Mark Krikorian Warns of the Hispanic Pizza Menace!

Now remind me again how to distinguish National Review from the Onion? National Review's anti-immigration crusader Mark Krikorian warns us of the Histpanic pizza menace:

New York Times: Mr. Swad, who is Italian-Lebanese and was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, did not speak Spanish when he opened his first take-out pizzeria in Dallas in 1986. But he saw a business opportunity in the growing Latino minority in his neighborhood, and the way his customers struggled to order in English. A year later he changed the name from Pizza Pizza to Pizza Patrón, hired bilingual staff members and added items like La Mexicana, a pizza that includes spicy chorizo sausage and jalapeños. Pizza Patrón became a franchise in 2003, and same-store sales were up more than 34 percent in the most recent quarter compared with last year, Mr. Swad said. From 10 to 15 percent of business at his five Dallas pizzerias has been in pesos, he said. Despite the criticism, he said he would continue the promotion until the end of February as planned.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, a group that seeks to limit immigration, said he was concerned that Hispanics could create a parallel mainstream in the United States. "It's a trivial example, but Hispanics now have their own pizza chain," Mr. Krikorian said. "It's a consequence of having too many people arrive from a single foreign culture, and may well reflect a kind of cultural secession."

Comments

[howard]

those gosh-darn jews like my grandparents: they listened to radio in yiddish. they read a newspaper (the farvitz) in yiddish. they attended yiddish theatre. however did we survive the parallel universe?

if krikorian wants to worry about something pizza-related, howzabout he concerns his little gray cells with the parallel world of california-style pizza, which have nothing to do with the former parallel world of italian pizza and cuisine (i used to live and work in boston, and my office was right on the edge of the north end. does krikorian know that people used to speak italian right on the street? what a threat!)

[jerry]

Chicken and peanut butter on pizza and you are an American success story, an entrepreneur with a national chain. www.cpk.com

But chorizo?

[ogmb]

Can we also retroactively evict those damn Italians that infected this country with that pizza fad in the first place?

[Jonathan Lundell]

We had a Cuban pizza joint (José's?) down here on the Peninsula a few years back. Heavy on the cumin. Gone now, as far as I know. Now there's a menace...

[RKimble]

Chorizo on a pizza is actually pretty good, but that is another subject.

The campaign for better economics reporting has achieved a small, but significant (P<0.0001) victory in getting reporters to state changes in sales per store. But why not go a step further and ask that changes in sales be expressed in the form:

"MegaMart announced a 25 % increase in annual sales (of which 20 % was an increase in sales per store and 5 % was an increase in the number of stores)."

Anyway, Jerry, try the chorizo, but chicken and peanut butter does not sound like it would be too good for your low density lipids.

[bakho]

It is part of a long term strategy by the Mexicans to take back Texas and the Mexican losses of 1848?

[Matt Austern]

Chorizo and jalapeño pizza sounds pretty good. I'd better try one. Anyone know if this chain has spread to Silicon Valley yet?

I guess we'd better make sure not to tell this dude about the Indian pizzerias in Fremont.

[Gene O'Grady]

I recently observed (did not eat) a pizza on offer in a restaurant in Ritzville WA, a town founded by Ukrainian Germans in 1882, which featured (the pizza, not the town) such ingredients as bratwurst, sauerkraut, and mayonnaise. Where was the National Review when we let that menace into the country.

All of the above, by the way, is true.

[piotr]

Pizza with jalapenos! Is there no end to this immigrant evility?

THinking about it, pizza itself got popular because of an excessive number of immigrants from a single culture.

[NBarnes]

DAMN those wops and their wop foods! Now our honest Mexican neighbors are being corrupted by their greasy wop-ways and greasy wop-flatbreads!

[Rob]

People are acting like the National Review is inconsistent. Come on now! We all know for a fact that if the National Review was publishing in 1890 it would be bemoaning the amount of Irish and Italians clogging the street with their funny languages and customs. Chances are if the National Review was publishing in 1740 it would have complained about the Scotch-Irish and their uncouth ways and their inferior religion.

[Conservative apikoris]

So there's a pizza parlor in Dallas that accepts payment in pesos. So what? I've been to whorehouses in Nuevo Laredo where the accept (prefer, in fact) payments in U.S. Dollars. And most of the patrons appeared to be Texans of the sort who are all upset about pizza parlors in Dallas that accept payment in pesos.

[Bruce Webb]

Where will it end? With Asian food aisles at Safeway?

Oh. We had that thiry years ago.

