Will Hooters Send the English Northeast Into a Tailspin of Depravity?
I subscribe only to the good parts of woke, the empathy and what-have-you
A few years ago, I drove way out into England’s West Country to attend the wedding of a dear friend. on the outskirts of a little village whose name I’ve forgotten. Hours after Rod and Jo had taken their turns saying, “I do,” I began yearning for a snack, and went out to forage for comestibles. As I approached the little supermarket across the road, I saw walking toward the neighborhood pub three hookers, each more lurid than the next — each at least twice as lurid as any of the streetwalkers who used to congregate on the southeast corner of Sunset and La Cienega in West Hollywood back in the days when I would dash up the very steep La Cienega hill at the end of my nightly run. Their makeup would have humbled any drag queen’s. Their hair was enormous, their attire scanty to the point of salaciousness, their bling beyond excessive.
On returning to the hotel, I told the guy at the front desk about them, and admitted I couldn’t imagine how there’d be enough custom in the little village for them. “Oh, them three,” he chuckled. Not tarts at all, mate. Just three local girls out for a bit of fun on a Saturday night.”
I was reminded of this as I read about outraged pearl-clutchers trying with all their might to keep the UK’s third Hooters restaurant from opening, in Newcastle.
On behalf of The Observer, I visited the UK’s sole thriving Hooters, in Nottingham, several years ago. The young women servers wore push-up bras, shorts (over tights), and T-shirts designed to make manifest how well the push-up bras were working, and were as friendly as the food was unspeakable. After my meal, I wandered over to the city centre, and saw around 50 young women whose attire made the Hooters servers’ look like body bags in comparison, tottering drunkenly on unfeasible stilletto heels, pausing occasionally to throw up all over each other, or collapse onto the pavement.
In response to local pearl-clutchers forecasting that the proposed Hooters will transform Newcastle into Sodom-by-the-Tyne, the restaurant’s major investor, Johnny Goard, wondered aloud, “Have they looked outside on a Friday night?”
Well wondered, Johnny.
In other UK news, a local artist in Stroud, just up the road from Thrupp and down the road from Pinchcombe in Gloucestershire, which no North American has ever pronounced properly on his or her first try, has pronounced himself deeply offended by the allegedly racist bellboy that for 240 years has adorned a local building just around the corner from the town’s high street.
The allegedly offensive bellboy, huge and red of lip, wearing a golden leaf skirt, apparently strikes the referenced bell every hour on the hour, though I’ve never been anywhere near Stroud, and can’t say for sure. There are two things I can say for sure. The first is that I avidly deplore racism, as I deplore all forms of xenophobia. The second is that I can’t for the life of me see what’s racist about the bellboy. Does he tacitly suggest that black people are inherently inferior to white? Not that I can see. Does he tacitly suggest that all black people are good for is mindless tasks like striking a bell every 60 minutes? Nope. Does he suggest that some Africans and the descendants of other Africans have large lips? Yes, and quite rightly. Does he impart the idea that Africans are so stupid that they prefer golden leaf skirts to proper trousers? Not that I can see.
Throwing into rivers the statues of 18th century participants in the slave trade I can understand. Being aggrieved by the Stroud bellboy I don’t begin to understand.
Stroud’s former representative in Parliament, Siobhan Baillie, has noted that “a certain minority of people with loud voices have an unquenchable desire to be constantly finding things to be outraged at”.
Well observed, madam.
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/i-finally-see-a-complete-unknown?r=7yu5q
Very kind of you, Ira. I'm proud to have you as a reader.
Well done, Johnny