should all give Foodfight a chance. They deserve as much. I spoke with the President of Local 171 today, and he said that he thought that there was a simple opt-out in the contract with Foodfight, and that it might just give 171 the jobs they were hoping for.
I’d like to find a win-win in all of this, because their food really is to die for. I am going to expect them to do the right thing here, and hope that they do. My guess is that they may or may not need additional pressure to do the right thing, but only they, or time, will tell.
I’m not in any way affiliated with 171, other than we’re both AFSCME Locals, and I went to the UW for too many years. We’re actually new neighbors at the Labor Temple, but I haven’t been there in a week or two.
This is their show, and I’m hoping Foodfight and AFSCME Local 171 can come to a respectful understanding PDQ, so we can all get back to our regularly scheduled eating.
Mr. Pickell,
My father, Joseph Garton, was the founder and owner of Quivey’s Grove. He started the place literally from a stable and house and 30 years later it’s still in business. It is regularly listed as one of the finest places to eat in this city. My father also sat as chairman of the arts board, won Governor’s awards for his work locally with the arts, and started the Ten Chimney’s Foundation for which he won another arts award from the Governor. He was a towering local figure for the arts up until his early death from cancer in 2003 which devastated my family including and especially my mother Deirdre Garton. If you’ve got an opinion on Overture you have every right to let it be heard. Just understand that in the process you’ve been disrespecting the legacies of people like my father, without whom there wouldn’t be things like the Overture Center. Let’s keep this stuff about Overture and not attempt to trample the names and reputations of establishments like Quivey’s Grove or people like Joe and Deirdre Garton without whom we’d have far less arts to enjoy.
Nick,
I don’t think I mentioned your mother, Deirdre Garton, anywhere in that piece.
If the subtext of my story, or my subsequent comments brought your mother to mind immediately, I wonder what that says.
Did I even mention Overture? I guess I did, but it was an aside.
Did you read the rest of the story at all, or did the word Overture really set off an emotional reaction in you that was so strong that you couldn’t see the rest of the literary forest but for that one tree?
I’ve got a longer response for you, later, but it involves labor being just as worthy of a seat at the table negotiating their fate, and of labor being just as worthy of respect, and of labor being just as responsible for art as your mother.
Maybe even more so.
Can your mother weld? Can she sing like Kermit the Frog? Can she debunk the black art of mathematical deception, embodied by the AMS Focus Model in this case, on very little sleep?
Has she ever cleaned up after a performance of Lion King (I mean the bathroom cleaning sense of that phrase)?
Can she run a sound board and mute channel 16? Can she assign channel 29 to two different outputs, and hook up the digital snake?
Can your mother tell a customer which is the best available seat for the show they’re dying to see?
Can she look a patron up and down and determine momentarily whether they’re a threat, or a drunk, or simply in wrong building?
Can she fix all of the lights that burn out, or program the complex lighting systems in art?
Can she build a bar or a lectern from scratch, for very little money? (Mayor Dave was speaking on Thursday evening into one that was built by a couple three of us on staff working together–on the cheap.)
Was your mother on the grid a few weeks ago with me and Jimmy helping trouble-shoot the malfunctioning Valance? Does she know what a valance is?
I know it might not have been her day to cover valance repair duties, but it wasn’t mine either. I would have rather have been home watching the Badger game. I hear it was good.
There are lots of other key players who I’ve left out of my inquiry, but if you call Overture, I’m sure one of them will answer the phone, and can direct you to the other key players.
We do what we do, regardless of the sacrifice to our time and convenience, to ensure that the show must go on.
Your mother is hereby invited to walk a mile in our shoes, Nick, just as much as we’d love to have her grant us the power to donate her money, for her, but without all the messy privatization strings.
I’m glad you brought up Deirdre Garton, brother. I had almost forgotten.
Brenda & Davin –
I am actually sympathetic to Davin’s message in this post. I just happen to think that very message (and others he is espousing, well within his rights) are more likely to be well received with a little more directness. My apologies if such commentary is not welcome on this blog.
Davin, I think you’re missing the point that without people’s donations guys like you wouldn’t have a building to work hard in.
I too have a shorter actually and much much different response for you as well, trust me.
Just make sure in your expressions that you maintain some respect for people and their families Davin.
I reread everything to find out where the disrespect to anyone’s relative. I then figured out that questioning the Overture seems to be deemed as insult to the donations.
MMM—-that’s interesting and revealing.
I remember asking my father in 1978 when he and my mother were going to Europe because they won the trip becausse my father’s sales to farmers were so high. I asked him as a freshman in high school, “Who pays for your trip?”
My father said to me, “The poor old farmer.”
Any business person who is successful does so on the support of others.
Is the Oveture of place of art? If so it needs to be questioned because art is alive and to keep things alive we have to question.
This Pickell guy shows up at city meetings on tv, he shows up on Soglin’s blog and the Huffington Post. I still am trying to figure out what is going on but it seems to me that he is this loud voice against inertia, and he’s up against the Physics theory that all things at rest remain at rest.
And though grief and loss are tough for anyone in no way does questioning inertia result in disrespect to a generous relative of any responder.
This Pickell’s writing catches my attention because it reveals a speaker who is up against inertia, the death of any art center because the arts are intended to be alive just as the discussions here are alive, with no disrespect meant toward any former generous donor who in fact may have made his money off of the “poor old farmer” that my father never lost sight of.