The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpet — PART SIX: The Subtle Warning Signs of Impending Doom in YOUR Area
[ Click above to embiggen: Canaries in a Coal Mine, more relevant than ever today ]
NOTE to OUR READERS: This is PART SIX in a ten-part investigation into “The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpet” and its true meaning in the bigger picture of what’s happening in our nation’s economy here in 2013. A recap of the investigation so far can be found HERE...and the complete collected Mystery is archived in our special “Mysteries” page in the HillBuzz.org archive, where mysteries such as this will continue to be solved in the spirit of our “political action, analysis, and adventure” mission around here. As always, there is an easy-to-use Search Box located just to the right in the sidebar (as well as an archive of articles by month)…should you have any desire to look up absolutely everything I’ve written on any topic in the entire existence of this site.
I need to take a moment to thank all of you out there who are assisting our mystery solving efforts either in comments or through private emails…because it’s been a lifelong goal of mine to tackle the most important issues of our time via epistolary investigations such as this…which reach out to the great experts of our age (and retired cast members of tee-vee shows I always liked) for their own input. We’re living in a time when the national media has become a true Ministry of Truth that protects all of the Left’s secrets…leaving only amateur sleuths and armchair detectives like ourselves to expose everything that the Obama Regime doesn’t want the public to know. Through prayer, hard work, and determination I believe we can get to the bottom of a great many things…one mystery and letter-to-whomever at a time.
It’s become clear that the Left has indeed won the Culture War and we’re faced with the reality that everything set in motion in the public school system and the media ranks in the 70s, 80s, and 90s has at last come to fruition in the here and now…but if you believe, as I do, that the very concept of an “America” as we know it is still important to the world, then we must endeavor to do a little bit each day to undermine the Left’s current stranglehold on power. That means tackling one mystery at a time in a thoughtful and determined way that turns a lot of the Left’s favored tactics against them.
I am proud and delighted to have your help with mystery-solving and thank you in advance for all the ideas, intel, and information you will hopefully continue to provide as this series continues as a daily feature here. Before you know it, we’ll all emerge as mystery-solvers unlike any who have ever existed in the political world…with no ready counter to our work on the Left and limitless potential for what next we can focus on.
KD for HB, Chicago — 2/27/2013
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Today marks the stage in concerted mystery-solving where everything starts to really heat up and happen rapid-fire…with lots of emails, calls, and messages pouring in from all over the country offering insight into our new economic theory that “dirty carpets in a big law firm” is an idiomatic 21st Century update of the old canard “canaries in a coal mine”. Since it takes a hot, shirtless miner with an iPhone to make coal shafts or canaries relevant to a lot of people today (particularly the self-obsesssed and difficult-to-focus “Millennials”, or those who were taught in public school that “coal is evil”), I think addressing the observable warning signs of an impending economic collapse in more relatable terms is crucial to getting the word out that we’re all in much greater danger than the Ministry of Truth that is our national media would ever have us believe.
If you’ve been following our investigation, you’ll know that the germ for this new economic theory originated with my exposure to the filthy carpeting I found in the lobby of the purportedly prestigious law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson in downtown Chicago on 2/20/2013…where I additionally discovered a men’s washroom that appeared neglected and not-cleaned for some time (with standing water on the floor, severely clogged toilets, and feces bobbing in urine under flickering, creepshow lighting). The shock of walking into a shiny, steel-and-glass high rent skyscraper in the middle of the Loop and encountering filthy and unsanitary conditions more predictable in the Third World inspired me to think about the general shabbiness I’d noticed in other unexpected places in recent years. In fact, staring at that filthy carpet on the waiting room couch at the Hinshaw firm made me realize that myriad establishments I’d visited since 2008 were similarly coming apart at their seams.
It just all can’t be a big coincidence…and I know this is not just happening here in Chicago; it must be part of something bigger that the Ministry of Truth just doesn’t want us to talk about and the Obama Regime is desperate to keep hidden at all costs. Dirty carpeting in a big law firm is one piece in a bigger puzzle that, when assembled with other clues YOU are picking up where you live, completes a larger picture of just how much 2008′s “Hope and Change” became “Misery and Ruin” by 2013.
[ Click above to embiggen: the actual filthy carpets at the Hinshaw & Culbertson offices that inspired the "dirty carpets in a big law firm" idiomatic meme ]
I took a walk around my neighborhood here in Boystown today and tried to keep aware enough of my surroundings to detect any oddities similar to the filthy lobby carpeting at Hinshaw & Culbertson downtown. It’s stunning how little time or effort it took to see that our emerging economic theory is right…and that all around us there are serious indicators that the Obama Regime’s impact on our economy has caused all sorts of “stress fractures” that are visible to anyone who cares to see them. And this, I remind you, is before the full blow of Obamacare hits business in January 2014 (with massive layoffs expected across the board in all industries where some of Obama’s mandates can be avoided by drastically shrinking an employer’s payroll).
