Why Restaurants Keep Getting Shutdown

So here's Venice Beach. Look at this video. This is, I mean, this is very mild in comparison to some of the videos that I've seen. But there's one from downtown LA that literally should... So Venice Beach, all the boardwalk, that whole area is now just encampments. Well, yeah, Wilshire and San Vicente. It's pretty bad, right? Terrible. Yeah, I've seen it. Wilshire and San Vicente is bad. Downtown LA is absolutely the worst. Downtown LA is bananas, thousands and thousands of tents. And I don't know how they're going to put that genie back in the bottle. Now you've got, they're trying to clean up because they're trying to like, oh, this is a health hazard. You've got like human shit in the streets. Like, how do we clean this? So they're trying to clean up. Right now, activists are stopping them from cleaning up. They're like, your actions are violence and they're holding hands and blocking cleanup crews. Like... But think about how many more people you've just added to the homeless roles because of all the industries that have been shut down and people that can't feed their families. Yeah. That's the hard part. It's like, you know, John, we all know the same people. And I actually, in my heart of hearts, think that they are, they believe that they're helping. That's my belief. That's cute. And I disagree with that. And they disagree. I know that. But I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. That doesn't mean I agree with them or agree with what they're doing in the least. But I will give a shout out to like the city of West Hollywood, the mayor, Lindsay Voharevath, Paul Aravallo. They have been so business friendly. They're trying to help as much as they can. The permits, the ability for me to get my patio up and running, they moved in lightning speed. But I'll give you an example. I got the front patio built. It finished on a Friday. And on Saturday, I got shut down. It's worthless. So what did I just spend 60 grand? There's no evidence that shows that outdoor dining is contributing significantly to the COVID spread. There's no evidence. They actually had to admit that finally. In court, the county has no evidence of a nexus between any sort of outbreak with outdoor dining. And so how do they make this arbitrary distinction between outdoor dining and going to Walmart or what they're calling essential? They don't. It doesn't make any sense. The county health officials shut us down right for three weeks, right around what was it, Thanksgiving? Yes. And some friends of ours took them to court and said, you know, how can you just shut down an industry with no evidence? And they said, oh, we have plenty of evidence. We have six studies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they actually got to court and they had nothing. Nothing. All the evidence was from indoor dining. Not one piece of paper. And they had to admit it. So when they admit it, then what happens? No, but now they're appealing it. Why? Now they're appealing. By the way, they've hired an outside counsel and you think these people have our best intentions. Come on. They're these guys. I know. I know. I know. This guy, Newsom wants a name for himself and no one's calling him out. And it's absolutely insane to me. Okay. Here's the number one thing that boggles my mind. You have a problem. We all agree there's an illness. Okay. The rates of hospitalizations are going up. Infections are going up, but the rates of death are going down. Okay. So we have an issue. Why not get together as a community and say, you know what? We're going to grab a couple of restaurant people. We're going to grab some doctors in the field of a committee and have people that have real world experience, not PhDs, not theoretical people, people that have real experience in the industry. Grab them, grab a round table and say, okay, we have this problem. How do we mitigate it? And how do we move forward? Smartly? I've never been asked. John's never been asked. No doctor that I know in the wide variety of people that I take care of has ever been asked their opinion by the county state on any level. He's right. It's it's that's the problem. And I reached out directly. I have a Garcetti's email. I emailed this mayor puts me on with some, some random person from the office that puts me on with the county and I say, Hey, get us together. Why don't you actually talk to real restaurant owners? This is when they were thinking about this is when they were going to do the curfew, right? There was a 10 p.m. curfew. And I said, where's the, where's the 10 p.m. curfew come from? Oh, well, when people get inebriated, they get looser and then they're super spreaders at restaurants. And I'm like, okay, why 10 p.m.? It's like, that's, that's the time when people really start, start getting inebriated. And I was like, but you realize you could at least say, hey, close up, let people make sure they get out and get their check paid. And be out the door by midnight, 11 30, whatever it might be, rather than everyone out the door by 10 p.m. He said, well, you could seat someone at nine and then kick them out at nine 50. And I was like, look, I have you any, do you have any understanding of the restaurant industry at all? Not one had not contacted any, any restaurateur. They went to a 10 p.m. curfew three days later, shut it all down. They just said, you know what? We're just shutting everything. By the way, they've never heard no from any of us. You want to do six people or less. Okay. You want table six feet apart. Okay. You want to do an 11 o'clock curfew. Okay. A 10 o'clock curfew. Okay. We've said yes to everything they've wanted. And yet they still find a way to shut the industry down. Well, why? This is what I understand. Why? Who's making the decisions? I personally think, again, I don't think Craig wants, wants to say