Imagine two Americans working for a firm in France. Imagine further that the company had a policy of conducting all business in French. Then imagine them extending this policy to the two Americans in the lunchroom. Wingnut heads would explode coast to coast.

It is not so much that they are hypocrites, it is just that American exceptionalism is just bred in, the fact that stores and offices in overseas countries often have English translations, that you can almost always find a cabbie that speaks English, or a waiter just flies over these peoples heads.

I suppose it is possible that you could find a restaurant in Denmark where none of the wait staff spoke English, but I sincerly doubt you would find one where they imposed a Dansk only ordering rule. And it is not all about the dollar, part of it is elementary politeness.

Not eight miles South of me is a town that to my knowledge hosts the largest Korean population north of Los Angeles. There are strip malls where all the window signs are in Korean. This bothers me no more than finding a gift shop in Tijuana where all the signs are in English. You cater to your customers and if I have a taste for kim chee I guess I will just have to take a chance that the clerk speaks English.

In one of the sidenotes to the tragedy at Virginia Tech it turns out their is a Hokie bar in Seattle. And Virginia Tech fans gather there in good times and bad. In Krikorian's world we should be busting down the doors and painting every orange Hokie thing in sight Huskie Purple.

(And BTW Krikorian seems like a foreign name to start with, I hope his family doesn't have any traditions drawn from Armenia or anything. Because he is one coffee grounds reading away from violation of the Patriot Act. If we wanted to spell 'America' 'Armenia' we would have put that 'n' in the Constitution. [IF I was channeling NRO])

[andres]

Guys, don't blame the Italians for pizza. The original pizza from Italy was just a naan-like flatbread with some spices on top. It was solely due to the USA that pizza as a food became associated with Rush Limbaugh, the older Orson Welles, and Jabba the Hut. ;-)

[andres]

Maybe I should add Brad DeLong to that list, but I don't know his diet either. ;-)

[bernard Yomtov]

"i used to live and work in boston, and my office was right on the edge of the north end. does krikorian know that people used to speak italian right on the street? what a threat!"

Howard,

Psst. They still do.

[Ruben Martinez]

Here in Mexico, people can pay in restaurants, malls, stores, supermarkets, almost everywhere in USD, that’s what I call an open market, why do some people try to be retrograde instead of progressive, especially in a country that claims to spur democracy & freedom, and free markets?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/us/15Pizza.html?ex=1326517200&en=83ae33036c26c2ef&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

January 15, 2007

Pizza Chain Takes Pesos, and Complaints
By GRETEL C. KOVACH

DALLAS — Jose Ramirez and two friends stopped by a Pizza Patrón here after work on Thursday for a carry-out dinner. Mr. Ramirez, his jeans dusted with white chalk from the construction site, ordered a Hawaiian and La Patrona — a large with the works.

The pies cost him almost 220 big ones. Pesos, that is.

Mr. Ramirez, 20, received his change in American coins and said he liked the chain's new "Pizza por Pesos" promotion. He had been in the United States for 15 days — his home is in Guanajuato, Mexico — and he wanted to spend the last of his Mexican currency.

"I just arrived," he said in Spanish, smiling nervously. "It's my first time here."

The employees at this Pizza Patrón in East Dallas, one of 59 in five Southwestern and Western states, were still puzzling over the conversion rates almost a week after the chain started accepting peso bills on Jan. 8.

But the promotion has already hit a nerve in the nationwide immigration debate. The company's Dallas headquarters received about 1,000 e-mail messages on Thursday alone. Some were supportive, but many called the idea unpatriotic, with messages like, "If you want to accept the peso, go to Mexico!" There were even a few death threats.

Antonio Swad, president and founder of Pizza Patrón, said he was surprised by the outcry.

"I certainly wasn't expecting 'pizza for pesos' to become a touchstone for the immigration issue," Mr. Swad said. It was nothing more than an effort to "reinforce our brand promise to be the premier Latino pizza chain," he said. "We're businessmen."

"The Latino population is significant and it's important," Mr. Swad continued. "It's here to stay. The United States is not going to be like it used to be; it's going to be different, and it has an opportunity to be better." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/17census.html

May 17, 2007

New Demographic Racial Gap Emerges
By SAM ROBERTS

With the number of nonwhite Americans above 100 million for the first time, demographers are identifying an emerging racial generation gap.

That development may portend a nation split between an older, whiter electorate and a younger overall population that is more Hispanic, black and Asian and that presses sometimes competing agendas and priorities.

"The new demographic divide has broader implications for social programs and education spending for youth," said Mark Mather, deputy director of domestic programs for the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research group.