This all makes me think of a very heavy, iron weight placed haphazardly atop a block of ice or a glass container…and the heaviness of that burden has caused chips and cracks in what’s trapped beneath it; it is now obvious to observers like us that a collapse is coming (though we still don’t have enough information on the system to determine precisely when total failure will occur). I don’t know very much about managing a law firm, but I at one time was a manager in a large hotel back in Cleveland and I can assure you that if we ever allowed our carpets to look like those photographed above that it would be a matter of just a few months before the hotel would have to close its doors. That’s because the very last thing we would ever cut back on before we could no longer stay in business would be shampooing the rugs and making sure the bathrooms were spotless. If whatever financial weight was upon our business that we felt pressured to stop cleaning the carpets and to turn the men’s rooms back over to nature just to save a few shekels, then Great Merciful Zeus our days as a business would have truly been numbered.
There is just no corner of my wildest imagination where our hotel would have ever been allowed to fall into the sort of ruin I observed in the Hinshaw & Culbertson offices last week.
On my walk around Boystown this morning, I thought about this…and about any hospitality venues in the city who clearly couldn’t survive in the current Obama economy…or who were forced to drastically cutback on goods or services. A great many restaurants and other small businesses have closed around Chicago in the last three or four years (which amounts to a very rapid die-off in a city where these sorts of establishments seemed fairly stable and secure up until 2008); interestingly for our purposes, all of these places that closed appeared shabby and evidenced “stress fractures” (like filthy carpets and uncleaned men’s rooms) in the months leading up to their closings.
Just off the top of my head I can think of the “Orange” chain of breakfast-only eateries that I’ve written about before…which shrank from a four-restaurant chain in the city to just two locations in the last year or so; before Orange closed the Boystown and downtown stores, it seemed like all maintenance and upkeep stopped in those restaurants. Those now-shuttered Orange outlets just didn’t sparkle or seem as clean as they always used to be. I happen to love Orange, so it was heart-breaking to watch their standards decline so precipitously; in retrospect, I now understand that the heavy burden of our current economic woes just forced this company to skimp on essentials…until the Obama economy necessitated laying off half its staff and closing two locations.
A pattern’s emerging here, where first a place starts to look shabby…then the quality of its services drops…and finally it cuts its staff and eventually shuts its doors for good.
Other restaurants in the neighborhood have drastically shrank their portions and have stopped doing elaborate menu changes for the seasons (since it’s much cheaper not to change gears and do creative or special things for a limited time only). Nookie’s Tree, a favorite eatery on Halsted, was seemingly unable to afford a reprinting of their menus…so they just ran-off copies of a Word document for inserts and used a black Sharpie to cross out all the things they no longer offered their customers. Based on my understanding of the hospitality industry, I saw a direct correlation between expensive ingredients and the drastic cuts to the Nookie’s menu…since everything crossed out was either too costly to continue serving or was very labor-intensive (and, thus, a drain on the bottom line if perhaps the kitchen staff was sliced in a budget cut behind-the-scenes). You might not realize just how sensitive restaurants are to changes in food costs…or how little wiggle room for error there is in budgeting a restaurant to stay in business and remain worth the time and energy of keeping the doors open.
Charlie Trotter’s, a gourmet Chicago staple for over a quarter century, shuttered late last year…under a weird cloud of obfuscation that it was because the eponymous chef “wanted to do something else with his life and maybe study philosophy”. That sounds a lot like when a politician is forced from office but cites a sudden desire “to spend more time with his family” as his primary motivation for disappearing into obscurity. At one point prior to 2008, Trotter sat atop an empire of restaurants, publications, retail, and even a tee-vee show…but one by one his restaurants in other cities closed, he stopped putting out new books, his “Trotter’s to Go” epicurean shop boarded up, and then his signature Chicago restaurant folded. I just don’t see any of this as being voluntary, because the man loved what he did and was the sort who spared absolutely no expense to bring the world’s greatest ingredients to the platings on his degustation menu.
Seeing Charlie Trotter’s close and the entire Trotter’s gourmet brand essentially vanish in the last few years was shocking…because even in the Great Depression the fine-dining and luxury brands didn’t collapse, because people who had the money to afford the 1930s equivalent of Trotter’s never lost their ability to keep drinking champagne and enjoying 12-course “tasting menus”…even while everyone else around them wondered where their next meals would be had. We are in uncharted territory where it’s not just the places like Orange or Nookie’s that are evidencing economic “stress fractures” in service and staffing cuts…but the likes of Charlie Trotter lose empires they built painstakingly by hand over 25 years (and their collapse happens in just three or four years under Barack Obama’s stewardship of our country).
Honestly and truly wrap your heads around this, but Trotter is a man who lost an empire he built and successfully ran for 25 years…but it all crumbled to pieces and was then swept away by changes made to our country by Barack Obama and the Democrats currently in power. I know you see this happening where you live, too, with people always known in your community for building something wonderful from scratch that has just not been profitable since 2008 when our entire world was changed by the Left.
The grocery stores around here seem to lack a lot of the more exotic fruits and vegetables that were always so plentiful before 2008. Pomegranates and water chestnuts are just two ingredients that I used to enjoy including in various dishes that are suddenly difficult to find, even at Whole Foods. I put pomegranate seeds in salads and also enjoy making jelly and a Persian chicken dish with them, but I have not seen the giant baskets of pomegranates in any store in Chicago in the last three years; when I first moved here, every year during pomegranate season there would be enormous displays of this fruit (but now, there’s none to be found). Similarly, the fresh water chestnuts that I like using in kung pao or orange chicken are never in the produce section any longer…and the canned versions are about a dollar more costly since Obama took power. I’ve talked often on this site about the chicken itself being around two or three dollars more per pound than it was when George W. Bush was still president…and the same is true for every other meat I buy at the store. Even the once “cheap” meats like short ribs or pork belly are ridiculously expensive all of a sudden. So much so, in fact, that sometimes going to the grocery store I feel like those old pictures I remember in textbooks of life just after WWII in Germany, where it took barrels of marks just to buy bread and milk. This is, indeed, the “Change” we were delivered by Democrats.
