NYT: All the News That WAS Fit to Print
It’s not often that we here in the backwater Northwest get to look to New York City, snicker, and roll our eyes. New York Times, I guffaw in your general direction. So what if I read and comment on the newspaper two days late? I’m a busy girl. That’s excusable. This is a blog. But what’s not excusable is the major WTF moment I had reading the lead story of the NYT dining section this week, “Outrageous? He’s Heard That Before” by David Hochman.
Back story: The article in question is a profile/gossipy/non-committal hatchet job about former Portland restaurateur and now Seattle food event guy Michael Hebberoy, he who is responsible for putting “Portland” on the lips of New York gourmets and hipsters. (For more back story, just Google him or clarklewis.) Northwesterners need no more back story, we food geeks have heard the tale in its varying truthiness, but thank you NYT for… for what exactly?
WTF #1 - This article is not news. This article is not interview. This article is not even current. Anyone with a learning disability could have pasted it together from pieces in numerous local blogs and publications…from, like, at least EIGHT MONTHS AGO. (Portland Food and Drink, Willamette Week, The Mercury, for ex.) None of these blogs or online pieces are mentioned in the NYT piece; yet surely all of these online publications were pillaged for contacts and factoids.
NYT, you are an example of your own irrelevance. The tone of the piece hits me the same way as an US Weekly “She’s doing OK!” on Jennifer Aniston would, if it dropped this week. And the piece seems to evoke both a “poor him” and a “serves him right” response. Huh? But really, if this is not news on the left coast, why are you writing about it on the right?
WTF #2 - Did the NYT run out of NYC restaurateurs to kick in the balls? There’s no such thing as bad press, and I’m sure Michael is laughing as the NYT fans the flames of his current endeavors. I would be. He doesn’t need defending. (And maybe, Michael, maybe now the website for your elusive book, Kill the Restaurant, will come up before this site on Google. Oh, it does! Kudos.)
If I may snark for moment, did you know that they don’t even really have a guerilla dining scene in the [hick voice] Big Apple [/hick voice]? Maybe that’s why this is intriguing to the NYT, even if it is so last year. The whole unlicensed restaurant thing has been happening on the west coast, and in other backwater places like Paris, for years now. Seattle has more than a handful of roving one-night-only dinners. One pot is the Ghetto Gourmet out of San Francisco is a hundred other dinners with the same idea: get people together, eat some food, digest some art. The phenomenon has passed being, well, a phenomenon. And other papers have written about it, including a piece in the Wall Street Journal to which both myself and Michael contributed talking points.
In conclusion, I often roll my eyes at the pieces on food and drink that hit the streets on Wednesday, including everything written by Frank Bruni. But nothing of late has provoked such a WTF response in me. We should all have the right to eat with abandon. And like what Michael is doing or don’t, he is doing just that. He tried to do and is doing something different. People fuck up. Some people fuck up publicly and spectacularly. But people who never try can only ever hope to fuck up with mediocrity.
New York Times, did you fuck up? I think so, in lower case 8 point Times font, but still. You wrote an out-of-date piece, with a very awkward stance and no point. Just know that many a “wayout” in the PNW is laughing at this article and the dead horse you beat.
But then again, this is just a blog. From 2,851 miles away. As the covered wagon flies plods.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
You almost make me feel sorry for the guy, and when exactly was it last that the New York Times was relevant? A risky thing as a writer, sassing the old gray lady. But I sure enjoyed it, and I agree 100%. But I couldn’t help but feel as if they were legitimizing by stooping to comment even if it was a year too late.
November 10th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Yes! I read that article, and thought what a dick! (talking about the writer) We forgot about Michael here in Portland, we were over it. So why does the Times have to go scrape at old wounds, and pour on the salt? You’re right, this isn’t news, so what the fuck?
November 12th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Right on, as per usual. Wow, I live in Portland, have a real restaurant with a street address and I’d like a story for no reason in the New York Times. I think I’m cuter than Michael, and I’ve got tattoos. Is there a “non-essential as pull” hotline I can call at the paper?
