Cossetta's

If you're like me, and spent your high school days in Minnesota, you know about Cossetta's. For those who didn't, Cossetta's is an amazing Italian Restaurant and Market in St. Paul. It remains today a destination meal stop whenever there's a High School State Championship at the Xcel Energy Center (previously the St. Paul Civic Center). The state's high school hockey tourney is synonymous with grabbing a slice of pizza or an Italian Sausage, and consuming it in a highly entertaining destination eatery before or after your team hits the ice.

As many great memories as I have from Cossetta's (I just took my parents and kids there three weeks ago), I'm saddened to hear their request to be omitted from the "living wage" law St. Paul enforces on any business that receives a $100,000 subsidy from the city. Cossetta's, as part of a ten million dollar expansion, is asking for a 1.6 million dollar loan from the city, and at the same time asking the city to give them a waiver on paying a "living wage," deemed at $10.16 an hour. Cossetta's insists it pays the "living wage" for most (not all) of their full time employees, and this request is mainly to do with the part time employees receiving the $10.16 rate, but Cossetta's hasn't actually released what it pays it's employees, and doesn't have to until after the vote on granting the waiver. I'm for local business expansion, and frankly, I love Cossetta's, but this waiver request seems unnecessary, mean-spirited and against everything an institution like Cossetta's stands for.

Cossetta's is a busy place. I mean a real busy place. At any given lunch or dinner rush, it can take you 20 minutes to find a place to sit down in either their upstairs or downstairs seating areas, as residents slap down $4+ for a slice of delicious pizza or even more for one of their salads or entrees. This demand shows a need for expansion, but it also shows they are making a lot of money. I understand the finances of a restaurant are usually feast or famine, but places barely making payroll aren't looking at buying premium downtown property adjacent to their establishment, nor fulfilling a multi million dollar expansion ensuring Cossetta's legacy for decades to come.

It would seem from the outside that Cossetta's has enough business to pay all employees a "living wage," but I know many who'd criticize me for trying to make business decisions for a private entity. I'm not the one asking for tax payer help. Cossetta's is the one asking for 1.6 million dollars in St. Paul taxpayer money for expansion. Although I don't live in St. Paul, it sure does become of interest to the people of St. Paul when a business says 'we need the taxpayers to help pay for our future, but we shouldn't have to pay some of those same taxpayers a livable wage.' Some will insist forcing a business to pay a 'living wage" will only push businesses out of the city and into the suburbs. If Cossetta's is foolish enough to even entertain that idea, taxpayers shouldn't loan them the money. They could leave tomorrow and their would be an all out war by every major restaurant in the Twin Cities, and nation wide, to gobble up the prime property Cossetta's rests upon. Cossetta's needs St. Paul more than St. Paul needs them.

There is also this modern vilification about paying people a "living wage." Why shouldn't we require all businesses to pay a livable wage to their full time and part time employees? We have become a country where our lowest wage earners are openly treated as a lowest common commodity, where, even though many of us can't fathom how a person working for $8 an hour can pay their bills and live somewhat of a happy life, we have purged the emotion from such considerations and treat these human beings as a column on a spreadsheet. To Cossetta's credit, they do offer health benefits and have a 401K match (although it's not clear if the match is for all employees or just full time workers), but shouldn't part time workers, many of whom have second and third jobs, be worthy of the same quality, hourly pay rate? Their doing the same job as the full time employees, but less valued by the employer.

Which brings up what I feel is the real hypocrisy of Cossetta's request for the waiver. This is a restaurant who's legacy and decor is comprised of hundreds of pictures celebrating the Italian immigrant story. The story where a person coming to America can get a job, earn enough money to set some aside so that one day they can open their own business, and with hard work and determination become a landmark within their community. The Italians, as well as many of the immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century ran into many hurdles designed to prevent them from succeeding, but the lessons learned of these immigrating peoples were the lessons we used to draw up the fair labor practices that are supposed to protect the working class today, the same working class this waiver will directly hurt.

I've always liked Cossetta's, but if this waiver is passed, it might be awhile before I travel to St. Paul to visit them. Maybe after their remodeling, when the waiver (if granted) is lifted, I might be able to sit at one of their tables, enjoy a slice of their pizza, and look into the eyes of the first generation Italians whose photos add color to the place, and not feel a tremendous amount of guilt.