this, but I personally think it is politicians trying to make a name for themselves. How does it make a name for yourself? I think it's fear. They honestly think it's fear. What? What? I think it's fear that they're going to, that they're going to be seen as not having done something. People are being, you know, killed. Newsome is on the news almost every day. So much so that people get, get off, get off the news, man. Like this guy is speaking every left and right. He really thinks that he's the savior situation. And I think that is where it's, it's some sort of political gain situation in his mind. And it's control. Like, look, they're, they're, by the way, I just found out recently and I, we've been, I've been in this business for 15 years. I had no idea that our, we're, we're considered independent restaurants, not franchise. We had no representation. We had no lobbyists. The, the, the representation for the restaurant community is driven by big fast food chains. Well, they have no incentive to help independent restaurants, you know, McDonald's and all these people, which God bless them, but they're thriving in COVID. So we just get bullied around essentially because there's no lobbyists. And so we're kind of like sitting ducks in this situation. And I kind of feel like we're somewhat trying to be a voice here for the independent restaurant world. And it's not just LA. I mean, think, think about, it's much bigger. New York and LA were trendsetters, right? The country watched what happened in LA and New York and they followed. And now LA and New York have just completely dropped the ball and everybody else is kind of rising up. Well, there are examples of government overreach. There are examples of government overreach without any thought whatsoever to these independent businesses. As a slippery slope. How much more is that going to happen? That is a big fear. Well, it's also slippery slope because what happens if it doesn't come back? What happens if you drive down Melrose and those things stay boarded up? What happens if downtown LA stays filled with tents? Yep. What do you do? Well, how many how many restaurants are going to be able to come back? I mean, like I said before, we'll manage. We'll figure out a way. And John's point, like Governor Newsom actually did help with something. I was trying to get a back patio done and there were a couple of health department rules and his office did step in and said, that's ridiculous. You should allow that and make that happen. And they changed the rule that benefited not just my restaurant, but all restaurants. Big Newsom fan over here. No, no. I'm just trying to like, I'm trying to split it differently. Like I want, I want it to be an honest conversation of I think your policies are wrong. I don't dislike you as a person. Right. That there's a big distinction. Sure. Okay. So that's, that's all I'm trying to say, but I will say that, uh, you know, on the reservation list, um, somebody's name that Ryan's would spaghetti will not get a reservation. Okay. Well, I'll do that. I mean, I will say I've spoken out about him and we got targeted pretty hardcore. Openly. They targeted you. They came health came every night when I finally could wear the permits for al fresco. Where's this every single night? I'm like, you were here last night. Well, you know, we were instructed to come every night. I said, okay. That makes instructed every time every night, because you talked out against Garcetti and Newsom. Correct. Jesus fucking Christ. And my, my thing is, I agree. It's nothing personal. I it's, it's their policies, their arbitrary policies. How does it make sense that, you know, there's a million people passing through TSA a day. I looked up all the stats. How does it make sense that we can fly here? For example, anywhere, Austin, New York, wherever it might be, and go right back in the same day with zero, zero issues, zero checks, zero anything. Yet outdoor dining is completely shut down. By the way, this is the first time in nine months I've left LA. And, and the only reason the way I got down here through jet age, by the way, thank you for a great ride and private suite. And you guys are the best. You should, you're a big baller. You should use jet age. Um, but I'm flying back United tonight and, and you know, it's the first time in nine months that I've left LA. Um, and I'm not a science denier and I take precautions and I'm around a lot of people when the, when the patio was open, I was around 150, 180 people a night. But you can go from LA to New York. You can take your mask down and eat. You can land in LA. You can go in a hotel. You can then go to a mall and go shopping. Okay. You can grab some food to go. We could sit together and eat outdoors in the mall, but I can't go outdoor and eat at a restaurant at that employees 90 to a hundred people and keep a business afloat. We're not thriving. You know, outdoor dining doesn't, doesn't, it isn't blowing the doors off of the revenue. It allows us to keep all of the people employed. It allows employees to make some money. We're paying payroll taxes. We're paying sales taxes and we're just one little place. There's 30,000 restaurants in Los Angeles. Now, one of the reasons they cited for shutting it down was they found that 10% of the restaurants weren't abiding by the rules. So, well, I would say then, then why don't you go to those 10% restaurants and shut them down or give them warnings to the point where they do come into line. So if they're not social distancing and they are not wearing masks and shields and they're not wearing gloves and they're not doing all the things that you've asked restaurants to do, well, then you can target them. But to shoot, to shut down an entire industry because you feel like you have a couple of bad actors makes no sense. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.