"There's a fairly large homogenous population 60 and older that may not be sympathetic to the needs of a diverse youthful population," Dr. Mather said.

The Census Bureau estimated yesterday that from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, the nation's minority population grew to 100.7 million from 98.3 million; that is about one in three of all Americans. The new figures also suggest that many states are growing more diverse as minorities disperse.

As a result of immigration and higher birthrates among many newcomers, the number of Hispanics grew by 3.4 percent nationwide and Asians by 3.2 percent. Meanwhile, the black population rose by 1.3 percent, and that of non-Hispanic whites by 0.3 percent. (The number of American Indians and Alaska Natives increased by 1 percent, and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders by 1.7 percent.)

More than 20 percent of children in the United States either are foreign-born or have a parent who was born abroad. Nearly half the children under age 5 are Hispanic, black or Asian.

Over all, the median age of Americans reached 36.6 years, another record high. It ranged from 27.4 among Hispanics to 40.5 among non-Hispanic whites.

The census counted more than 73,000 centenarians (about 14,000 men and 59,000 women) and also 78 million baby boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964), who, as they turn 60, are helping to drive the racial generation gap.

While growth rates fluctuated, many states are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse.

"Hispanics are dispersing, especially from California," said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. "Texas is gaining from all racial groups, a true multicultural magnet." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/l20ethnic.html

Race and Ethnicity

To the Editor:

"New Demographic Racial Gap Emerges" and its chart, "America's Changing Ethnic Profile," highlight a major sociological issue that affects our view of ourselves as a nation: in public parlance, and in social science terms, there is a world of difference between race and ethnicity.

Racial divisions are considered biological, although they are, in effect, largely socially constructed. Ethnic divisions have no such connotations in contemporary American society.

Racial differences are considered basically immutable and divisive. Ethnic differences are considered "normal" pieces of the American mosaic. And people's ethnicity is expected to be quickly played down, as immigrants learn English, acculturate and marry across ethnic lines.

By listing Hispanic next to white and black, the chart highlights the issue of how Hispanics are to be defined. About half of the Hispanics consider themselves white. These days we generally take the position that it is up to the person to decide what his social category is. For the community to come and say, in effect, "You say you are white, but we say you do not qualify" is not in line with our enlightened policy. The chart saw more divisions where fewer are called for.

Amitai Etzioni
Washington, May 18, 2007
The writer is a professor of sociology at George Washington University.

[anon]

First, California style pizzas will be pried out of Californians' cold, dead hands, buddies. Parallel schmarallel societies, I don't care.
Second, the Hispanic food menace has been with us for over 40 years. I remember my poor defenseless little white boy self being forced to learn 'ensalada', 'carne', 'pan'. 'sopa' and 'frijoles' in California grad school. No wonder this state has gone down the tubes.
Third, I agree that Washington state Ukranian-German pizza does not sound good. But I'll give it a try. But, how come we never had a corn beef and cabbage pizza, or lox and cream cheese with chopped boiled egg, caper and purple onion pizza (best served cold)? What happened there?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/nyregion/08batmitzvah.html?ex=1331010000&en=cfbd9984e40de179&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

March 8, 2007

A Chinese Orphan's Journey to a Jewish Rite of Passage
By ANDY NEWMAN

Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers. The girl once known as Fu Qian has been thinking about that a lot lately.

Three weeks ago, she stood at the altar of her synagogue on the Upper West Side and gave a speech about it.

Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.

She will not be the last. Across the country, many Jewish girls like her will be studying their Torah portions, struggling to master the plaintive singsong of Hebrew liturgy and trying to decide whether to wear Ann Taylor or a traditional Chinese outfit to the after-party.

There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not "look Jewish." And grappling with identity is something all adopted children do, not just Chinese Jews.

But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful — yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet — and profound.

Yet for Cece, as everyone calls Cecelia, and for many of the girls like her, the odd thing about the whole experience is that it's not much odder than it is for any 13-year-old.

"I knew that when I came to this age I was going to have to do it, so it was sort of natural," she said a few days before the ceremony at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on West 83rd Street where she has been a familiar face since her days in the Little Twos program. Besides, she said with a shrug, "Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish."

As Zoe Kress, an adoptee in Mt. Laurel, N.J., said about her approaching bat mitzvah: "Being Chinese and Jewish is normal for me. Thinking about being Chinese and Jewish is a little strange."

Olivia Rauss, a girl in Massachusetts who celebrated her bat mitzvah last fall on a day when the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot coincided with the Chinese autumn moon festival, said she saw no tension between the two facets of her identity either.

