Quote:
Originally Posted by Via Chicago
ill say it again: get over yourself. the fact we're sitting here debating the offense of a place serve $60 hamburgers potentially being located near $3 chain burgers displays a level of comfort and privilege 99% of the worlds population can barely begin to dream about (which is not hyperbole when 50% of people on the planet lives on less than $2 a day).
also, your contempt for the "average person" who is supposedly too stupid to suss out quality from gimmicks (or that they are somehow flawed for even liking gimmicks) is really gross. id suggest you evaluate and reconsider this thought process.
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Being a quality snob is "gross"?? These Chicago forums practically exist (often) to mock and deride (and eventually educate and inform) people who are "too stupid to suss out quality from gimmicks" in building design here. If Lucien Lagrange shows his head around here, we shoot him down, and anybody who supports him, etc. (And, everything we talk about in these threads are already "first world problems.") So I think the comment "get over yourself" applies to yourself very nicely if you don't like the fact that many people strive for quality and condemn mediocrity. Are you a philistine or something? For many people in architecture, fashion, theater, and other professions, everywhere in the world, including tons that I've met in this city, being a quality snob is a way of life. (In the sense of being discerning in their field, and obviously not in the sense of being a jerk towards less educated or wealthy people.) Isn't that part of why theater or restaurant critics exist? Isn't that why millions are captivated by the painstaking work of (the legendarily snobby) Steve Jobs and Jony Ive and their creations? Is your vision of an ideal city an outlet mall?
And it's not contempt for consumers. Many consumers aren't sure what they want, so ideally they will be presented with quality options. I will say it's contempt for merchants who sell garbage and market it as quality. I'd prefer merchants serve, marginally, some educational and cultural role. A $3 burger place next to a $50 burger place is fine and fantastic, if it's doing something clever or new.
And I don't look down on a person if they have lousy taste (and certainly not if they have little money, for crying out loud). People are multidimensional and even if I may be unimpressed, even privately disdainful, about one of their choices, it doesn't judge the whole person; everybody has something interesting worth listening to, everybody is capable of improving themselves, and you have to look at the whole person (now I sound like a hallmark card).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Via Chicago
youre also acting as if Fulton Market as of very recently didnt have a negative connotation rather than a positive one. this is absurd revisionist history. the whole reason it was gritty and undesirable is the reason so many cutting edge restaurants were able to set up shop there in the first place. 42 Grams before it closed was located in one of the most undesireable parts of Uptown. Schwa resembles a dive bar more than a restaurant and is on a strip of Ashland mostly populated by auto body shops and a Shell station. Goosefoot is in the no man lands portion of Lincoln Square. El Ideas is located off a stretch of western that looks like this:
frankly i couldnt care less what food snobs from Europe think about that. if they want to get to know the real Chicago, than there going to have to leave the imaginary fantasy world and enter the real one.
Also, Bonci should probably worry more about the swastika that has been grafittied on the side of their building in Rome for at least several years (as best as I can tell from streetview) than a taco bell or McD being somewhere near one of their corporate expansions
Rome isnt some museum piece set in amber either, its a real breathing place. the reality is any city is a cacophony of contrasts and contradictions, and thats often what makes them exciting and interesting.
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The past of Fulton Market is not relevant. Its present is relevant. I've been to almost all the restaurants you listed; their locations are fine, I don't see your point.
If you don't care about "what food snobs from Europe think", how about stepping back and recognizing that some people do care? It's part of competing on the global stage, you get praised in articles in the foreign press, guidebooks, etc. For my part I don't care what theater snobs from NYC think, but I don't go and attack theater critics (there or here) for saying such-and-such production is lousy, or whatever.
Chicago received lots of awesome press from Bonci choosing us first. Your attack on Bonci for being in a graffitied neighborhood is irrelevant; in fact it nearly aligns with my points about Fulton Market. Your comment about Rome is a truism that happily applies to Chicago at large, so it's inapplicable. Italy is probably the most famous food country in the West; having one of its most well-respected young chefs come to Chicago is something to celebrate, or do you hate those damn, sometimes cultured foreigners?
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