Fun Trailer Park-Themed Restaurant Opens In San Diego: Writer Goes Classist Apeshit
Sour Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski's panties knotted themselves into a bunch over a trailer park-themed restaurant that opened in San Diego.
She writes in the LA Times, all earnestie-poo about how...sorry...I've got to catch that big tear about to fall...it's America's latest effort to treat "its impoverished as entertainment":
A new restaurant has opened in San Diego's tony Gaslamp Quarter, one with an unsavory theme: Trailer Park After Dark. The underground restaurant and self-described "five star dive bar" features fashionably mismatched furniture, shopping carts for seating, wood wall paneling, actual trailers scattered around the room and dishes with names such as "Meat Tubes" (hot dogs) and "Twerkin' Melon" (a graham cracker and watermelon confection).If this were merely an example of 1970s nostalgia, as one might think from the wood paneling, I'd let it go. But it has the stench of classism -- so I can't.
The "stench"?
Snicker.
She continues:
I finally made it into the middle class in my 30s, after I made enough money to put myself through college and earn a bachelor's degree. I am extremely lucky and I know it.And now people with too much money will be imitating my childhood milieu, eating overpriced foods that rich white people think "trailer trash" like. As if we'd have eaten canned green beans and tater tots covered with melted government cheese if we'd had a choice. Rich people can walk down Fifth Avenue avoiding eye contact with people trying to panhandle so they can buy a meal or perhaps some booze because being homeless sucks -- then go into this restaurant and buy a $10 grilled cheese sandwich.
America has a long history of treating its impoverished as entertainment.
Um, America loves kitsch -- that's appreciation of the lowbrow, garish, and sentimentally tacky. That's what this trailer park-theme restaurant is surely about, not making fun of poor people.
On a culinary note, my mother fed us "health food" -- food that tasted like bark (or perhaps was bark...I still have my suspicions). I would have sold my little sister to the mailman for tater tots covered with that bright yellow-gold American cheese. Frankly, tater tots are gloriously delicious.
That kind of food she's talking about isn't trailer park food, per se; it's what everybody in suburbia in the Midwest ate back in the 70s, save for my family, thanks to my mother's unfortunate discovery of Nathan Pritikin.
And then there's this: People with "too much money..." Huh?
As for the "rich people can walk down Fifth Avenue..." remark, I know rich people and I've walked down Fifth Avenue with some of them. Wealthy people aren't monolithic. They aren't necessarily more likely than, say, middle-class office workers to avoid eye contact with people trying to panhandle.
Frankly, a lot of the time, anybody walking down Fifth Avenue is just watching where they're going so they won't walk up onto the back of somebody's heel.
As for the trailer thing necessarily signifying poverty, well, this writer is beyond clueless (perhaps living in San Diego and thinking she can write for an LA audience).
Let's talk about LA "trailer trash." At one point, seeking "affordable housing," I thought I'd do the economically clever thing and move into one of the LA trailer parks in or en route to Malibu. Um, wrong. There are trailers there for over $1 million.
Finally, why is it acceptable to sneer at "rich white people"? If they earned their money or inherited it instead of stealing it, well, lovely for them that they're well-heeled.
P.S. The place looks like fun. If anything, it's a replica of midwestern 70s life. One of the rooms is pretty swanky, complete with plastic-covered furniture like my Grandma Pauline had.
I like this commenter:
SDSUBasketbal
Seriously?Where is the evil intent to mock poor people with the theme of this restaurant? Any sane person who actually sees it (did you even go inside?) would know this is nothing more than a play on a gentler time. The trailers aren't trash - they are new. And the food is creative, nostalgic and good! I know because I have physically been to Trailer Park After Dark - have eaten there, looked at every inch of the place (it really is fun and the service is great).
Brooke admitted never talking to the owners. Funny because when I was there I actually talked to one of them because she was WORKING. She shared that her family were Italian immigrants and many own restaurants or Italian delis. This is her first venture.
So it we follow Brookes twisted logic, then we better shut down Buca di Beppo since that makes fun of Italians (for those who don't know Italian, roughly it means "Joe's Basement.") Funny I haven't heard a word about when that's happening.
Finally, I think it's really cool whenever I see somebody come up with a successful business idea.
Just guessing here, but I suspect the writer of this piece feels differently.
I really don't know how you manage to make it through the day lugging around that quantity of sour grapes.
