Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jough]

Dude, I will eat at Ruby Tuesday's ANY TIME rather than eat at fuck*ng Applebees.  I know they're supposed to be competitors, but RT's is SO much better.

The salad bar - baby back ribs as opposed to those mutant "riblets" things, a full bar, etc.  RT's kicks Applebee's ass six times from Tuesday.

[filas]

at first i thought, "oh no, what is cornelius doing?  somebody stop him from spending all that loot..."  but now that he's done it and is actually over there i hope he actually meets what'shername...Ekaterina...and they at least do it a couple of times.  
why is he in love with her again?  didn't he just think she was hot and then decided he was in love?  maybe that's why nobody is a close enough friend to tell him to stop stalking.  

on a more personal note, if i ever actually meet sara silverman i will be unable to talk except to say "bufaahlaham."

[arkabee]

on a more personal note, the only "dine in" "chains" that we have in town, are Applebees, Perkins (within the cursed confines of the 'doomed restaurant space in the hotel' where every restaurant that opens in that space fails), and ryans.  ryans, honestly, doesn't count to me, because "dine in" is not the same as "root through the trough".

As such, i've spent WAY MORE than my share of time at Applebees, because quite frankly, it's the only game in town.  That being said, i have several friends who work there, i talk to the manager about her hosss, etc, etc, etc.

I will, however, easily concede the fact that Applebees, as a chain of restaurants, sucks as compared to the OTHER chains of its "genre".  It has the most boring and bland menu of them all, etc, etc, etc.  However, this particular Applebees is held in a happy place in my heart.

Well, apparently it closed yesterday morning.  Monday morning.  Folks arrived at work, and were told "don't clock in" (word on the street is...).

The parent CORPORATION, which is NOT "applebees" (which is the parent CORP for 90% of the applebees rest.'s) but some stupid assed management company in this "area", went CAPUT.  and so they have to close down the location that was making them money that they used to fund the locations that were costing them money.

Sadly enough, the Corporation of Applebees can not "buy out" this particular location (which is an actual money maker and profitable) because it would not be cost effective because the management company that "owned" it had fubarred their books so bad.

So now the best run, best managed restaurant in town is closed.

It get's better.  It's the "mall" restaurant, in a mall that has had the Hallmark shop, the Toy Store, the Eye Glasses place, and 3 specialty clothes shoppes close down in the past year or so.
There's a JC Penny's on one end, and some random MidSouth specific chain on the other end, with a pop-corn place in the center/food court.
both ends of the mall are about  5 "stores" long (5 on each side, etc.).

so,  a good 30 percent of the mall is Vacant, and Has Been Vacant For Quite Some Time.

i have no idea why i'm telling you all this.  think of it as a poorly worded vignette into the suckiness of a local economy.

maybe i'll reply to next week's blog where Phillippe starts drawing pictures of unicorns with chalk on the front walk, with a poem about the closing of the fabrics plant.


ps, sarah silverman == THUMBS UP!

[V-Adore]

Arkabee, that is profound in a way I can't totally express right now. Damn, man. You good.

I was just about to get riled up about the declining quality of the blogs (and Mr. Bear's blog rapidly becoming the saddest thing), but then I read LN's latest entry, which is pure gold. Pure, pure gold. I can just picture LN sitting on the curb, making a vinegar volcano and brooding.

[AugustWest]

There's a JC Penny's on one end, and some random MidSouth specific chain on the other end, with a pop-corn place in the center/food court.
both ends of the mall are about  5 "stores" long (5 on each side, etc.).

so,  a good 30 percent of the mall is Vacant, and Has Been Vacant For Quite Some Time.

i have no idea why i'm telling you all this.  think of it as a poorly worded vignette into the suckiness of a local economy.

This sounds very much like the town I grew up in.

[CortJstr]

About halfway through arkabee's post I thought I'd accidentally clicked over to the Bleat.

Maybe these places are just by area. I know where I lived before from worst to best the sad crappy chains went Ruby Tuesday -> Applebees -> Friday's but maybe that doesn't hold true everywhere. Plus some places have Bennigan's.

Also, I just saw Sara Silverman in a "10 Unattractive Women You Know You Want to Sleep With" list but I just don't see it.

[V-Adore]

Maybe these places are just by area. I know where I lived before from worst to best the sad crappy chains went Ruby Tuesday -> Applebees -> Friday's but maybe that doesn't hold true everywhere. Plus some places have Bennigan's.

See, when I was in high school, we had the exact opposite hierarchy going on: Ruby Tuesday was classy for the restaurant type (genre?), Applebees was okay if you were near one, and Friday's implied a certain level of sad desperation. But hey, YMMV.