All of this, I believe, is attributable to the Left’s desire to hike gasoline prices as high as possible…because I think it’s the fastest way they have come up with to tank our economy completely. Grocery stores and restaurants are uniquely impacted by hikes in gasoline because everything they sell is shipped on large trucks from farms, and then shipped two or three more times on various modes of transportation until it’s received at a loading dock and prepared for customer purchase. Each step in that supply chain adds a higher fuel charge that the shipping companies are passing onto consumers…and that ultimately results in me feeling like it’s now costing barrels full of cash just to keep dinner on the table for Justin and me.
I applaud and deeply respect all of you out there who are somehow managing to do this for large families, because I have a $300/month grocery budget that I need to be more creative each month to survive on for the two of us…and I couldn’t even imagine how I’d be able to stretch even double that to feed a household with children.
I think the restaurants that have gone out of business or have dramatically shrank their operations were victims of the gasoline hikes, since their purchasing costs are much higher than a family’s would be. The grocery stores are probably decreasing the number of shipments they receive, or just forgoing certain items because they’ve become too costly to order from their purveyors…and there’s no longer a justifiable profit margin in even carrying the pomegranates, water chestnuts, or whatever any more. Why spend limited resources bringing in things that aren’t helping the bottom line in a period of history where loss-leaders and exotics just aren’t worth the effort anymore because of the gasoline prices?
I bet you can think of all sorts of things like this that you notice where you live…and I invite you to add them in comments below, because one of the worst fears of those in the Ministry of Truth is that regular people on the ground will communicate amongst one another the things that they see happening where they live…and then start piecing it together that none of this is isolated or specific to one city or town. This is not just something that’s happening in Chicago because our sales tax is high or because Illinois is so messed up. It has nothing to do with winter here or other common excuses. It’s all part of a much bigger picture that indicates that, YES, we are currently in an economic Depression (and this is precisely where the Leftists want us to be, since they see a manufactured crisis like this to be the perfect opportunity to cease complete power).
People often feel powerless in the face of a reality like this and wonder, “Well, what can I do?”…and I think the first thing to do is to start talking openly about all of it. That’s one of the things that totalitarian and repressive regimes dread the most…when ordinary people start effectively communicating with one another and everyone can see that the same terrible things that are happening in Chicago are going on in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Los Angeles and Houston too. Democrats gain and maintain power by carving everyone up into tiny fiefdoms and increasingly more specific buckets…but if communicate with each other and talk about all the warning signs we can detect that this really is a Depression and that things are indeed going to get worse before they get any better, then the Ministry of Truth will ultimately not be able to suppress the truth any longer.
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“The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpets” might not have made sense to some of you when I first launched this important investigation last week, but I truly do believe the Holy Spirit pushed me to see a deeper meaning in those dirty stains at the Hinshaw & Culbertson offices (and their pigsty of a men’s room) that relates to this sort of thing happening all over the place…in businesses that before 2008 would have never dreamed they’d allow their offices to become so filthy or their store shelves to go bare. But, here in 2013 we’re all encountering surprise filth in places we used to take for granted would be immaculately clean…and I can honestly say I never experienced anything like this before in all of my life. It really is the sort of thing I only encountered in communist countries or dreadful places like Mexico or India…and I never thought skyscrapers in Chicago would fall into this sort of similar neglect and disrepair.
Several days ago, after my investigation was launched, Scott M. Gilbert (the young partner in the Hinshaw firm whom I was supposed to meet with the day I went there) asked a judge here in Chicago for a court order to silence me…because he claimed it was “harassment” for me to tell all of you about the filthy carpeting and the dirty men’s room at Hinshaw’s corporate headquarters. I think he was mad because I let the Senior Partners know that I was there because he was supposed to have a meeting with me and maybe they were upset with him for having me come to their offices when they all knew it was so dirty up there. The judge refused to give Mr. Gilbert such a gag order and told him that if he wanted to complain about me that he’d have to write a motion and present it to her (since apparently you have to do this sort of thing in writing and Mr. Gilbert wasn’t allowed to just blurt it aloud in open court because he was so upset at that moment). I personally think this was all kind of ridiculous of Mr. Gilbert to do, because if you really are embarrassed and don’t want anyone to know about how filthy the carpets were in your offices or how stinky your men’s room was then I don’t understand the strategy behind trying to get a court order to silence the guy who is talking about it. The net effect of that is really just the “Streisand Effect” of drawing more attention and interest to the story than ever would have existed if you hadn’t tried to make it a federal issue (literally…in a federal court, before a judge who is widely believed to be on the shortlist for a future Supreme Court nomination). This is totally the sort of embarrassing thing I’d pretend wasn’t even happening, instead of making it more interesting for everyone following the ongoing investigation into “The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpet”.
