The Bremerton Beat

Photo: Cecelia Newberry
Two Bremertonians look skeptically at a presumed April Fool’s hoax Tuesday, an announcement that Hooters (“Where the skin trade meets bar food!”) is setting up shop downtown.

Binion here:
There’s a saying in the food service industry: If the boss is willing to eat the food, you know he’ll eat anything.

And so today we at the Bremerton Beat are proud to present a column from our direct supervisor, a mostly good and decent man, David Nelson.

If you’ve followed the downtown revitalization campaign you’ll have noticed
a theme: announcements, press conferences, flyers, and Mayor Bozeman shaking
hands like your usual Bremerton blogger does his moneymaker. With that in
mind, the banner I noticed this morning announcing the newest crown jewel
seemed a little subdued. Under the radar hasn’t exactly been the gameplan
behind the looming Tim Ryan building under construction at 6th and Pacific,
so when a construction worker I talked to on the corner midday was more
interested in the nearest Burger King than the sign behind him announcing a
‘HOOTERS’ restaurant as the new tenant, well…

Others in the neighborhood also doubted the “announcement,” and asked for an
explanation. So, by popular demand: No, there’s no Hooters coming. Happy
April 1st.

Even though no one will be using chicken wings as an excuse for oogling the
short-shorts on bar waitresses anytime soon, I was smiling. Because a
Hooters sign always makes me smile, and not for the reason most red-blooded
American men would admit (at least not completely).

See, when I was 15 my parents took my brother and I on an East Coast swing,
and historic Baltimore was a stop. My father is a calm person who doesn’t
unnecessarily hurry himself, but when on vacation in those days he’d put on
his Clark Griswold cap and hustle his teenage sons along at a quicker pace.
Time was money, and he wasn’t driving his family up and down I-95 to fritter
away either.

So one summer night we’re in Baltimore’s inner harbor, looking for dinner
when the old man spots a restaurant a hundred yards away with a sign that
appeared to fit the Red Robin/TGIFridays/Tipsy McScratchys class of eatery
we indulged in. What my old man didn’t get: ‘Hooters’ don’t mean owls in
that context. But my younger brother and I understood, and couldn’t stop
giggling at the prospect our father was going to not only allow us into a
small town kid’s land of cheap thrills costumed in orange shorts, but then
pay for it.

That is, until my dad reached the entryway ten yards ahead of us. Before his
teenage boys could get their heads inside the door for a peek, the wordplay
hit him. And all of a sudden one party next up for a table became “too long
for us to wait for,” and, much to his sons’ dismay, we were eating
elsewhere. He may not have been culturally savvy, but the guy could cover.

PS – Builder Tim Ryan confirmed that the Hooters banner was a joke. In a note to the Sun, Ryan wrote that Hooters has “‘busted’ out of the pack to be the first tenant at 6th and Pacific.” Depending on your point of view, that’s good news, or bad.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 5:07 pm by bremerton-beat and is filed under But Seriously. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.