EDIT: Upon rereading, I feel the need to make an exception clause here. While the food is good at Ruby Tuesday, my associations with it remain that, when I eat there, strange cosmic surreality will befall me at that table. This may because two of the three distinct Ruby Tuesday memories I have are eating dinner with my parents before my first unchaperoned nerd meetup ("your father and I would really appreciate it if you didn't get into drugs or alcohol or unsafe sex or anything") and a post-tournament forensics dinner (in which my teammate desperately tried to con the server into serving him booze and then later left with our opponents to go cow-tipping out West).

[St_Zartan]

For some reason, the ambiance of a dying shopping mall really rings my bells.

I can't really weigh in on the Applebee's vs Ruby Tuesday's debate, as the last time I was in an Applebee's was, like, ten years ago (in High School you have to go on Dates and such) and I've never been to a Ruby Tuesday's. As a kid, I really thought T.G.I. Friday's was the damn cat's pajamas, because they had (what I perceived to be) gigantic hamburgers and this delicious peanutty ice cream drink thing. I sort of have a violent aesthetic allergy to "fun, casual dining", mostly because I'm one of those people who looks at the menu and thinks "for what I'm paying, I could make three of something far better". See also the dead-on-target "Grizzlebee's" on Sealab 2021.

I love the turn of phrase of "get into drugs or alcohol or unsafe sex", as though one "gets into" drugs or unsafe sex (I immediately thought of staple guns and cranes) in the same way one gets into, say, stamp collecting or model railroading.

[wombat]

Ark, that is a sad story.  Similar things have happened to me so many times.  You get attached to a place, you know the people, it seems like more than just a business, it's part of your life. And one day it just vanishes at the hand of the cruel and random whims of capitalism.  I know, compared to like, death and destruction, a restaurant going out of business is not a major tragedy, but it still sucks.

[V-Adore]

I sort of have a violent aesthetic allergy to "fun, casual dining", mostly because I'm one of those people who looks at the menu and thinks "for what I'm paying, I could make three of something far better". See also the dead-on-target "Grizzlebee's" on Sealab 2021.

I personally am thinking of the restaurant scene in American Splendor, which involves very similar observations (and the realization that neither of the people involved are actually enjoying any of it).

I love the turn of phrase of "get into drugs or alcohol or unsafe sex", as though one "gets into" drugs or unsafe sex (I immediately thought of staple guns and cranes) in the same way one gets into, say, stamp collecting or model railroading.

The only element of the surreality of the conversation you've missed at this point is my mother, who is an elementary-school special ed teacher and is known to get out of speeding tickets just by looking vaguely upset and matronly, saying this to me with all due earnestness.

[arkabee]

wombat- exactly!  this morning i saw that Mount St. Helen's is still brewing a motherload of hot lava, and the thoughts of the caribbean/gulf inhabitants as opposed to 30 odd people who have to find a new job is a rather ludicrous comparison.

yet, even though "business is business", people are always affected.  this morning on the UPN financial show/thing, one of the gentlemen said somehting to the effect of "they should have outsourced to india the job of Oil Price Setter" or somesuch.  

there is a Tennessee Williams-esque Melancholia that tries to touch me whenever i enter our Mall.  it is quite disconcerting.  there's such a level of absurdity to it, one wonders "where are the tumbleweeds"?

Also, mix Grizzlebees with the "home of flash" from Office Space.  Inherently those places grate on me, but oftentimes it is a matter of lack of choice.  sometimes you just need an ambiance of greater romanticism than Waffle House, if there is any chance you are going to get Special Time later.

[Gimpson]

Ruby Tuesday gets a pass for offering a burger so big you can't eat it without a knife.  My S.O. used to live in a somewhat remote K.C. suburb where the best restaurant around was Chili's.  She got sick of Chili's which I find kind of unfortunate since I kind of like their ribs.  

You'd be surprised at how many barbecue places in Kansas City serve sub-par ribs.  

Damn, I need to go buy some ribs.  I'll be back after lunch.

[AugustWest]

For me it's Chili's (I sort of like Chili's) --> Bennigan's (though I haven't been in one since the 70's) --> Friday's -->  Applebee's --> O'Charley's.  I hate O'Charleys.

[CortJstr]

I'm more depressed by the fact that around here the malls are all full but identical.

10 years ago we used to go to Tyson's Corner Center over Fair Oaks Mall or vice versa because each had a personality and stores the other didn't. Now every mall has the same H&M, Gap Empire, Hecht's, and FYE line-up as all the rest.

[AlohaDawg]

Also, mix Grizzlebees with the "home of flash" from Office Space.  Inherently those places grate on me, but oftentimes it is a matter of lack of choice.  sometimes you just need an ambiance of greater romanticism than Waffle House, if there is any chance you are going to get Special Time later.

Tschotchke's! Minimum of 15 pieces of flair!

Also, I would want to be deloused before an intimate moment following a waffle house encounter. Everyone I have been in looks like I'm in a Jarmusch movie.

Edit: Ray is in for some pain. And what happened to ManTonio?