I haven’t heard anything more about any motion since, but I don’t see how it’s possible for a big law firm like Hinshaw & Culbertson to prevent a visitor like me from telling all of you about the filthy and unsanitary conditions I found when I came to their headquarters for a meeting (especially since I took pictures as proof of how bad it was). If a company really was able to order someone’s silence, then I don’t see how YELP! would still be in existence…since frequently people write on that site about filthy conditions in restaurants, bars, hotels, doctors offices, etc. and I don’t see how law firms have any sort of special privilege afforded to them that would prevent people from describing the dirty carpets they find in such big law firms.
Hinshaw & Culbertson might not like the fact that their filthy carpet and stinky men’s room inspired not only my investigation but a new Internet meme…but considering the First Amendment I don’t think there’s a whole lot that they can do about it (besides regret not keeping the carpets cleaned and the washroom tidied to begin with).
Mr. Gilbert was very upset, however, that I told people about what I’d seen…and he also seemed clearly very embarrassed by the condition of the place when I spoke with him the day of our meeting. He sheepishly admitted that he didn’t have a conference room available, but then gingerly danced around the fact that he couldn’t have our meeting in his own office on another floor. That was so strange, and felt a little like back in the days before I met Justin and I’d be on a date with a guy and he was embarrassed to ask me back up to his place because he knew it was too dirty for company. That’s one of the most tense and heartbreaking moments in gay dating…when you’re having a nice time and are inclined to head somewhere private, but the guy just knows that he’d be mortified if you saw how dirty and messy his place was. It’s totally apocryphal that gay guys are neat and clean…when in fact we’re all just like straight guys in this regard, only we like dudes (so a lot of times apartments get even messier because gay guys figure the other guy won’t really care). I felt really bad for Mr. Gilbert in that moment, actually, because he seemed like a nice man and was very polite to me…but I believe the filth in the lobby may have been nothing compared to what the rest of the behind-the-scenes Hinshaw offices must have been like if he couldn’t just meet with me in his office or elsewhere.
I almost wanted to tell him that it would be okay and that I wouldn’t tell anyone about it being dirty in his office and that we could really have our meeting there, but I didn’t want to embarrass him any further than he already was. He never asked me not to take pictures of the filthy carpet in the lobby or to not tell anyone about that or the stinky men’s room…so I didn’t even realize it would become a federal issue for the Hinshaw & Culbertson firm that I’d write about it all. They clearly know I’m a writer and that all of my work is based on my life experiences, so I don’t really know what they expected in having me come to their offices when anyone could clearly see that the place was so rundown and shabby.
It’s scary to think about just how much trouble the entire country’s in if this is what a corporate headquarters of a big law firm is now like in “The Golden Age of Hope and Change” delivered unto us by Barack Obama. Filthy carpets, not having a presentable location to meet, disaster areas in a washroom…these are the kinds of embarrassments that people had to cope with behind the Iron Curtain in states controlled by the Soviets (and their particular brand of resource management and wealth distribution). But the Chicago corporate offices of Hinshaw & Culbertson prove this is happening HERE with Barack Obama and his motley crew of Chicagoans in the White House.
“Dirty carpets in a big law firm” really has become a fitting update of the “canaries in a coal mine” warning sign…and so it just remains to be seen how big of a disaster this alarm indicates. That’s what I’m now trying to determine, as our investigation continues and I attempt to collect everything I’m learning into one unified economic theory. Since none of this is good for the Left or the Obama Regime, I just know that nobody in the national media or academia will ever be inclined to investigate and study it. That means it’s just up to me and my friends and all of you out there reading this (which is kind of redundant, since I’ve come to regard all our regular readers as friends of the variety that “I just haven’t met yet”).
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In thinking of who to reach out to next in our continuing investigation into what “dirty carpets in a big law firm” means for the country’s economic health as a whole, I remembered the story of The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee and how it survived the Great Depression…but had to close down for a spell in the 1970s because of the urban decay and financial malaise of the Carter Administration. The Peabody is also famous for maintaining a collection of wild ducks in the hotel, and at one time housed alligators and other creatures…which no doubt all made all sorts of messes. Oprah Winfrey stayed there a few times, I think, which also couldn’t have been beneficial to the carpets.
Memphis is a city with a massive boondoggle of a public works project in its “Pyramid Arena”, that was built with plenty of taxpayer money under a grand delusion that it would save the city from ruin. Currently, the building’s scheduled for conversion into a Bass Pro Shop, but there’s a lot of squabbling between the company and the city about just how ugly it all will be. I figured writing to The Peabody might elicit some insights into any warning signs the staff could remember before the hotel shut down when Carter was president…and possibly could give us some scoop on if the staff’s seeing any augurs of another closure ahead during the Obama Regime. I have not heard back (yet) from the Senior Partners of Hinshaw & Culbertson, actress Ann B. Davis, Heloise the Household Hints lady, author John Grisham, or HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy…but the mail here in Chicago is just dreadful and it often takes a while for things to reach people in different states (so I’m sure that’s the main reason for why I don’t have a response from any of them yet).
When letter-writing for assistance in solving important mysteries, I have found that the more people you write to then the greater chance you’ll receive a response from some of them. I also think it’s very helpful and quite nice when those of you reading this give me your take in comments or via email as well…since often hearing from you is much more enjoyable than getting a letter from a member of the “Kennedy Family” or whomever any day.
