Sunday, February 13, 2005

Josh Harkinson: Profits of Place

I've never been to the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia, but it sure sounds like a "great" place to dine on good food and experience the world. I wish we had something like this in Lexington or around the University of Kentucky (which has one of the worst communal environments centered around a university, especially for a decent size city)

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Profits of Place
Josh Harkinson
Orion

A SHORT WALK from the University of Pennsylvania, on a block of Victorian brownstones once condemned to the wrecking ball, resides one of the East Coast's great salons for the liberal intelligentsia. A visitor on a given evening might find Eric Schlosser deconstructing fast food, former ambassador to Czechoslovakia William Luers analyzing the United Nations, or a gaggle of TV cameras crammed in to cover a protest of the Republican National Convention. Yet the crowds are as likely to be pulled in by the Sweet Potato Plantain Soup, Crispy Twice-Cooked Quail, and Organic Pear Salad with Jumbo Lump Crab Meat as they are by a lecture on the hydrogen future.


Entire Article

2 comments:

The Continental Op said...

The White Dog is indeed a great place to eat, whether it's a burger and a beer at the bar, or a casually elegant and creative meal in the dining room. I always recommend the White Dog to friends traveling to Philadelphia.

I am less enthusiastic, however, about the White Dog political culture, which too often seems like a parody of wooly-headed liberalism at its worst. The shining example was the labor day event a few years ago, featuring a corporate executive who spoke about the intense psychic pain he experienced upon laying off a large portion of his workforce.

I give Judy Wicks credit for her good motives. But the "caring capitalism" for which she (along with folks like Paul Hawkin) is a poster child leaves me cold. Just as a revolution is not a dinner party, neither is a dinner party a revolution.

Michael said...

Continental Op,

Thanks for the local perspective...