November 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I would like to complain. Every time you rant about something, I end up choking down a spit take at work. Then I have to explain what happened, and lie about the fact that I am reading blogs about alcohol on the clock.
And yeah, all we New Yorkers can be total douches about the rest of “you people.” But IMHO the old grey lady has been out of touch for years. But then how would you really know, living in the Pacific North West outback?
November 12th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I too could give a crap about what happened, but I couldn’t figure out why they run this story. Is it payola for the book that’s coming out? Nothing sells copy llike controversy.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Everyone loves to see the mighty fall, especially when they have such luxurious hair.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I’m sorry. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
When was the NYT relevant? As long as you or I have been alive.
The “Old Grey Lady” is like a retired old liberal quack who lives on the beach and wears crazy clothes maybe, but not the misguided juggernaut you suppose it to be. Sure they are not as hip as your on the street blog, but look at what they did,
they wrote an article about a snake oil salesman who made his way 2 hours north (via NY) to ply his craft here in the emerald city and exposed him for what he his. A charming young man who burned all his relationships in PDX because he was too distracted by the handsome figure he cut in the media. Let’s look at what our charming little newspaper did, assigned a writer who should be covering philosophy lectures at the UW, knows nothing about food other than it’s existential value, and was entranced by the scent of this handsome white boys smell. Charles Mudede wrote a dreamy piece about Heberoy starting over and rising from the ashes in our lucky city. Then a bunch of sheep in this city fell in love in with him, and SURPRISE you suddenly find out that he screwed a bunch of small independent vendors in Portland because he is a SHITTY businessman that conned a bunch of people out of their capitol, misspent it on exorbitant food budgets, and then ran from his problems.
I know this is all very gossipy, and very trashy to talk about, but look, when it comes down to it, there is a fundamental point here. If you are going to take chances in this life do it with a team. Don’t go out on a limb and involve a whole matrix of people if you are only going to hightail it when everything crumbles. Be SMART. Get a partner who knows what the fuck they are doing and wont give you money until your bills are paid off. Get a FUCKING ACCOUNTANT, GET A LAWYER, life is not a a privileged game for most of this world. Michael Hebberoy is one poor handsome white boy who is cruising through life on other people’s checkbooks. I’m sorry if you enjoy his company and are offended by the NYT calling him out, but don’t throw stones at them. Ask your buddy when he is going to man up and go back to PDX and confront the people who hate him and reconcile things. Anything less just makes you look ridiculous. Which is too bad because actually you’re very sweet.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Wow. Let me guess: a former employee? I wish people would get their heads out of their asses. Lots of restaurants fail, lots of people fail to make good on debts when this happens. I’ve been one of those people. But maybe I wasn’t handsome enough for people to hate me for it. Maggie makes a good point. The “crabs in a barrel” moment for trashing or rejoicing these people’s flop has passed. Let it go. Move on. Or channel that tremendous amount of snarky energy into helping people.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Huh, interesting. #7, I don’t even know what to say. Except, get angry about something that matters: like the press not covering the possible IMPEACHMENT of our Vice President, people from New Orleans who still haven’t gotten a dime, or people who frequent your local food bank that will never know what it’s like to argue about something so fucking trivial.
Again, some people fuck up. And sometimes, “some people” is you. This thing has turned into The Scarlet Fucking Letter, and that’s not right.
And I’d be careful about the scarlet letters you wish to pin on people… glass houses… kettle… black… karma… etc.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Ya all must be some bored up there in Seattle. Get your own damn controversy; that one is ours.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:47 am
And now the Gray Lady has sent her penny-pinching Frugal Traveler to Seattle (with a $500 budget) to slurp up our happy hour specials. With no more accuracy than the Hebberoy story.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Allan Melving…
Allan Melvin died Thursday at the age of 84 of cancer…