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VIA US MAIL — 2/27/2013
Duckmaster Anthony
The Peabody Hotel (Memphis)
149 Union Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
Dear Mr. Duckmaster,
As you’re aware, this week I’m hard at work putting the finishing touches on a groundbreaking new economic theory that my readers and I have been developing…which seeks to provide a warning sign for approaching economic collapse in much the same way that “canaries in coal mines” once warned miners of deadly toxic gas when they were deep in the bowels of the Earth. The inspiration for my sudden entry into the field of economics came from a foul experience I had in the law offices of Hinshaw & Culbertson here in Chicago; specifically, it was the filthy carpet in their lobby waiting area and the stinky mess that defiled their men’s washroom that made me think about places I expect to be spotlessly clean in any economy…but are noticeably disgusting here in 2013.
This leads me to believe that we’re currently in a global Depression, but the Ministry of Truth that is our national media just won’t admit it for political reasons…and that things are going to get much worse economically before they get even a little better.
I thought to seek your input into all of this because, obviously, as a “Duckmaster” you have experience with all things “fowl”…and must certainly have encountered all manner of stains and odors as a result of your unique position. I also think that from your perch at The Peabody you know a thing or two about buildings that might be closed in a bad economy, since The Peabody itself ceased operations and was boarded up for a period in the late-70s and into the early 80s (if memory serves, it seems like that overlapped quite perfectly with the Carter Administration in Washington and all the corresponding damage it caused to our country).
I originally wrote to the Senior Partners of Hinshaw & Culbertson about the neglected and shabby appearance of their offices…and told them at one point that I believed it looked like they rented their lobby out to a veterinary clinic or livestock auction house on the weekends to make extra money. I wonder if you could have a look at the photographs of their carpeting that I’ve attached and determine — once and for all — if you believe that animals of any kind were involved in making these stains. I know that might seem ridiculous to you, but I need this information for my important economic theory…because animals on the loose in a law office would skew the anecdotal and idiomatic value of my experience at the Hinshaw firm. For me to assert that “dirty carpets in a big law firm” is truly a warning sign of a major economic crash on the horizon I need to be 100% certain that the filthy carpeting in question was just the result of upkeep and maintenance failures…and not evidence of a Noah’s Ark-style parade of all God’s creatures through this lobby several times a day on (at least) the weekends.
Can you tell from photographs if the filth in the Hinshaw & Culbertson offices was caused exclusively by human foot traffic or if at least some sort of animals had to be involved? I know you’re a Duckmaster and not a zoologist, but I remember “Bones” from Star Trek always screaming about how he was a “doctor” and not a “engineer” or a “Duckmaster” and that guy always managed to come through in a pinch once he got all the drama out of his system.
I don’t know if all my readers know this, but The Peabody Hotel is famous for keeping a flock of ducks in its lobby fountain…and the hotel’s “Duckmaster” is responsible for training the ducks to be able to walk from their “Duck Palace” on the roof to an elevator and then along a red carpet to the fountain. Apparently, there’s a similar position in the current White House where someone more or less does the same thing with Michelle Obama (whom I imagine is not as easy to deal with and as fun to be around as the Peabody’s wild ducks). Glad I don’t have to worry about cleaning those carpets!
From what I can tell, the Peabody ducks are all female except for one green-headed drake…and they only live at your hotel for a few months before they are returned to a farm where children are told they “choose to head back into the wild”. I’m 36 years old and still like believing there’s a Santa Claus and that our votes actually are counted and mean something at election time, so I’ll also go along with the story that these ducks never, ever end up on anyone’s dinner plate after they’ve been entertaining the guests of The Peabody. I even want to believe there’s really a place called “Duckburg” and that the happiest and safest ducks of all live there, having endless adventures and having Duckmasters a plenty to care for their every need. Life is pretty bleak here in Chicago after what Barack Obama has done to our economy for five years now…so “Duckburg” might be a place that far too many others out there would dream of living now as well.
In many years past, the hotel apparently had alligators and other creatures in the lobby fountain…which is a fun and interesting tradition that survived even the worst economic collapses that hobbled just about everything else around the hotel at various points through the years. I’m wondering if there’s any pressure to eliminate the ducks or the “Duckmaster” position at The Peabody in these depressing economic times. Here in Chicago, it feels like every day some longstanding tradition or spark of local color’s being mothballed…because there just isn’t any money left to keep these marvelous things going in the age of Obama-induced austerity.
I know you weren’t around when The Peabody closed its doors due to the Carter-provoked economic ruin of the 70s, but I wonder if you have any historians at your hotel who have ever given you insight into what cutbacks management made to the building that in retrospect could have been seen as signs that The Peabody just couldn’t stay in business any longer. I used to work in the hotel business while I was in college and graduate school…and 9/11 occurred during the time I was head of security of a major hotel in downtown Cleveland. The penny-wise but pound-foolish General Manager we had at the time decided to scrap a lot of the maintenance and upkeep programs that he felt were “too expensive” at time when his quarterly bonus depended on slashing hotel costs. One of the stupidest things he did was to fire both the marble cleaning company and the sprinkler system inspectors…because he felt they just cost too much and that the hotel’s own housekeeping and engineering staff could just work a little harder and take care of these things.
