History Lesson

Update: Greetings, Gawkers. While the rest of the country is a dirty, filthy place, (too) the idea I was trying to get across here is the difference between enforcing health codes and the Holocaust. Anyway:

When passing through the boiled peanut belt, now and again you'll see a shirt with the Confederate battle flag, and the caption, "IF THIS SHIRT OFFENDS YOU, YOU NEED A HISTORY LESSON." As my Fessering sometimes bumps up against related issues, I've been tempted to request the promised history lesson, but have never quite managed it. Conversely, if this sign does not offend you,  you need a history lesson:

I saw the earlier, self-justifying sign John's management posted, and thought it seemed  to presume a  good deal of its customers:

 

Essentially, the message of the sign is:  "we've been in business for 70 years, and now, the Man wants us to follow the rules that are designed to keep you from getting sick when you eat our pizza. Lame!" The failure of Sani-taco as a business model suggests that hygiene is not sufficient to make a good restaurant,  but it is necessary, and I'd rather not eat in a place that was this cavalier about following health codes. But the graffito on the sign takes the fucking cake, resetting as it does the famous lament of Martin Niemoller in the wake of the Holocaust. To review:

Homosexuals
Gypsies
Jews
Pizza Lovers
Smokers

Who can forget the purges of 2003, when hapless smokers were rounded up on the streets of the East Village and Upper West Side, herded into boxcars and sent to death camps? Oh, wait, that was the Jews, in the 1930s and 40s. Never mind. Or the inconvenience that homosexuals, Gypsies, and other marginalized types faced when their favorite restaurants were closed for health violations? Wait, that was the pizza lovers -- the gays and the Gypsies went to the concentration camps too! The Wiesel manque with the Sharpie probably was not thinking of this when he wrote on the Health Department sign, but not thinking is precisely the problem.

Comments

[New Orleans]

I'd like to hear that history lesson too, given I, like you, live it every day.

[Ben K.]

Essentially, the message of the sign is: "we've been in business for 70 years, and now, the Man wants us to follow the rules that are designed to keep you from getting sick when you eat our pizza. Lame!"

I'm glad other people are finally getting around to pointing this out. I don't feel bad for John's because all of a sudden, now, they have to comply with the health codes. In fact, it makes me a little queasy to realize I have eaten at a rat-infested pizza place on Bleecker St.

[Old Hickory]

Good post. While on some level, John's may have a point in that, undoubtedly, these violations have been ignored (either deliberately or out of negligence) for countless years, and the sudden clampdown is an inconvenience. However, their obligation is to ensure customer safety, not to game the horrendous health inspection system. I doubt these violations came as a surprise, though their enforcement likely did.

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