Letters for March 16, 2006

Good Hooters food— in Fort Lauderdale

Re “Gave a hoot” by Becca Costello (SN&R Nothing Ever Happens, March 9):

Good article. The first Hooters that I ever went into was in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Dan Marino (Miami Dolphins quarterback) used to do his weekly TV show there. It was a huge, rustic place with many big-screen TVs. It was nothing like the redone Monterey Bay Canners store. They had absolutely the best burger and fries that I have ever had in the United States (the best burger ever was at the Regent Hotel in 1984 in Hong Kong, if you can believe that).

I work one block from the Arden Hooters. If I want a quick burger and fries at a decent price (yeah, the potato salad sucks), I go there at 11:30 and sit in the bar. That way, I do not have some airhead bother me every five minutes asking me if everything is OK and then giggling as she bounces away.

I am not a prude. Some of the women there look sexy, and some do not. But I do not like to have jiggling boobs in my face when I am trying to eat my lunch. Maybe being married for 29 years to the same woman and having a 17-year-old daughter has changed my view. Personally, I find a 40-something woman in a stylish business suit (or slacks and a sweater) much more appealing than the Hooters girls. But that’s just me.

Dennis Johnson
via e-mail

Where are the indie clerks?

Re “Clerks” by Noel Neuburger (SN&R Feature Story, March 2):

Just felt compelled to vent my displeasure regarding SN&R’s “Clerks” article.

I’m writing because I’m baffled that we at Records, at Seventh and K streets, were never contacted to partake. This shop has served downtown Sacramento for over 30 years and boasts the largest selection of vinyl and music memorabilia in the area. Our logo was personally designed by Robert Crumb. We were featured in the hip-hop documentary Scratch, and our interior graced the cover of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing album. Our staff includes local musicians, DJs and promoters, and the event coordinator for KDVS, as well as some of the most knowledgeable music fanatics and collectors in town.

Yet, we remain unacknowledged.

This also comes at a time when the business is being threatened by the current K Street redevelopment plan. We are a completely independent, family-owned and -operated business that has survived since the early ’70s. I feel as though we would have been the most qualified and deserving choice to feature.

Instead, you chose businesses, like Tower Records, that only serve to sell whatever status-quo flavors happen to be hip for the minute. The article suffered from regurgitated clichés as opposed to offering opinions from “individuals” who actually live their lives with music at the forefront.

Jamie Smith
Sacramento

Where are the suburban clerks?

Re “Clerks” by Noel Neuburger (SN&R Feature Story, March 2):

Way to shun us suburban clerks. When else will I have a public forum to draw attention to the fact that my customers will only buy the reggae of a Jewish guy and the rap of a white one? Long have I dreamed of that day.

Colleen
Tower Records, Citrus Heights

Where can he get a job as a clerk?

Re “Clerks” by Noel Neuburger (SN&R Feature Story, March 2):

I really enjoyed reading the music opinions and suggestions in this story. I only wish there could have been room for a lot more interviews to help cover even more musical genres.

I have to admit, though, I was a bit envious when reading the interviews. Ever since I graduated high school, I desperately wanted to work in a record store. I would apply at different local retailers (almost all of the ones whose employees were featured in this article) several times a year, but I never got hired or even an interview.

I’m 23 now and have been working at Wal-Mart for the past two years. And as comfortable as I would feel working in a record store, I know most of them start at minimum wage and don’t offer too much room for advancement, so I don’t see myself applying at them anymore. And while Wal-Mart doesn’t pay a livable hourly wage either, it’s enough for me to get by right now while in school.

After I finish school, I want to look into possibly opening or franchising a record store. I loved small independent stores like Dynasty Music, whose main staple was porno and underground metal, run by the same guy six days a week. I also love the Bay Area used-record-store giants like Streetlight, Rasputin and Amoeba. I always wondered why a place as big as Sacramento never had any of those; it would do wonders for the music scene here. Dimple is all right, but we could always use more used-record-store variety.