Well, the housekeepers (who were never trained to clean marble properly) ended up damaging the very expensive flooring in parts of the lobby…because they used the wrong solutions and equipment when trying to clean that marble. Engineering just didn’t understand the sprinkler system well enough to detect any problems that the professional inspectors would have quickly found…and about five months after the General Manager fired those guys a sprinkler line burst and flooded several floors of the hotel. That ruined carpets, wall paper, bed linens, and caused us to lose those hotels to paying guests for several months while it all had to be remodeled. Not surprisingly, the General Manager soon “early retired” from the company…and now works at a small bed and breakfast somewhere in Montana that few people ever visit.
It’s been a long time since I worked in a hotel, but I wonder if your staff is under pressure to keep cutting back on cleaning and maintenance in this depressed Obama economy. I also wonder if you could show the photographs of Hinshaw & Culbertson’s filthy carpeting to the housekeepers where you work and see if they can either identify what caused all those stains or offer advice on how Hinshaw can remove them. I am very much inclined to believe that budget cuts at this big firm resulted in the carpeting becoming so filthy…in much the same way that the foolish General Manager at my old hotel believed saving a few bucks on marble cleaning and sprinkler upkeep would make him look good to the accountants (who surely stopped patting him on the back when they processed the enormous bills for marble replacement and the renovation of three entire floors that those cutbacks to maintenance ultimately caused).
I am sure that taking care of five ducks in a very large building must keep you endlessly busy…but I appreciate any information you can provide us in the matters of stain identification and possible removal, as well as anything you can find out about what The Peabody was like immediately before it was closed for that spell in the 70s during the worst of the Carter-induced economic malaise Americans suffered back then.
Best of luck with all of whatever it is you do in this most unique and interesting position,
Kevin DuJan
Editor-in-Chief, HillBuzz.org
© 2013, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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This reminds me of the Broken Windows Theory,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
mainly that when there are broken windows in a city, graffiti, etc. and they are simply ignored, not repaired, that sends a message that nobody cares and it leads to further deterioration .
Mayor Rudi Giuliani of New York City acted on this theory and targeted this kind of ‘small’ stuff and successfully improved the condition of the city.
Taking care of broken windows works. I lived in a crackville neighborhood back in the early to mid 90s. Foot traffic on our block would stop to solicit prostitution or make make “interesting” monetary transactions. The foot traffic also left enough litter to fill
three large black trash bags. I invested in one of those reachers
they have at hospital supply companies to help pick up the trash.
On a good day, the reacher and I could do three blocks worth of litter in about 20 minutes. If the surface litter was kept down, then the human refuse kept moving to plague other persons’s blocks. When an area’s appearance shows that someone is paying attention, then the bad guys go further away
to where their trashy surroundings are more welcoming.
I saw a great bumper sticker that says it all:
ONLY TRASH LITTERS
They did WHAT?! Streisand effect, indeed. Holy smokes.
Your observations about daily maintenance are cogent. I worked in restaurants for 40 years. While working as a manager, I had a conversation with our exterminator who also served the restaurant group with “Entertainment” in its moniker. (This to simply establish the exterminators “bona fides”)
His comment was that they always knew when a restaurant was in trouble because the first thing to be eliminated in hard times was the exterminator.
Eliminating or cutting back on cleaning crews must be a harbinger of bad news as well.
Kevin if you have an opportunity, JC Penny reported today. I’m told that retail in this last quarter was a disaster even when compared to last year’s disaster. Penny’s disaster was worse apparently and the CEO tries to explain it in the conference call. I’m going to find it and listen to it later when I have some quiet.
I saw something about that on the Fox News crawler earlier this evening, if that helps you find it. JCPenney’s used to be a nice place to shop, but it has gone downhill.
Actually, a lot of department stores in the older malls have gone downhill. Loud music, nasty dressing rooms, fewer customer service people behind the registers ( you have to hunt them down to check out), clothes hung in the clearance racks higgledy-piggledy, just really unpleasant when looking for something that you need.
Same thing at grocery stores and WalMart, there are no registers open and the lines are huge.
And don’t get me started on movie theaters. I don’t know where all of these box office numbers are coming from, because the theaters are nowhere near full anymore. You and a friend can have a whole row to yourself. Prices are high, yes, but when is the last time you couldn’t get into a show because it was sold out?
Kevin…I could not believe it when you mentioned pomegranates..I had been getting them at Trader Joe’s..already out of the fruit..I am lazy !! and then viola no where to be seen..and as much as I love TJ’s I was not surprised..my fav iced tea mix..disappeared and all my begging of corporate to at least let me know who made it…was for naught..I have learned if there is anything at TJ’s that I love..buy it by the crate..
Whole Food’s isn’t carrying them either..if you go on Pom’s web site they tell you where you can get them in your zipcode..except no one has them.another friend of mine…who actually cooks..like you..said they are seasonal..in the fall..but honestly, have no clue..all I know is…I LOVE them…
They are seasonal…and in the US the only orchards I know of are in California.
But they weren’t available here in Chicago in the fall. Believe me, I looked, because I enjoy them.
