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News & ArtsWednesday, August 25, 2010
City / Chow Tom Douglas Lets Homeless Sell Wieners Next to His Salmon
Posted by Riya Bhattacharjee on Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 5:48 PM
- Tom Douglas to the rescue
After some heated conflict earlier this summer, local chef Tom Douglas has invited the city’s homeless leaders to do their own fundraiser next to his salmon bake at Victor Steinbrueck Park this Saturday afternoon.
Proceeds from Douglas's event, expected to be held at the south end of the park, will go toward improving park security and the Pike Place Senior Center. The hot dog sale, which will take place at the north end, hopes to raise money for homeless shelters. The senior center and the Downtown Food Bank will be giving out free meals to those who won't be able to afford Douglas's $15-a-plate salmon, courtesy of Starbucks.
The contentions arose in May. When Douglas, a big supporter of a controversial aggressive-panhandling bill that never got enough support to become law, announced that he wanted to raise money to reduce the presence of thugs and panhandlers at the park, the homeless community panicked. Some thought that Douglas was trying to chase them away from the park, a refuge for many of them. Homeless advocacy group SHARE (Seattle Housing And Resource Effort) applied for a permit to hold a hot-dog roast on the same day as the salmon dinner in protest but was denied a permit (Seattle’s Parks and Recreation Department doesn’t issue two permits for the same park the same day).
Pamela Hinckley, CEO of Douglas’s restaurants, got wind of this and invited SHARE over for a discussion. “SHARE thought we are the ones preventing them from holding the wiener sale,” Hinckley said. “I told them that they would be welcome to share the park with us. Our intent is to make the park safe for everyone.” Ultimately, park officials agreed to make an exception and issued two separate permits.
Jerry Thomas of SHARE told The Stranger that Douglas's initial comments about bringing in security guards at the park had been hostile toward the homeless. "He may have had a change of heart since then," Thomas said. "We believe that providing homeless people shelter and a place to sleep is a greater form of security than renting security guards."
Eighty percent of the salmon bake proceeds will fund increased park security.
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I will dislike it less if they remove it during the winter months.
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sleep outdoors in a random place because there's nowhere else they can go.
Wow.
What year is this? What decade is this? What century is this?
Talk about flying cars and moon stations... and gourmet salmon... coincides with talk about people who live on the streets in cardboard boxes. That is amazing to me.
The human race is advanced? Really? Are we an advanced species? We certainly have more technology... does that mean we're advanced by default?
The inhumanity of man towards man is astounding. It always has been, and it continues to be so.
Sorry...I'm ranting here, but the human race has a long way to go. A really, really long way to go, before I would consider it advanced. We're barely past the jungle. Barely. I'm not even really convinced we actually ARE past the jungle.
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Kudos to Chef Douglas AND to SHARE for coming to consensus! And blessings to the animals that sustain us!
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The homeless never named, and would never name, a pizza restaurant "Serious Pie."
It's a tie.
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Also, @5, I think Tom Douglas is allowing SHARE to share his existing permit. At least, that was my read of the article. So in that sense, yes, he is permitting them to hold a wiener sale.
Not that I'm defending Tom Douglas. I find it unsavory that some guy who caters to people who can afford super-expensive food essentially wants the undesirables to stop messing up the view from Etta's. Class warfare much? Inviting SHARE to the party is either a very constructive move or a self-serving attempt to mask his real intent by draping his salmon bake in the flag of "safety." But then it's a tried and true strategy. Just ask the the Nazis or Bush Jr. - "safety" and "security" were the buzzwords they both used to disguise their misanthropy and bloodlust. Why shouldn't Tom Douglas use it to put a shine to his banal commercial self-interest?
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