The Worst Hotel EVER!

So, due to illness my weekend plans had to be changed at the last minute. I decided to go to Duluth and I heard from a friend that there was a hotel and water park combo. Making the call, I was able to reserve the last room available for the Saturday night. We had just had a very stressful visit to a local water park so I had some very pointed questions for the reservationist; Did park passes come with the reservations? (yes) Was there lockers in the water park with locks? (Yes to lockers but no locks) Could we bring our own locks and use them? (You bet!)

We arrived at 4 PM (the earliest we were told we could check in) to find a very busy lobby. After I waited 25 minutes, I finally got to the counter. I was first informed that our hotel room was not in the hotel where the water park was, but rather in the hotel down the street a block, not connected to the water park. We were told there was a shuttle that ran between the two hotels so there was only a minor inconvenience. The counter person then handed me our park passes, but they were one short. Even though the reservation person had asked the number of people staying in the room, they never informed me that only a certain amount of park passes came with each room, so I ended up shilling over an additional $17 for another park pass (this on top of a very expensive hotel room, and I was not happy.

We drove over to our hotel and was immediately concerned about the safety of the car. My theory was that my five year old minivan wasn't going to be the first choice of your standard thief so I risked it. We went up to our room, and although it wasn't the worst room I'd ever rented, it wasn't very nice and the level of dust showed this room had probably not been rented in awhile. We quickly decided to change into our swimsuits under our clothes for the 25 degree trip over to the water park and burn out the kids for the evening. My wife called to the front lobby to find out the size of the lockers and was told 18 X 6 (?) and indeed if we brought our own locks, we could safely secure our stuff.

The water park was swarming with out of control 8 to 13 year olds, most with no parental supervision at all. We went to the locker rooms and immediately discovered the lockers were much larger than described to us, and could not be locked regardless of whether we brought our own locks or not. Since I had some valuables, and I was pissed off for being lied too, I left my family and went upstairs to complain. While I waited to speak to the manager, I overheard another guest complaining about the state of their room (blood all over the bathroom and seriously soiled sheets [!]) and how they were leaving. I got to the counter and explained to the manager that I was very upset about the fact that A) even though they knew the number of members to my party, they never once mentioned there was a limited amount of park passes per room, and B) that we were lied to twice about the ability to secure our stuff in the water park. He apologized, remitted the price for the additional wristband, and secured my valuables behind the counter.

The water park was nothing special. The little kids play area was a big hit with our kids, but the one open pool they had was a tribute to Lord of the Flies, with dodge balls replacing the big rock. We seriously could not even think of putting our kids in there. The meandering river was also a nightmare. Unruly pre teens pushing everyone and everything out of the way to chase each other around while their half drunk parents blindly stared out into space with no concern for their kids behavior (and probably questioning most of their life choices up to that moment). The water slide was fun, and very fast and the line moved fairly quickly. After an hour and a half, we had decided we'd had enough (even the kids were saying can we go now, which coming from kids in a water park is saying something). We retrieved our clothes, changed, got our secure items from the front desk and called the shuttle bus to take us back to our hotel. By the way, the shuttle guy was the only legit employee the entire place had.

We went out to dinner, but the kids were exhausted so we went back to our hotel. The level of volume in the hallways was akin to the howler monkey exhibit at he zoo. The same unruly 8-13 year olds were left alone in their rooms while their parents were getting sloshed someplace. Occasionally you'd hear one parent trying to reign in their children, but those were few and far between. Being we got the last room in the hotel, we were in the very middle of the hall and so regardless of what side of the hotel the kids were in, we heard them. The hotel had one security person coming through but he was too overwhelmed with the amount of out of control kids, and the kids had figured out his pattern and knew when to be quiet and back in their rooms. This went on until around 1 AM. Three times someone tried to get into our room (whether this was by mistake or by intent I won't know for sure) and when at 12:30AM one of the young kids went on a swearing rampage, I almost went into the hall and took care of things myself. I didn't because I knew that the deranged little bastard out in the hall would become an innocent sweet child the minute I grabbed them by the nape of the neck of physically threw him back into his room.