I started looking in September (even though that is too early)…but no pomegranates. Then I looked in October. Still none. None in November or December either….and none in Jan and Feb. So they were nowhere to be found here in Chicago in 2012-2013. The last time I remember seeing the giant crates of them that we used to have was back in 2008. Before Obama was elected.
You can still find the Pom Wonderful juice, but it’s very expensive now. But the actual fruit that you slice open and then take out the seeds and enjoy them…you can’t find that here now.
So something is up.
The only place that I have seen pomegranates this year is Costco.
I left a very lengthy comment about my time in Eastern Europe back in 1993 on the previous post. I hope it gives more insite as to how communists turn everything once beautiful and refined in to crap.
Everyone should read your comment. It makes you think.
As regard the below comment about the sequester. There is so much wasteful spending going on in the federal government. Probably a lot of it could be cut and no one would notice. Instead they choose to cut things which make the mayors of big cities hit the MSM with their hysterics.
And this morning the democratic operatives were all over the place claiming that 2/3 to 3/4 of the spending by the government is untouchable and cannot be changed. Sheesh it doesn’t take a rhodes scholar to realize that if something isn’t working instead of complaining about it, “fix it, fix it”.
The way they are behaving in DC these days should be a giant canary in the coal mine for all of us. What happened to thinking and analyzing and implementing and the big one COMMON SENSE?
The pattern you see of misery and ruin is happening everywhere and it is purposely engineered by Obama. Proof of this is his hysteria about the Sequester and its possibility of budget cuts. He wants more spending which weakens the dollar and forces businesses to charge more. It also hurts seniors as groceries, cosmetics, gasoline and home energy costs are strangling us just as he intended. Why does he want this misery and ruin? Because the elites that run him want a New World Order and it is not one of freedom. Some Republicans are members of it and have signed onto Agenda 21. What is happening is horrifying and can only be stopped if citizens become informed, band together, refuse to riot, refuse to engage in civil war, and force charges of impeachment against Obama. He has let illegal hardened crimnals out of jail to scare people into demanding that cuts not happen but if they don’t happen, our financial collapse is assured. This is what the elites want.
Kevin, can you suggest a way for us to band tightly together? Tea parties are great but they are not joined together as one and many of our citizens are outright ignorant, purposely dummied down by our educational system.
It is dangerously unfortunate that most Americans have no clue what Agenda 21 is. The few leftists voters who do know about it are naive enough to believe that it is actually a global plan for environmantal sustainability and not a greedy land and natural resource grab by the worlds richest and most glutonous piggies. Leftist go around vilifing the rich while they are handing the world over to them on a silver platter. Leftists are weak and submissive and will endure living in squaller rather than fighting for their God given rights. Most of them don’t even believe in God so they probably don’t believe they have any rights other than what the government is allowing them to have.
Brave Europeans like Nigel Ferange have taken on the architects of The New World Order-Global Dictatorship who plan their evil plot in Brussels Belgium. They have been dictating laws to the once soverign nations or the EU and will enslave countries they call PIIGS by luring them into cheap easy credit that will eventually destroy them.
Many Americans fell into the easy credit trap and willing made themselves slaves to the big banks. The Europeans willingly gave up their independence as nations and sublitted to the feudal lords of their past. If Americans are just as stupid, Agenda 12 will proceed full steam ahead. And if enough courageous Americans who would fight for their freedom don’t even know what the UN has in store for them with A-21, how will they even know that they must fight for their lives?
It’s hard to fight for your God given rights if you don’t believe in God. This is why communists love them some atheism.
All is not happy in democratic operative land. First Ms. Brasil very publicly realized on twitter that her health insurance bill is rising:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/27/donna-brazile-complains-about-her-health-insurance-premium/
And then we are learning that “Woodward” is trending on twitter. Gateway Pundit seems to be covering the Woodward thing: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
They seem to be canaries in the coal mine of a different sort or, as some have suggested, is this all for show? Could they be among the many who are reading this series, looking around at their abode and work space and realizing that they too haven’t had the extra money for the little extras like keeping their personal environments clean and neat?
I have a different take on it:
The group running the Country now is anti-American. Americans have generally been a far ‘cleaner, neater’ group than the rest of the world.
In order to maximize the rejection of all things ‘American’, we all must get used to living in squalid, dirty conditions.
I have a friend, or should say had. Ray is a 3rd generation high iron Union man. Anything the Wan says, is GOSPEL. He is, and always has been the perfect democrat.
During Sandy, I could not let him and his two kids(and wife) stay in the cold and dark so I drove my generator to him.
I have been involved in low income houising rehab in the city of Trenton for decades. I have been in abandoned homes that have been crackified that were cleaner.
Dog feces, hair and mess all over.
Not a clean spot on the counters.
I would not sit down.
And to him, all that mattered was that his man was in the WH, and he had beer.
It’s what they have in mind for us all. Just like Mimi says, the wish is to mimic Soviet Russia.
Glad to see you back. I was worried, Kevin.
My best to all.
NJM
Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Again, the communists love them some atheism.
Grey Gardens is avaiable on Youtube.
Never heard of it before now.
a lot of department stores in the older malls have gone downhill here too
I see from the pics of the hot half-naked guy, that you must be feeling somewhat better. I’m glad, I missed your writing.