"Judaism is a religion, Chinese is my heritage and somewhat my culture, and I'm looking at them in a different way," she said. "I don't feel like they conflict with each other at all." ...

[anon]

'ensalada', 'carne', 'pan'. 'sopa' and 'frijoles' in California *gradE* school. Not California grad school.

[anne]

"Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers."

Who knew?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/books/29pcoh.html?ex=1335499200&en=cb73f73bd3ba600d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

April 29, 2007

The Chosen Frozen
By PATRICIA COHEN

Sitka, Alaska

ASIDE from geography, Sitka, a boomerang-shaped island in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, has very little in common with the imaginary city named Sitka conjured up by Michael Chabon in his latest book, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union."

In this fourth novel, which comes out Tuesday, Mr. Chabon takes a historical footnote, a pie-in-the-sky proposal to open up the Alaska Territory in 1940 to European Jews marked for extermination, and asks: What if? What if this proposal, which in real life was supported by the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, but killed in Congress, had actually passed? What if Jews had poured into a frigid island instead of the Middle Eastern desert, and the state of Israel had never been created? What if the small settlement of Sitka had grown into a teeming Jewish homeland, a land not of milk and honey but of salmon and lumber? ...

[Who knew?]

[andres]

All it would take is one run-in with a kodiak or polar bear and all bears would be labeled anti-Semites ;-)

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Rafferty-t.html?ex=1336708800&en=ef5467487a9d2b2b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 13, 2007

Cops and Rabbis
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY

THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION
By Michael Chabon.

"Don't get wistful on me," says a sly old man in Michael Chabon's sly new novel, his first big serious one since the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," seven long years ago. "God knows I've had my fill of wistful Jews, starting with myself." Chabon, starting with himself as writers should, seems determined in "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" to stave off wistfulness by any means, even if it requires him to turn the story of the endless, endemic disappointment of the Jews — their millenniums-old-and-counting wait for the Messiah — into a screwball, alternative-reality, hard-boiled mystery, set, for maximum incongruity, in Alaska. The impressively wacky premise is that after the Holocaust, large numbers of Jews were relocated to Sitka, where by statute they were allowed to make their home for the next 60 years, at the end of which the town would revert to the control of Alaska. Israel, it appears, didn't work out: the Jewish settlers there were ejected "with savage finality" in 1948. "The Holy Land," the novel tells us, "has never seemed more remote or unattainable than it does to a Jew of Sitka." The godforsakenness of the place is something more than a figure of speech.

Stuck in just another temporary, cruelly provisional homeland, farther than ever from the one originally promised — yes, you could get a little wistful in a situation like that. But it soon becomes clear that Sitka's very remoteness, its impossible distance from the dreamed-of site of redemption and fulfillment, suits both Chabon and Meyer Landsman, his alcoholic homicide-cop hero, right down to the frozen ground. This bustling Yiddish-speaking enclave in the far north is so improbable, so irredeemably absurd, that it functions as a kind of comfort zone for an irreligious Jew like Landsman, a daily confirmation of his unbelief: the chances of the Messiah turning up in Sitka look gratifyingly slim....

[anne]

There really is an absuridty in race and ethnicity or ethnicity and race. I get it.

"Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish."

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/chapters/0513-1st-chabo.html

May 13, 2007

'The Yiddish Policemen's Union'
By MICHAEL CHABON

Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

"He didn't answer the phone, he wouldn't open his door," says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman's nightmares. "I had to let myself into his room."

The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.

"Did you touch anything in the room?" Landsman says.

Tenenboym says, "Only the cash and jewelry."

Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39.

"I hate to wake you, Detective," Tenenboym says. "Only I noticed that you don't really sleep." ...

[Robert Waldmann]

Last night I observed (did not eat) a pizza on offer in a restaurant in Frascati (RM) where the Romans go to eat and drink since 192 BC which featured (the pizza, not the town) such ingredients as ciaiuscolo which I fear is Italian for Chorisco (we're talking a soft peppery sausage here right ?). This is a barbarian Romagnola contamination of a Campanian dish.

And Andres, you are full of it. Round here abouts a super standard pizza with tomato and mozarella is called a Pizza Margherita because the first was cooked in Naples with the colors of the Austrian flag in honor of the visiting queen Margaret (a possible attempt to kill her with coronary artery disease)

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Meat and potatoes? Lager beer?

Keep those damn Brits and Germans out of America, folks!