We woke, got changed and cleaned up, and left as fast as possible. Indeed one car in the parking lot had been busted into (newer car) and police were taking the report of one seriously angry dude. I parked outside of the lobby and went in to discover a line of people complaining about various things. One had the phone charges for another room charged to his bosses credit card, something they apparently could not reverse until Tuesday (?), another like myself had had a very unrelaxing evening of unsupervised children running amok in the hotel, and one woman was complaining about the injury that sent her father to the hospital and how the hotel was at fault. Hearing all of these complaints was a cowering 18 year old who had just come on shift and was immediately overtaken by upset customers.

In the car, as we headed for breakfast, my kids said how much fun they had. That smoothed some of the pain, but all in all, the Edgewater Water Park and Hotel in Duluth was the worst hotel I've ever been in.

The Pilgrims

Righto's and Tea Party folks are really funny. The latest allegation they have is that due to the commie/socialist leanings of the Pilgrims, their society nearly failed, until they embraced capitalism. The pilgrims...the people who got a boat and sailed to an untamed wilderness with no real support system, only what they could carry with them in the boats. People who came not knowing the food, animals, land, and weather, not knowing what lay on the other side of the hills they could see, not having one house or farm built, heck not even having land cleared so they could build a house or a farm, using tools more akin to the stone age than anything we have today. Those losers. I swear the right seems to be getting dumber every day.

The Pilgrims were not communists or socialists. The Pilgrims, were more like the beginnings of the modern day corporation. They were bank rolled by investors and the pilgrims themselves, who by paying for a place in the community were in turn shareholders in the venture. They had a basic management structure with William Bradford acting as the on-site CEO, and a heavily religious, church lead group of "executives" (a turn you think the righto's would love), who worked in the trenches hand in hand with the workers to establish the community and get it going. And considering the community itself still stands today, one could argue they were a success.

The real problem the righto's have with the pilgrims are entrenched in the modern idea of what is a fair corporation. First is this idea that they would have to roll up their sleeves and get down next to the workers and sweat with them. In our modern world where being poor and having to work hard for a living is looked down upon by many wealthy people as beneath them, the idea of having to help build the community as opposed to sit back, pay someone to do it, and opting to have tea parties and tennis ladders seems like punishment. The modern righto takes no account of the realities of their arrival, only that some work is meant for the privileged, and other work, mainly physical jobs and menial labor, is meant to be preformed by people less fortunate than them. They label this socialism because the thought of their life being dependent on working hand in hand with people they deem beneath them is worse than death itself.

The other real problem for righto's is the lack of a for profit executive class earning 3 or 4 pumpkins for every 1 pumpkin the worker gets. Since Plymouth Plantation really was a basic corporate structure, with only a greedy bloated executive class missing, this has to be their major problem. It shows that the tea parties real objections are based in our modern time, that the vast majority of the population of the US today should be eagerly and happily doing everything within their power to make sure the small percentage of wealthy get wealthier.

The pilgrims were a success because they incorporated capitalism and socialism to build their community and, in turn, a country out of scratch. Plymouth, Jamestown and the other early colonies are still towns due to the idea that making profit is not the most important thing, but rather building the community is. That's not saying profit is a bad thing. The pilgrims made it a point that profit shouldn't come between the health and well being of the community, as opposed to modern right's version of today, where hunger and homelessness are treated with a "it sucks to be you" pithy comment, followed by an "out of my way loser" (I know there are many righto's who will say I give to my church or I donate to this organization or that organization. That's great, but how many people today say that the community is more important than profit? No, righto's will argue that unless profit is maximized, regardless of social problems within a community, the enemy wins. After all, "those people less fortunate than me are just lazy, deadbeat good for nothing syphons on the community." Sad and not very humble.)

Oh, and as we continue to digest the remains of our Thanksgiving feast, let's also not forget than none of the early European settlers would have survived with out "socialist" aid from the Native Americans.

Reality

Good points and conversation tonight. Maybe I'm not as worthless as some have made me feel...

Don't ever stop fighting...EVER!!!

