LOL: "Famous" Portland Lesbian Bookstore, Parodied in "Portlandia," Goes Out of Business; Blames Racism (Its Own)

I blame Trump.

By Emily Zanottia.

Portland's foundational feminist bookstore, and the inspiration for Portlandia's famous "feminist bookstore" sketches, announced Monday that it's going out of business at the end of June because of white supremacy, the Patriarchy, racism, and the decline of modern feminism.

The store, called In Other Words, opened in 1993 with a mission to "strengthen resistance against a culture of oppression," and "to create a safer space where women, people of color, queer, trans, gender variant folks, workers, and those who live at the intersections of these identities can organize for self-determination and build a sustainable movement for liberation."

...

Confronted with their own white supremacy and regressive ideas of gender, In Other Words announced it could no longer contribute to the Portland community.

They faced an “inability to ‘reform and re-envision’ a space founded on ‘white, cis feminism' (read: white supremacy)," they say on their website.

Zanotti actually throws in some funny humor into the piece, but I didn't steal that. Read the article for that.

I recently came across an old 2016 story about a vegan restaurant closing.

There wasn't any deliberate humor in this Fortune account, but it's funny nonetheless.

A Michigan Marxist Restaurant Closes After Failed Group Decisions and Long Sandwich Waits

By JOSEPH HINCKS
December 13, 2016

A Grand Rapids bastion of Marxist politics and vegan burgers is shutting down after five years in business. And some are likening its closure to the fall of communism.

The Garden Diner and Cafe--replete with wall murals of Che Guevara in a chef's apron and raised fists clutching asparagus sprigs--had eschewed tips in favor of paying its workers a living wage and scorned traditional management methods.

And while its vegan, vegetarian and raw food fare was mostly a hit, Vice‘s Munchies reports, its unpredictable opening hours, slow service and 40-minute waits for a sandwich, strained customer patience.

...

The restaurant's (now-defunct) Facebook page was flooded with complaints from patrons angry at its slow service. Patrons hungry for a sandwich would find the cafe shuttered at odd times, thanks to opening hours set by employee group decision.

Some commenters gleefully attributed the restaurant's failure to flaws in socialism...

But for others in Grand Rapids, the restaurant wasn't progressive enough. After sending a free meal to the local police department, some complained that it had sold out by cozying up to the city's "nearly all-white police force in this era of police violence."

So what's next for the ownership of these two establishments?

Source say they're being courted by Lucasfilm to produce an "origin trilogy" about how Admiral Holdo defeated sexism, the male gaze, and The Patriarchy to win her fight to wear pink hair as the Resistance's Supreme Leader.

posted by Ace of Spades at 08:15 PM

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