The article about Hooks Seafood restaurant closing states that this type of failure isn't unusual in an urban renewal area, according to experts. So says the Morning Call. The article also states that
The $6 million renovation of the long-closed Sal's Spaghetti House included a crystal chandelier from Hess's department store.... As you can see from my photograph above, Sal's wasn't renovated. The long closed former spaghetti house was demolished, and a new building was constructed in its place. Now, I can understand the paper not knowing this, after all, the building is over a quarter block away from the newspaper building. Assuming that people at the Morning Call read the paper, apparently nobody caught the error, twice. This was the second time in about a week that this misinformation was printed. However, this post is about the important part of the story, not covered by the paper.
The restaurant was built pre-NIZ. Save for a $50,000 city grant, the entire cost was borne by the owner. It happens that the owner and his wife were retired from a very lucrative business, and always wanted to own a high end restaurant. Opened as the Cosmopolitan, it was high end indeed. When that failed to attract enough well heeled, it was transformed into the more price friendly Hook Seafood. However, with the NIZ and Reilly's hospitality group of eateries, the market was now over-saturated.
The owner of the restaurant when asked about lack of foot traffic downtown stated,
"I'm not going to get judgmental or say anything negative." Those are traits that nobody accuses this blogger of having.
photocredit:molovinsky- site of the former Sal's Spaghetti House being prepared for new foundation
reprinted from March of 2017
ADDENDUM DECEMBER 5, 2022: My photo above is from August of 2008. Today's reprint is based on correcting the historical record. The Morning Call's premise of Sal's being
rebuilt was used on Wikipedia, and yesterday that misinformation was recycled on Allentown Chronicles, a facebook group that I administer...There was nothing
rebuilt about the Cosmopolitan, it was a completely new building, including the foundation.
Mike so you are writing that the morning call has published lies and propaganda as facts. The propaganda piece is also in Wikipedia as fact about the repurposing of sal's spaghetti house too.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought as to what local entity was tasked with fact checking before this propaganda puff piece was printed in Wikipedia. The media people helped this farce become national fact?
I reviewed what I had wrote about Pat's/Sal's Spaghetti House..
ReplyDelete"The building was raised in 2008, re-built as the Cosmopolitan Restaurant and nightclub with a new address of 22 North Sixth Street. "
Using the word "raised" I was referring to it being torn down. I'll just change the wording to "torn down" as Sal's was actually part of an older building which had several storefronts along Sixth streeet going to Court Street (now the "Arts Walk") Then a new building housing the Cosmopolitan was built
I have a seperate article about the Cosmopolitan/Hooks restaurant that I'll insure is clearer on this point as well. Thank you for pointing this out and take care :)
Brent
When referring to being torn down, or demolished, the correct term is "razed."
DeleteAs I get older, I often worry that digital sources (like Wikipedia and digital copies of books) can be easily manipulated to erase true history or stories in our world. What is or was fact, can be easily altered with just a few keystrokes and few (if anyone) will notice the difference.
ReplyDeleteWhat you point out goes beyond that and has become a far more common (and far more concerning) occurrence in recent years: incorrect information from "reputable" sources being used as the source of digital information that is then accepted as fact.
I don't think the increase in this trend is unintentional, and this is especially dangerous for our younger generation, who are far more accepting of what they read on the internet (or even in print). A country cannot survive if its policies are based on lies, and that is where we are headed (if not already there).
How I wish the problem was limited only to accounts of the demise of spaghetti shops across our nation.
anon@7:52, although there were errors in the newspaper article, I'm sure that they were NOT intentional "lies or propaganda". Wikipedia is not fact checked, but rather public input. IMO it would be better if people cited their source(s) when submitting articles to Wikipedia, and better if people cited Wikipedia when using it for a source.
ReplyDeleteMM - I agree 100% that the spaghetti house article was not intentional. I should have been clearer with that.
DeleteMy point was that my larger concern had previously only been about malice being done in some cases after-the-fact on the digital side, not by using intentionally incorrect print sources (in other cases) to drive an incorrect digital narrative.
When I made that comment about intentional, I was thinking more about formerly reputable places like the NY Times or Washington Post, which have lost most of their credibility and now seem far more concerned with weaving a narrative than getting their facts straight, printing the truth, or presenting all sides fairly.
I suppose that could also apply to local columnists and editors who present what they choose and ignore fairly presenting alternative views.
Again, that is not what I believe happened with the spaghetti house story. Sorry.