I'm waiting for a restaurant called "Country Home", in which you see a rusted out pickup truck and a couple of hound dogs on the front lawn, and a sprung sofa on the front porch.
mpetrie98 at August 20, 2017 12:16 AM
Love that idea.
Also, consider "The Beverly Hillbillies."
They got rich, but...they were just the gilt version of people with the car up on blocks.
And then there are countless books -- "The Grapes of Wrath..."
"America has a long history of treating its impoverished as entertainment."
And how about the rich? We do it to them, too. See "Gatsby, Jay."
Amy Alkon at August 20, 2017 5:29 AM
Actually, the more I think about this, the more I think the writer is just clueless about American kitsch, and missed the point entirely, and wrote a whole piece on it as an excuse for demonizing people with money.
Kitsch, again, is appreciation of the lowbrow, garish, and sentimentally tacky. That's what this trailer park-theme restaurant is surely about, not making fun of poor people.
Sometimes poor people live in trailers! Yes, but the photos they show of the place on Yelp aren't that kind. They celebrate 70s kitschy style.
As I tweeted to a friend who said that sometimes urban folk make fun of rural folk:
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/trailer-park-after-dark-san-diego?select=UpGniPHg3NbW8PL_nXGvZQ
PS Rural folk also make fun of urban folk. Whatever. If you have a sense of humor and no need to complain about people with money as if they are all the same...EEEEVIL!...no need to write a screed!
Amy Alkon at August 20, 2017 5:54 AM
So rich people are disgusting and poor people are deplorable....I guess only hipsters are all right?
cc at August 20, 2017 7:23 AM
The fact Democrats don't want to confront is that they are every bit as classist as the rest of us. They won't admit they hate the poor, but they condescendingly "know what's best" for them in ways that make life worse for a lot of people.
We need new sitcoms that make fun of those know-it-alls, Oprah fans. Of course Hollywood will never produce it because guess what group they all belong to?
jdgalt at August 20, 2017 7:33 AM
kinda the reverse of the trend here which is to put restaurants in old trailers (and trucks).
The Former Banker at August 20, 2017 8:37 AM
but they condescendingly "know what's best" for them in ways that make life worse for a lot of people
It isn't the results that interest them as much as what they say they did, and what they say they're going to do in the future. And how wonderful they are for such efforts.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 20, 2017 10:13 AM
The only part of that article that set my teeth was the reference to an "underground" restaurant, but I suspect it's the writer's error: how underground can a restaurant be if it consists of trailers?
One of the funniest acts I've ever seen is "Doyle & Debbie," a portrayal of a washed-up, fourth-rate country music duo (performed by two people with great talent and reverence for the form). It runs weekly in Nashville, where people seem to have a sense of humor about such things. And one of their songs is called "Fat Women in Trailers."
Kevin at August 20, 2017 11:22 AM
Thank Gaia the media elite are here to protect the poor folk.
Either that or a deadline was approaching and the Enlightened Ones were desperate for filler ...
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 20, 2017 12:07 PM
It already exists. It's called "Cracker Barrell."
I'm waiting for a restaurant called "Urban Ghetto."
Conan the Grammarian at August 20, 2017 3:10 PM
Have you ever visited Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota, Amy? Talk about Kitsch! This dumb writer would hate the hell out of it!
mpetrie98 at August 20, 2017 7:11 PM
I ate at a Cracker Barrel in Belgrade, Montana, 10 years ago, because I could walk to it from my hotel next door. No hound dogs, but it was definitely country. I seem to remember some kind of wagon wheel on one of the walls inside.
mpetrie98 at August 20, 2017 7:15 PM
Re: Urban Ghetto
Do you get a free beatdown and mugging with every 50-dollar purchase?
mpetrie98 at August 20, 2017 7:17 PM
Hmmm? How is this not "cultural appropriation"?
charles at August 21, 2017 6:40 PM
So yeah, I've lived in a trailer. (It wasn't a nice one either.. we had to turn the heat off at night because the pilot kept going out and then the thing would spew raw LP gas into the trailer...) Being that trailer parks are usually associated with Southern white people, and Southern whites are one of the few remaining classes which it is still socially acceptable to be bigoted against, I do appreciate the sentiment just a little bit. But damn, loosen up.
I want to go to San Diego now.
Cousin Dave at August 22, 2017 8:50 AM
I wouldn't have thought of this a couple of years ago, but now I suspect that one reason that prejudice persists is that Southern trailer parks consist (in part, that is) of Irish Travelers - i.e., thieves and con artists.
lenona at August 23, 2017 5:20 PM
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