This Way Out

I need to do a little background for those outside of Baltimore, but all of us here have heard this story a lot, and that's as it should be, because it reflects a consciousness that dates back to the days of Mr Jim Crow and His Traveling Stupid Racist Show.

A Black woman and her son wanted to have Sunday dinner at Baltimore’s Ouzo Bay. That is one of 15 properties in our town owned by the Atlas Restaurant Group. They were denied admission by a self-important manager. You can tell he's young, because he started his sentences with "So."  As in, "So, we have a dress code..."

So guess what he doesn't have anymore? A job! He and another manager got the can tied to them, because while they were busy telling this lady that her son Dallas's Air Jordan T shirt and shorts violated their dress code, a Caucasian kid around the same age, dressed approximately the same, was busy getting up from dinner.

I don't know the Greek word for double standard, but it doesn't matter anymore, because all of a sudden, with a firestorm of public sentiment against them, and picketers calling them out, the Atlas Group announced that it will no longer enforce a dress code at its properties at the Four Seasons Hotel in Harbor East.

The company, which owns 15 eateries in the city as well as others in Texas and Florida, “continues to assess the policy at each of its venues,” according to a statement.

That's the deal, and the whole chain looks like a group of four-flushers over it. Truth to tell, you won't find me dead in a dump like that, but I feel bad for the lady who tried to take her son to a nice place, only to get the stiff-arm from Ned Neanderthal.

Alex Smith is head cheese at this group, and this week he told the SUN paper,  “We should have accommodated those guests. I’ll never know what it feels like to be Dallas in that moment. But I want the opportunity to meet him. I want the opportunity to be a mentor to him. I want the opportunity to apologize to him and Marcia.” He said he’s made more than a dozen attempts to reach the family, to no avail.

Smith goes on to tell the reporter of the inviolability of their vaunted dress code, claiming that one time, contumacious English chef Gordon Ramsay showed up at one of his joints, and was given the bum's rush for wearing sneakers.

That's not the only reason I would not let Gordon Ramsay dine among the refined. Who wants to spoon their salad with his belligerent barking going on?

But did you notice the "I want the opportunity to be a mentor to him" line? How smug, how bumptious, how condescending, how patronizing, how orgulous.

Having that "Come learn from me how to run a business that makes people feel unworthy" attitude is no way to go through life, mister.