[andres]

First Bupa attacks me for reading pop-left trash rather than real economics, and now Robert tells me I'm full of it. And to think I post comments here to relax from the latest argument with my ex-wife. Robert, whatever was the original state of Italian pizzas, I'm sure they were not as filling and complex as what I would eat today at Uno's or California.

But yes, I can always stand to be corrected, even if I continue to be full of it (pizza?). As one of my former profs keeps saying, "I am often wrong, but never in doubt"...

[baxter]

Does this guy know about the "Naanwich" and the Tandoori "wrap" served by the Indian Fast food places in Silicon Valley? Would it be considered as cultural aggression by Indian food on and English and Hispanic food?

[low-tech cyclist (formerly RT)]

Time to upgrade the lyrics of the Refreshments' 1996 hit, "Banditos," to:

"Well, I baked the pizza,
so I get the pesos,
now that seems fair."

[a different chris]

> a pizza that includes spicy chorizo sausage and jalapeños.

Sounds really good.

Gene, around here many places offer "perogi pizza". I, for one, think it is great. I'd try that pizza in a moment, if they left out the mayo. I hate that stuff.

[PSP]

Is there any chance that the place selling tandori wrap would deliver to New Jersey?

[Sanjay Bigglesworth]

Robert is off a bit on the Margherita. Margherita (or Margaret of Savoy) was the Queen consort of Italy during the reign (1878-1900) of her husband, Humbert I. In 1889 the pizza Margherita was named after her. It is the colors of the Italian flag. Red sauce, green basil and white cheese.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

I remember as a child going to a Mexican resturant in Fresno Cal in say 1940. It sticks in my mind because of the Mariachis walking around the pleasant outdoor area singing and playing. That would be 67 years ago. I have a feeling they had been in Fresno for quite a bit longer than that. I think I remember some Chinese food, Basque food, Armenian and Italian food (no pizza!) from that era.
That guy from NO must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel for something outrageous to say about the foreign menace.

[Aaron]

I think people are missing the real threat: if Latinos are able to buy pizza with pesos, then the next thing you know, they will be able to buy a 12" sandwich on a cylidrical shapped roll otherwise known as a "hero" using their pesos.
From there it is clear: having the ability to buy a hero using pesos, they will pool their money and buy a super-hero.
Yes and it will be fully the equal of any of our American super heros such as batman, or even the flash....
And then their dream of a new Aztec empire comprising much of the southwest will be complete.

[anne]

Ah, the dread Aztec empire conspiracy. Hide the women; but, why are they always after the women? No matter, as long as they're cute Aztecs.

[Altoid]

The only thing missing here is the fabled root beer pizza! Combines all the basic food groups.

Somewhat more seriously, what gravels the Krikorians of this world, I think, is that venal, weak-kneed, borderline traitorous American businesses-- real ones like chain department stores, run by supposedly red-blooded American-Americans-- seek the custom of Spanish-speakers by printing things in Spanish.

This affronts real American-Americans like Krikorian because it forces them to read things they don't understand as they go about their red-blooded American-American business.

But Krikorian, being a red-blooded conservative American-American, can't accuse American businesses of wrong-doing, even though they clearly don't understand that they're not supposed to seek money or business from mere hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Instead, he has to displace his anger about seeing things he can't understand onto the people who do understand it. Instead of being angry at the businesses, he's angry at the people whose custom the businesses want; Krikorian-style free enterprise has no room for that because it's really subordinate to something else.

What he really should do is to organize a boycott by American-Americans of any businesses that post signs in Spanish, even-- especially-- if they try to cover their tracks by also posting signs in English. That'll teach those businesses that their real business is forcing people to assimilate for their own good and the good of civilization. Forget this profit stuff, that's for sissies.

[jeffreydj]

I'm with the threadsters who like the idea of chorizo and jalapeno on pizza. I'm hoping a Pizza Patrón opens near me soon.

[Ernie on Cannibal Island]

Damn. Jose's Cuban pizza joint on El Camino in Palo Alto! I have fond memories of that restaurant. I seldom ate the pizzas. Mostly went for the meal-sized empanadas -- bigger than any empanada I've ever seen anywhere else. Jose did Argentine-style pizzas, too. During the Falklands war I went in there one night and it was full of Argies celebrating. The Argie navy had just sunk some big-ass British warship. Being semi-Irish, I joined in and thought it was a great party.

PS: The wingnuts would probably have a cow if they knew there are quite a few stores out here in Hawaii that accept Japanese yen and Korean won. Pretty soon they'll be accepting yuan too, cuz the invasion of the Chinese Commie tourists has just begun.