Thursday, March 01, 2007
Eating weenies can muddle your brain
Larry Bly
Larry Bly runs an ad agency and does freelance writing in the Roanoke area.
Recent columns
Call it “Weeniegate.” Call it “The Great Weenie Flap.”
I call it “Hotdog Hogwash.”
Hogwash that if the Roanoke Weiner Stand is moved down the street a half block a Roanoke landmark and revered downtown institution will be destroyed.
It’s a damn business, nothing more and nothing less. And whether the owners make a million selling dogs or make a modest living is of no concern to me. I wish them well, but no one’s out trying to save and defend my business (a local ad agency) -- and it’s been a Roanoke institution for more than 36 years.
People here get so put out over the strangest things, not always important ones.
I love a good hot dog -- and theirs, while not the best I’ve ever tasted -- is certainly good enough. I’m not fond of restaurants, large or small, where I have to stand in line for food and then stand in line again to sit down on one of the very few stools. But that’s just a personal thing. I swore that if I ever got out of the Army that I’d never stand in line for food again. So maybe that’s a part of my ambivalence with all of this.
A lot of important people have said a lot of silly things in the past week about this topic, so I might as well weigh in because I’m sure my silly opinion couldn’t hurt any.
An article in The Roanoke Times (one of many) stated that when the subject first came up some time ago, Warner Dalhhouse, Center In The Square board member, declared that if they closed down the weenie stand in its current location they (Center) could just forget about raising any more money. How’s that for thinking globally?
The current board president has been chided in letters to the editor as not being sensitive to the “soul” of the issue. The only thing he hasn’t been accused of is kicking his dog.
If only these passions for the weenie stand were directed to more pressing issues. Talk about a tempest in a pot (of hot dogs). Obviously some people need to get a life, expand their culinary horizons, find a worthwhile cause.
I’m not for putting the weenie stand out of business. But no one’s proposing that, though from the hue and cry, you’d think they were. What we’re talking is relocating them a few feet or asking them find another nearby location at worst, neither of which would affect their business a bit. What’s the big deal?
Nearly every time the slightest change has come along in the City Market, the owners of the weenie stand have cried foul. Change the traffic patterns from one-way to two-way caused them to kick up a ruckus in the press. Why? You can’t drive up to the weenie stand. You have to park and walk there, and never mind that there’s plenty of parking in the garage above them.
The late Laban Johnson, who for years headed up the Roanoke Special Events Committee, once told me that every time he held events on the City Market, the stand would complain that it hurt their business. I never believed that anyone could complain of having thousands of new potential customers right outside their front door. And in all fairness, we have not heard a peep this time around from the owners. And with that terrible free publicity and all. Just awful!
It seems reasonable that Center In The Square should want to re-define themselves to the general public. From the front, it’s hard to tell if it’s a home for the arts and museums, or a weenie stand or an Orvis store. What’s wrong with strengthening the image of this building with some changes? Sadly, I know a lot of people who have never visited Center In The Square because they don’t even know what it is. There are organizations, like the Mill Mountain Theater, who are struggling and who could use a better presence. If making street-level architectural changes would better steer people into the arts and museums, what could be wrong with that? The stand could easily fit in with the mix of vendors in the City Market Building across the street or in one of the nearby empty storefronts.
Fact is, we obviously LOVE the weenie stand and all that it, uh, represents historically to Roanokers. Fact also is that many people who eat at the weenie stand have never set foot in the building that houses them.
And that’s precisely the point: We can certainly have our weenies and eat them too -- maybe just in a more appropriate location.
Bly for now.