Aging

Things I don't get about the younger generation:

I was at Target Field and a kid walked by the soft serve ice cream booth, where they had pretty good ice cream, but instead he was eating dipping dots.

So you are either waiting for a phone call or conference to start at 9PM in your office, or you just have nothing else to do, and instead of leaving (or staying at home until you are needed) and watching your full screen television or computer, you stare at your phone's tiny little screen and try to watch a movie.

Sure, there is the rare occasion where texting is the best option, but in the 98.5% of the other cases, you'd rather take 5 minutes to text someone as opposed to take 2 minutes to actually call them and deliver the same message.

They don't cook...ever!

FUN-NEE

So last night I had a friend over and he was giving me crap about my liking Dr. Who. He called me obsessed. Obsessed? I have a few DVD's and two or three books...and that's it. I don't have friends over and force them to watch. I am not even part of any fan club or messaging board. I just like the show and bought the DVD's. Yes I have made two posts here about the show, but it's only been two. He then went onto criticize me as a nerd because I also had the complete DVD sets of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the TV show Angel. The fact that I own a few DVD's was enough for this guy to criticize me as obsessed.

It was then I had one of those moments you remember for history. I said, "you're criticizing me, but what are you going to do this weekend? You're going to put on your favorite Vikings jersey (the road one since they're on the road), dress your kids up in their Vikings jerseys, force your family in front of the TV in a room covered in Vikings merchandise and memorabilia to intently watch a pre-season game for four hours, including the pre-game and post game show, where you will insist that no one answer the phone in case you miss anything. You're going to tape the game and watch it again the next day, read and watch highlights again the next morning, get together at a sports bar the next day and relive the game with your buddies. You're going to ignore the real news of the week just so you can intensely follow every decision of the team, who's injured, who's got a good match up, what tired old cliches are being used to describe a sporting event. You're going to get into your car with the Vikings flag and Vikings license plate, turn your radio to one of the many sports talk stations to get the 'latest' up to date info, drive to your fantasy football draft which you have spent weeks preparing for, and seriously debate the merits of back up kickers. Your life will not exist for five months. I won't hear about your family or your job, but instead I have to talk to you about the games, the teams, the coaches and their decisions. When it's all over, you'll spend the other seven months of the year watching highlights being pushed by paid shills who are trying to convince you to forgo your child's education fund as you need to put down the three hundred dollars for a fan fest where some retired player might sign a jersey, or you need to drive two hours to a motor parts store where a player is making an appearance. You'll call congressmen and senators insisting they need to pay a billion dollars to keep the Vikings in town by building them a state of the art facility, and you'll scream at the team when they don't throw down eight million dollars a year to get one player. You do all of this, but yet you're calling me obsessed because I have some DVD's that I occasionally watch?"

"Yeah, but that's different, that's SPORTS! At least I follow something that's important."

Funny

So I was driving in town and had an SUV pull over and nearly run me and my family into oncoming traffic. To his credit, the driver clearly was sorry, but that didn't stop my heart from beating really fast. What got me over the near death experience was the vanity license plate on the back of his car - "PRO LIFE."

Well I saw the irony of this and made a post on Facebook thinking it was actually kind of comical. I end up having this friend of mine rip into me. She felt I was taking a cheap shot at pro-lifers and insinuated that I probably would be offended if she said God bless. Now this friend is a far right conservative who proudly told media at her kids school she was glad they didn't show Obama's welcome back to school speech as "she didn't trust him with her kids." I mentioned she was suggesting the President of the United States was nothing more than, at best, a creepy uncle, and at worst, a pedophile. She said he doesn't deserve my respect. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see what was really forming her opinions.

The best part of this was that she thought that since I leaned left in my political thinking, that A) I am pro abortion and B) I hate God. I actually, personally, am against abortion unless it is needed to save the life of the mother, rape or incest. It's a personal decision, as it should be for everyone. Everyone should make their own choice on this, as I have. I understand both sides of this argument and would never condemn a person who disagreed with me. I also go to church pretty much every week. Me and my family sit in the front row off to the side. I don't hate God because I'm a lefty, rather, I am a lefty because of my belief in God.

I pointed this out to my friend. I've not heard anything back. If you make presumptions about people don't expect to be right most of the time.