Saturday, May 10, 2008

Has Beans is Has Been?

The little cafe my friends and I used to frequent has been having some troubles lately. It appears that the owner is terribly confused.

You see, he made an arrangement with the Bohipnix to play every Friday night for trade and $10.00. Now, that is almost playing for free. So, the band agrees to play at 6 p.m. to accommodate the local folkies (who plague the corner with their crappy renditions of other peoples songs) so they can get a little stage time before we came on. This all went well the first three weeks.

However, the little by little the times were altered to suite either the Neanderthal baristas, or the scummy toothless panhandlers who never spend a dime on coffee or pastries, unlike the members of Bohipnix. On top of that, the owner never made any attempt to advertise the recurring event, made no posters, called no TV or radio stations, even didn't bother to post the posters we designed in suitable places to view.

Aside from the obvious, the last time we played there, they closed early and wouldn't pay some of the band members. I went to talk with the establishment a couple days later to work out some kind of compromise to allow the street folks to play a little earlier so we may go on at Four as the new request from the owner. Goon boy informs me that he was told that was our last night because the business was too slow and the band was too loud with our big amplifiers; these were the size of a lunchbox! Are you kidding?

I flipped. The owner never expressed these views to the band, but, as usual, he was out of town this week and couldn't do his own dirty work. This, plus the rude behavior of the employees, shutting down whenever it suites them, making weak coffee, and selling three day old pastries, has driven myself and my friends away from even patronizing this little business.The time has come for a boycott of this establishment. It is obvious they don't care about the public, as they were turned away last Friday when they thought a band was playing there. "I saw it in the Journal. I wonder why they aren't open?" (Of course the band had to get the listing placed in the Journal since Has Beans management didn't bother.) Well, the reason is the owner and his goons are too busy sitting at home listening to music like Jack Johnson and Dave Mathews.

What ever happened to a honorable agreements, where a man's word is solid? I now see that this was how the good employees were treated also, which is why they no longer work there. They had a wonderful manager and a great baker, but the owner cowed to the pushy indigents that plague the streets of Eureka with there sooty appearances and their constant panhandling. Whoopee! So you can play a Bob Seger song.

I am so thoroughly disgusted with them, I will join the moratorium with "The Sunny Side" (who were disrespectfully referred to as "The Wild Bunch" by the new manager, presumably for playing cribbage without a license) and boycott the Has Beans Cafe. I hear even the Fair Chance folks now meet at Ramone's (on Tuesdays at 5) after Has Beans started playing games with their closing time and confusing the customers.
Sorry guys, but Ramone's Bakery (which started in Old Town Eureka in 1981, unlike Has Beans from Chico), not to mention Old Town Coffee and Chocolates, are a little more user friendly.

3 comments:

hucktunes said...

The Wild Bunch indeed. Well, I never. It was probably Wild Cribbage Joe. He takes the game so seriously. A nice friendly game turns into Full Contact Cribbage. I sure hope we don't get booted out of Ramone's. We'd have to set up a card table on The Sunny Side and then risk drawing heat from the cops. But Brother James has suggested I set up some coffee dispensers and call it Huck's Buck A Cup. Sounds like a winner, turn lemons into lemonade.

Charles Douglas said...

Go Bob! Take over the old Alleycat space and do it!

Dave's readers might enjoy seeing his band, Bohipnix, at one of the few Friday Night Set performances they squeezed in before the recent clampdown. It's on our Humboldt Sentinel page on YouTube.

rumpledcritic said...

And here we are almost in August and even more of us have been run out of the non-existent coffee house. The only people I see over there are the pot smokers and the street folk using those lovely tables and chairs that are feebly linked together. I guess they like keeping the homeless around so cheap labor is available. Whats next? Child labor? I guess they are busy manicuring, cause I know for a fact they got no coffee to roast.Closed for the Summer?