Tabor Hill Cafe: Life On Hawthorne

When last I visited the subject of the Tabor Hill Cafe it was around 10 days ago. The sidewalk was torn up on a Thursday and on Friday the orange barricades were up with a dirt path to the door. Then it sat with no apparent work for a full week, at which time someone did a little more on the edging. The workers were there on Monday, today, preparing the ground for the pour.

My first post about this was critical of city hall for not having a more timely process. Today I walked by and the place was empty, except for the restaurant owner sitting down having a bite with two others. You can get in, but it doesn't look like you can from the other side of the street so business has suffered.

I know these things take time, but there shouldn't be a down week off where everything just sits there. It's hurting businesses on Hawthorne and it's just not fair. City planners would do this differently if their livelihoods were on the line. I originally was going to do a day by day pictorial of all this but I could have put the pictures from Day 2, a week later. Nothing changed for a whole week.

This is not the Baghdad Theater, where interestingly the barriers were pushed aside earlier and an improvised path through the site was formed. The Baghdad Theater is not going to go under based on these 10 days. But what about the small business owner? This guy at the Tabor Hill Cafe is working his ass off to make it in a tough competitive restaurant environment and the city is threatening his chances of making it. Even when this is done, his momentum could take a while to return.

I wonder if any of the city planners who threw this together work these hours. This is the guy's schedule: 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. 7 days a week, except for Friday night where he often stays till midnight.
That's right: 7 days a week, every week. It's a vision of the old American Dream when the immigrants first moved here. Incidentally, he came through the Cambodian Killing Fields so he still says this is nothing, but still....Are these the people we want to screw over in this city? The hardest working among us? I'd like to see the city planners try to keep those hours for a couple of weeks and then have some outside force put a hurt on their chances of making a living. It ain't right, and worse than that, it's wrong.