The second amendment was never intended to be a suicide pact, and that is essentially what it's become.

The P-G and KDKA are still talking about restaurants having a hard time due to "pandemic restrictions."
 
Every single pandemic restriction on restaurants in this state went away on May 2021. Nearly two years ago.
 
Maybe these restaurant owners are just incompetent.

You can use a web browser to look at this web site and it works just fine, in case you didn't know

It's hard to put 115 grains of lead into someone at 1100 ft/sec with just evil intentions, you need a gun for that.

I am looking at places in that general area and what sellers want is bonkers, especially considering that interest rates are up massively. Nearly a half million for an 1100 square foot townhouse that has a roof from the 1980s? No thanks.
 
The talk about housing prices going down in cities during the pandemic was all bullshit. Everything's up massively since 2020.

Restaurants operate on razor-thin margins, and restaurants close all the time. New restaurants open all the time.
 
This is nothing new and people shrieking about it like it's the doomsday clock are overreacting.
 
The entire sector of casual sitdown-dinner-three-days-a-week places is a recent thing and it depended on cheap labor and cheap food they could mark way up. It wasn't going to last forever.

It's sad as fuck if you think life isn't worth living without restaurants, our dining culture in this country is fucking bizarre.
 
My wife and I went from eating out all the time to cycling and hiking. It's fine. We aren't missing anything. The french fries don't need us, and we don't need them.

My dad's family used to tell people "You best not stay here, your car battery won't last the winter" and it took me a very long time to understand that was a threat, not friendly advice.

I've got a lot of love for Max's. If I lived closer I'd be incredibly fat. Cheese / sausage platter would be my undoing.

And that's what the past was to a large degree, too.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-automat-is-a-guide-to-the-wonders-of-mid-twentieth-century-urbanism

> but places where families sit down just to go and feed and to be served are already dead and just don't know it yet.

 

This sort of restaurant is an invention of the Boomers' lifetimes and were massively overbuilt in the 1980s and 1990s to paper over a fading real economy.
 
We weren't making steel or widgets anymore, so we got a bunch of Chilis and PF Changs to bump the numbers and make it look like the economy was still expanding.
 
It definitely wasn't going to last forever. The average American eats 3600-3800 calories a day now. If we were to snap our fingers somehow and set everyone at a healthy weight, and ensure they only ate a the USDA allotted number of calories per day, it would completely destroy the economy.

Every business has a life cycle, places like Mad Mex or The Sharp Edge were cool in the nineties. It isn't the nineties anymore though. Sharp Edge is already gone and Mad Mex was feeling pretty stale last time I was there.

Monroeville is boomer central

I miss WS&S and I miss Max's Allegheny Tavern, that's about it.

Takeout or they come over for dinner. We cook for nearly every meal.
 
The end goal of capitalism is to take your human experiences and rent them back to you, we're at the point now where people think socialization can only take place on commercial real estate. It's wild.

Yeah, turns out that no one wants to work in a dangerous environment during a pandemic for shit pay and garbage tips. Can't say I blame them.

The whole "let's go out for dinner three times a week" thing is an anomaly in American history, it only really started in the late 1970s and will likely die when the boomers do. And that's fine.

 
Greasy spoons, diners, take-out, roach coaches, etc have always been around for the time poor, but the sit-down casual dinner places like Applebee's, Outback, etc are a pretty recent thing.

 
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=90227

I don't see the closing of a boring, tired, shitty chain restaurant as another tick on the doomsday clock but your point of view may differ.
 
Restaurants close all the time and always have.

I haven't eaten in a restaurant since March 7th, 2020 (Wings Suds & Spuds). I have lost over twenty-five pounds and saved enough money to pay our student loans off early.

 
There will always be destination restaurants for special occasions, but it wouldn't be the worst thing for America if all the Max & Ermas, Paneras, and Applebees went away.

Child molestation - okay as long as it isn't the goddamn gubbermint doing it.

> pro Government schools.
 

Here's the keyword to let you know this guy is a nut, the right wing nutjobs call public schools "government schools."
 
> Crimes against children in our public schools are happening NOW every day.

 
The Catholic church systematically enabled child molestation and covered it up.

Compare the number of pedophiles in the Catholic church to the ones in public schools and get back to me.
 
The Catholic church deliberately and intentionally shielded pedophiles by moving them to different schools and dioceses for decades in the US.

I'm talking Bradford County because I have specific experience with it. It isn't very close to NYC.

You certainly are.

Ask a public question, get a public answer. That's life. You've got a right to raise your kids any way you'd like, and I've got a right to speak my mind.