Jaime Nichols
West Sacramento

Breeding losers

Re “Sensible, single payer” (SN&R Guest Comment, March 2) and “Read all about it” (SN&R Letters, March 2):

A first! A liberal Marine and liberal minimum-wage advocate.

If these two would do some checking instead of complaining, they would find out that 99.9999 percent of those without medical insurance and/or earning minimum wage are high-school dropouts. They have made themselves unemployable or underemployed. Here in California, we give high-school diplomas away; the ability to spell your own name is optional.

Medical benefits and well-paying jobs are not a right! They require effort on the individual’s part. Want to end poverty? Make it a requirement that you graduate from a regular high school in order for you or your DNA strain to be eligible for any sort of government dole.

Lou Meyer
Sacramento

We need cops and care

Re “Cops and care” by Amy Yannello (SN&R News, March 2):

A major reason I voted and encouraged others to vote for Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, was to obtain funding for services to the most “underserved” mentally ill. We who live in Midtown, along with police officers who work here 24-seven, see them often and know well who they are.

Personal experience with street individuals whom I tried to help taught me that PERT [Psychiatric Emergency Response Team] teams and the Stockton Boulevard crisis clinic are the most dependable to serve homeless and other individuals who are in denial as to their psychiatric disorders—even if service is no more than an officer driving a person in crisis to the clinic. At some point, if that point is ever reached, mental-health providers and county staff are probably helpful. However, they limit their services to individuals by appointment!

Worry about the funds going to pay for “officers’ salaries” should be less of a concern for taxpayers than the amount of funding that goes to pay public and private mental-health workers’ salaries and their overhead, because how one defines “services” and the result of those services is what matters.

For example, more than once I contacted both private and county mental-health workers to get an appointment to bring a mentally ill person in for help. First question they asked: “Does the individual know they are mentally ill?” When I answered “No,” the workers told me that there was nothing they could do. Sorry, Ms. Gallagher, that is not a service.

When mentally ill persons do not know that they need help, but are most “underserved” because they are either on the street or in their homes when they act out their crisis, paranoid, schizophrenic, bipolar, depressed (or combinations thereof) behavior—often violently—who is called? The employee behind the desk who accepts only appointments during the day but is home at night watching TV?

No, those patients must rely on a PERT team (which includes a mental-health social worker) or, in the absence of such a team, police officers who recognize the person is mentally ill and take them to the overworked crisis clinic where staff members are few and the wait for help is too long.

Before bringing out the hankies to wipe away PERT team opponents’ tears, I suggest that the public ask those complainers to work as a member of a PERT team so they can provide 24-seven “services” on the spot. Until that happens, and regardless of dollars spent, patients and public will see little to no improvement in those who become violent to handle the demons and spirits that they believe possess or control them.

Dale Kooyman
Sacramento

Jesus would say, ‘Get a life!’

Re “What would Jesus read?” by Brent Bourgeois (SN&R Essay, February 23):

Presumably, if Jesus were inclined to spend time at a microscope, Jesus would simply read the minds of the modern Pharisees and devise a pill to make it all better.

I’m an incurable admirer of the heroism of such resolute martyrs as Jesus, and in no way can I envision Jesus as wanting or needing gabbling sycophants. Every major Zoroastrian-style philosopher (including Jesus) has been stern and studious in steering seekers of truth toward every source of knowledge they can possibly find.

Not surprisingly, there is nothing in the beatitudes implying, “Blessed are the sycophants.”

Let us not overlook the additional question implied by the very focus of the article: “What would Jesus write?” Same as Jesus spoke: “Get a life!”

Shaal Mohammed Tarpeit
Sacramento

Correction

Re “Sensible, single payer” (SN&R Guest Comment, March 2):

In the author’s note for this article, a typographical error incorrectly identified Jim Cook as a Democratic candidate for the state Assembly in District 100. He is actually a candidate in District 10. This has been corrected on the Web site.