Shot in the Dark

“Welcome To Potemkin’s! I’m Chimera, I’ll Be Your Server”

I’ll meet Mayor Frey halfway.

He’s supposed to be Minneapolis’s top cheerleader. It’s part of his job to blow smoke up the world’s collective nethers about the city.

So when he went on social media after about a week of his bizarrely illogical and unscientific vaccine mandate to say everything was hunky dory:

…it wasn’t in and of itself a surprise. Cheerleading the city, and their own policies even moreso, is part of a mayor’s job description.

Of course, the stats aren’t nearly as sanguine. Minneapolis table reservation via “Open Table” are off by…

…ahem…

…two thirds:

Now, it’s entirely possible the Mayor’s phone is flooded with photos of full restaurants. The number of choices in Minneapolis has plummeted. Literally, every place in Minneapolis where I used to do social events has disappeared in the past 20 months.

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Mitch Berg

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20 responses to ““Welcome To Potemkin’s! I’m Chimera, I’ll Be Your Server””

  1. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    lies, damn lies and statistics.

  2. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Potemkins. Nice title.

  3. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Minneapolis has always prided itself on being funded by things like event and licensing fees as much as property taxes.
    They’ve gotten by for two years on federal government largesse (e.g., covid bux).

  4. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    And, BTW, much as I predicted, the “omicron wave” began to collapse nationwide a day before Frey’s vax passport scheme went into effect.
    Another metric that can never be proven to have helped anyone, but can be shown to have hurt specific people and businesses. Doesn’t anyone here know how to play this game?

  5. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Doesn’t anyone here know how to play this game?

    you can always conjure up pics to support your narrative ’cause pics don’t lie, dontchaknow?

  6. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Haven’t noticed any trouble getting a table in restaurants which offer table service. Not all have returned to it. Several are still in ‘take-out-only’ mode which I suspect might be a Washington County Health Department regulation based on square footage (six feet of separation in every direction means I need 36 square feet all to myself, not easy to do in a storefront Asian food operation).

    By the way, “I’ll be your server” seems to have been the old phrase. The new phrase seems to be, “I’ll be taking care of you.” I suspect marketing believes it makes customers more receptive to wait staff upselling drinks and desserts. When a cute waitress says it to me, I want to raise an eyebrow and say, “Yeah baby!” but it makes my wife kick my shin, so I don’t.

  7. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Obviously, he’s lying like a pig in shit, because he doesn’t have to show the pictures of alleged “full tables”. Either that, or he assembled his bloated staff and that of the city CLOWNcil, then restaurant hopped for photo ops.

  8. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Anybody notice that Frey has a certain resemblance to Justin Trudeau? All he has to do is wear that kurta like Trudeau did when he visited India. (I’m told Nahendra retaliated by wearing a Mountie outfit when he visited Canada)

    To the point, though, it strikes me that perhaps due to a bit of political protection, the kind of restaurants Frey likes are doing well, maybe some places like “Hammer & Sickle” or “Psycho Suzi’s”.

  9. In The Mailbox: 01.27.22 : The Other McCain

    […] Do Democrats Hate Children? Shark Tank: Eskamani Considering Run For Congress? Shot In The Dark: “Welcome To Potemkin’s!”, Dismantle, and Casualty Of Not-Quite-War Yet STUMP: 2021 January-June Cause Of Death Ranking Table […]

  10. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    I downloaded the spreadsheet from the source. It’s worse than it looks, there was a significant dropoff of restaurant reservations in Minneapolis beginning 19 January, about 20%.
    So Frey is lying. If the numbers were on his side, he could say the restaurant association reports no drop off in reservations since the 19th. But that could be subject to a fact check. So instead he cites never-seen pictures of packed restaurants.
    But anyway you would have to be an idiot to believe that allowing fewer people to eat out and placing obstacles in the path of those who are allowed to eat out wouldn’t affect the number of people eating out.

  11. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    You can download the Open Table data here: https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry
    https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Here is Minnesota’s data demonstrating the tremendous power of vaccination. Again, the death rate for the vaccinated is the line down by the x-axis:
    Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths Over Time
    https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html#data

  13. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Won’t argue about what has happened in Minneapolis or the restaurant business, but what exactly is being measured here?

    The answer is the business app OpenTable which did a rollout from free to $265/month. So is there a drop in reservations or a drop in reservations through OpenTable?

    And any mention here of competition and other opportunities for the clients?

    Having said that, I do notice a Doppler shift from red to blue as on reads down the chart.

  14. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Hard to disentangle, Greg. There is probably a bias difference between small, going broke restaurants and doing okay restaurants who subscribe to open table. Open Table has been a subscription based business for at least a decade.
    The point, as usual, is that this restaurant reservation activity is information that we, as citizens (not subjects) need to know to properly determine public policy regarding covid restrictions.
    As usual, it is hidden from us.

  15. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    What MP is saying that if a higher percentage of restaurants that went out of business were small guys who were not on opentable, than the statistics shown, as bad as they are, are way skewed to show the situation better than it actually is.

    And yes, as usual the raw data is hidden from us. Heck, if Moore can refuse to show raw data under a subpoena, data that is OWNED by us since it was generated by NASA, what is to be said for data owned by a private company? Oh wait, it will be pried out if it was politically expedient to the libturds.

  16. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Unvaccinated people 65 and older are 52X more likely to be hospitalized from Covid-19 compared to the vaccinated/boosted. For 50-64 year olds, the difference is 46X. Major difference in every age group, including 12-17 year olds.
    https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitalizations-vaccination

  17. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    ^^Someone still trusts the CDC 🙂
    What makes the CDC so trustworthy in your eyes, Emery? The constant message-garbling, the conspiring to defame the signers of the GBD? Or is it the downplaying of China’s role in producing the virus?

  18. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    ^ You’re fully vaccinated and boosted — why don’t you strap on a pair of balls and just admit…

  19. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Emery, take a close look at the MN data. Look at the time stamp, and tell me what very significant things have happened since the beginning of that period.

    As Disraeli is said to have noted, “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

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