You have some very good points in your “Filthy, filthy carpet” series. I live in a rural area between 2 small towns, we don’t seem to be affected by the problem yet. But, I’m less than 2 hours from Detroit, and they are long past the “filthy, filthy” stage. They are in the “the dirt ate the carpet!” stage. Or, “the whole building was swallowed by the filth and roaches!”
I’m listening to Dr Ben Carson on Glenn Beck right now, and he just said that we (Americans) have forgotten how to even run our homes. We need to go back to teaching Home Economics in schools. We need to be taught standards again, I don’t think he means letting children decide what makes them feel good either, I think he means turn off the TV and kick their butts until they get their schoolwork and chores done. I love that guy!
Interesting. I missed that comment from Dr. Carson but he’s right.
This relates to what you said about gas prices/truck deliveries above (although it presents a little bit of a chicken-or-the-egg question):
“Consumer Spending Drought: 16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money:”
#10 Another sign that consumer spending is slowing down is the fact that less stuff is being moved around in our economy. As I have mentioned previously, freight shipment volumes have hit their lowest level in two years, and freight expenditures have gone negative for the first time since the last recession. – See more at: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/consumer-spending-drought-16-signs-that-the-middle-class-is-running-out-of-money#sthash.NBYSxJXQ.dpuf
Great post, Kevin (as usual). Have to say I’m rather stunned that the firm is whining to judges about this. It’s sad, really, for them, as you said. But I hope they leave you alone.
You are right about the stores and the quality of the produce. I don’t even buy clementines anymore, because they’re not nearly as juicy as they were even two or three years ago—as you said, they’re already off the peel. I was able to find pomegranates earlier this winter, but not as many and not as nice as before—they’re smaller. I’m hoarding the pomegranate syrup I made like you would not believe; it’s hidden waaaay back in a corner of the fridge.
Your theory is a good one that is quite logical and makes a great deal of sense. Granted, as (my fellow!) Michigander points out, so far as our homes, people are not taught how to care for them any more. In addition to Mom teaching me, I did have home ec in school (not so long ago, really), but by the time my sister was there it had been chucked. A lack of order at the smallest level of a society will creep up to higher levels. Homes to organizations and businesses to government….so here we are. Filthy carpets in law firms! (I don’t even want to THINK about the carpets in Congress.)
Great pic, by the way!
Oh Jen, I’d love to know your pomegranate syrup recipe. I never thought to make that.
I think that would be terrific.
This whole messy house theory needs to be the next mystery you solve. It actually makes a lot of sense.
Actually the show Hoarders and Hoarders Buried Alive would illustrate part of the dirty house theory coupled with the deviance as illness theory. Instead of calling these people out for the utterly disgusting slobs they are, they are coddled and told they’re ill. Granted, they may be crazy. I’d think you’d have to be to live like that. But they should still be ashamed to live like that. They’re a public health hazard and they hurt the housing market. They should feel badly about that. The extrapolation to a societal level is that it is okay for all of us to live in shit hole and someone else will take responsibility for it. Furthermore, if you watch enough episodes, which is hard to do bc it is nauseating, when you see a hoarder who isn’t living in their own feces they don’t seem so bad. They may still only have a trail to walk through their home but at least they’re not living in their own poop. The same is becoming true of us under Obama – well, it’s bad but it’s not that bad. ie We’re not Cuba or Zimbabwe etc etc. We are being desensitized to the crappening of our kick ass country. Now we’re happy to be as good as Canada. I never thought I’d live to see that day. And actually, Canada is doing better than we are. I can’t believe this. What is happening to America???
Just some thoughts.
I live in Orlando, FL and the South’s biggest grocery chain is our beloved Publix. The thing I began noticing a year or so ago was the gradual reduction in available sizes of products. I first noticed it with cereal and Cottonelle TP. It used to be that there were lots of sizes available. Now, not so much. E.g. with the TP, you can only buy the 12-roll size- no 4,6,or 9-roll like in the past. Not as much variety and selection on the shelves as before.
PS Don’t forget that it’s “shrink, shrank, have shrunk”- lack of verb agreement is like nails on a chalkboard to me- sorry)
Love this series- welcome back!
Here’s the thought that kept occurring to me as I read all the filthy carpets postings: is it beneath the “dignity” of the employees of this firm to take it upon themselves to clean their space? If they couldn’t afford a carpet cleaning machine, at least a spray on-mop in foam cleaner, and a little elbow grease and bleach in the bathroom? It wasn’t so much the filthiness of the space as the willingness of the employees to wallow in it without taking responsibility for it themselves – after all, they are the ones who created the filth, right? Mr. Gilbert had enough time to go to court to ask that you be censored, but didn’t have the time to plunge a toilet or mop a floor? That’s as much the shame as the filth itself, IMHO.
My husband is a Chicago native; his first home was a couple of blocks from Wrigley Field. His aunts still live there, and one of my worst family moments was having dinner with them in a deli, and I thoughtlessly made a disparaging comment about Mayor Daley. The wrath of Rahm is child’s play compared to the wrath of Aunt Mary when her beloved Democrats are criticized. That was my last visit (though I can’t tell my hubs that; I’ll just mysteriously be deathly sick the next time he wants to go back).
And, so glad to see you’re back, and ok. And when you’re ready to leave ChiTown, consider Oklahoma City. You’d be welcomed with open arms.