Bread Stuy Seized By Feds

if sarah palin owned this shop, bxgirl would be singing a different tune. seriously!

*rob*

Oh boy, yet again the rhetoric is getting heated. How fun.

Both sides have points. Yes it’s a potential loss for the ‘hood. Yes it’s sad for the owner(s). BUT, on the other hand, you have to be a “big boy” when starting out your own business, be willing to accept the risks AND, more importantly, if you’re going to take the leap you have to do your homework and understand the tax laws. I mean, come on. So while I’ll give the owner(s) the benefit of the doubt as to motive and feel slightly sad they’re in this bind, they really have no one to blame but themselves.

Now my real question is why bxgrl has to, yet again, turn things personal and ramp up the rhetoric? Her point that folks don’t need to rush into calling the owners cheats is a fair one, but it’s also worth noting that while the folks calling the owners cheats don’t know all the facts, they do have some pretty strong circumstantial evidence (the fact that the property was SEIZED, an extreme measure as benson repeatedly noted) that this is more than some innocent, squeaky-clean shopkeeper completely ignorant of the tax rules. Even so, bx, you can fairly simply make the good point that folks shouldn’t rush into judgement w/o personally bashing other posters. The tone of your attacks doesn’t square too well with the forgiving nature of your point. Pot calling the kettle black and all that…

Thank you, bfarwell. Well said.

I’m not saying that neighborhoody cafes should operate with some sort of magical diplomatic immunity from criminal and civil law. Just pointing out that we folks here, whether condemning them or lauding them, don’t know what happened. We can speculate, but passing judgment based on speculation is ill-advised. Maybe they were running cocaine out of bogota, maybe their accountant was crooked, maybe they didn’t pay sales tax due, maybe a bunch of stuff.

I am saying that if they need to pay somebody (the IRS, the Mafia, their gramma) a bunch of money to stay open, and somebody wants to give it to them because they like them, there’s nothing morally dubious (or even particularly anticapitalist) about that.

If my regular bar closed, I’d be pretty upset; it’s a social center and relaxed hangout that I value above and beyond the price of the drinks. If they held a fundraiser to raise money to pay off [whatever] I’d give them money. Perhaps low on the “tragic loss” continuum compared to the death of a friend, (perhaps higher than the loss of Al Vann) but it would still a significant and sad thing, breaking up a community of people whose lives were joined and improved by the place.

We didn’t go to BreadStuy all that often, but enjoyed having a friendly low-key place to grab a cuppa and a cookie when we were going for a walk in that direction (and wished that there was a similar place over in our neck of crown heights). I can certainly understand people who went there regularly feeling the loss.

(And if I can walk to breadstuy, you can walk to stuporfoodtown.)

Thread monitor alert!!!