This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
News Veganopolis Leaving Town: Blame Downtown Crime
Posted by Matt Davis on Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 5:41 PM
I've spent the last two hours at the closing party for Veganopolis on SW 4th. Owner George Black and her partner David Stowell have served thousands of customers since they first opened the store on January 24, 2005, but now plan to go back to Chicago to write a cookbook and start an international franchise operation.
BLACK: "We've had a great time..."
The mood was positive this afternoon, despite marking the closure of a business many Portlanders have enjoyed since it opened. Former loyal customers were allowed to make their own sandwiches, maybe take a free bag of kettle chips, meanwhile, former employees were taking some of the furniture home with them. I saw one guy walking out with a couch while I talked with Black, and someone else seemed to be making off with an old refrigerator. There was champagne. It felt like a party.
More seriously, however, the number one reason Black is giving for their departure? Downtown crime. "I don't expect the streets to be crime free," she says "but the number of crazed meth people shouting obscenities, getting violent, and problems we've had here in the store...I'm getting scared for my personal safety and we were just exhausted from trying to keep things safe."
The pair started business in Portland with a food cart, which they ran for 18 months before moving into the store on SW 4th. Since opening, they've suffered repeated robbery attempts from "wide eyed junkies," and even seen "dope dealers dividing their dope on the table right outside the restaurant," Black says.
There have also been some odd incidents of harassment, with a bag of salami being dumped outside Black's office on one occasion, and another man allegedly screaming sections of the Torah at Stowell, demanding that the restaurant become "kosher." The last straw was in March this year, when Stowell was assaulted on the street corner outside the restaurant, by a man who ended up smashing his head into a lamp post.
"He was beaten badly by a warrant-laden sex offender who didn't even know who he was," says Black, who ended up hiring a bouncer from the next door City Bar at a cost of $800 a month to sit in the restaurant and keep things safe.
"We practiced how to turn difficult people away," she says. "But if things turned violent, then he would step in."
The loss of Veganopolis will come as a major blow to downtown boosters. While crime is reportedly down in central precinct, Black wonders whether that might be because "it's so difficult to report it." She says she has been on the phone to a recorded message after dialing 911, while fighting a would-be-robber for the store's tips jar. Black has personally been assaulted at the restaurant, she says, being shoved to the ground during another, separate struggle for money from the cash register.
Black's attitude to running a vegan restaurant has never been militant. "I don't like this I'm a vegan bullshit, you're not," she says. "It's a party, and everyone's invited. That's always been my attitude."
The franchise operation, which should be under way in 2010, after the cookbook is published, will be $55,000 a pop, and there's already been interest from a well-known rock star in opening a couple of airport franchises, apparently.
Loyal customer Kimberley Haas, who works for an insurance company up the street, said she was sad to see the restaurant moving on. "They have great food, it's really tasty, and it's just too bad they've had these problems," she says. "It shouldn't reach the point where a business has to email its loyal customers giving them the lockdown procedure for the next time there's a robbery in the store."
The restaurant has sold 14,008 spelt chocolate chip cookies, 7970 veganopolis rubens, 5645 roasted eggplant salads, and 5952 democracy burgers since it opened. Tourists have come in, saying "you guys were the first place I wanted to visit," and rock stars including Chrissie Hynde, Smashing Pumpkins, and Joan Jett have all been customers.
"It's too bad they're leaving," says another loyal customer, Casey Martel, who runs the Portland Rosepedal Pedicab firm. "But they've really opened up the market for vegan food here in town."
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I'm all for good vegan food, but damn, you could taste the can. I hope their cookbook uses some fresh stuff.
Just went there for the first time a couple months ago, had the "Portland" cheesesteak. It was pretty average, but I could definitely see it as a haven lunch spot for vegans and anyone who wants to eat healthy. It was my first recommendation for vegan visitors in town.
"I don't expect the streets to be crime free," she says "but the number of crazed meth people shouting obscenities, getting violent, and problems we've had here in the store...I'm getting scared for my personal safety and we were just exhausted from trying to keep things safe."
Best of luck in Chicago... If anything personifies Portland's myopia, this is it. I'd love to see a follow up piece in a year.
Goodbye George! Now I no longer have any reason to go downtown to eat.
Hey - at least vegan criminals aren't being profiled for drug free zones.
I have a hard time believing that Portland's downtown crime is SO much worse than what I've seen in Chicago.
They are paranoid a-holes. I went there to eat after I had written a mostly favorable review (for the Mercury, read here: http://www.portlandmercury.com/pullout/whats-up-doc/Content?oid=39392)
for which I was treated to a (presumably vegan) tongue-lashing at the hands of both owners on the premesis after I paid nearly $10 for a fake bologna sandwich.
They commented about "what a small town" Portland was and how an objective critical review "would never happen in Chicago or SF." Fuck.
Good riddance burned out fake bologna mongers! We hardly knew ye--and what a relief! Have fun with the criminal contingency in Chicago!
I wish they had acknowledged that some of the people they were having difficulty with are suffering from mental illness and addictions, and leveraged their experience to advocate for treatment and services for those people in our community. Instead, all we get is a blanket statement blaming the "crazed meth people" and a lost opportunity.
dear opportunity.....please advocate for violent repeat sex-offenders high on street meth....and please continue doing so after they have tried to kill you....and I do blame the bastard
who tried to kill me...who is now out on the streets again probably looking for someone else to hurt or some child to molest....I hope he winds up in YOUR block and then you'll find out what happens when you try to get help. and for you calling us paranoid assholes go fuck yourself you have no idea how hard we worked and how many customers actually liked our food. yes this is me David Stowell former owner of Veganopolis. and while I'm at it fuck you to the Higher Taste in Portland who literally FORCED our sandwich line off the shelves of seven local stores two years ago. The reason so many people hated us here is because we were successful and did a good business serving cruelty free meals. So to those of you who hated us and put us down continually on blogs and to your friends fuck you all. None of you could
have survived two weeks of what we put up with for three years ten months downtown. You would have completely
crumbled.
The only good thing about Veganopolis was a very nice, very cute red head who worked the till (the last time I was in, a year or so ago). Food was overpriced and boring, for the most part; and this town has many more interesting and more affordable vegan options all over downtown. They did a good job of staying relatively free of PETA-style harassment of non-vegans, I'll give them that. But as a decade-plus vegan, this wasn't a place I could bring non-vegans to "prove" that vegan food was just as good as "normal" food. The meat analogue-centric fare won't be much missed in this small town, I don't think. Have fun in crime-free Chi, a town that certainly has no particular relationship to the history of "animal cruelty" in America.
oh man, i will miss the reuben. good luck to both of you in chicago and elsewhere.
hey ian, at least chi town tried to ban froie gras...what can we say for our city? (ahhem nutshell)
Thanks for the lol - can't imagine anybody would ever flee Portland for Chicago due to concerns about crime, but there you go. Best of luck in that crime-free midwestern utopia...
Maybe it's just my skewed view from having grown up in Newark, NJ - but I must say that I've lived and visited many, many cities in my days; and there's a reason I've stayed here. Portland is by far the cleanest and 'safest' (however you'd define that...) large city I've ever lived in or visited; and for that matter let me ask again, just to get this straight - they're leaving Portland for Chicago over concerns about crime?
What happens when Chicago turns out to not be the city of hand-holding, flower-giving and kumba-ya singing? What's next? Sarajevo? Grozny? Houston?
Wow never realized how deep the hate was here. As far as Veganopolis being too expensive I went to Papa G's the other day and their buffet was priced at $9.75 per pound. Veganopolis was a total bargain at $7.95 per pound. But that bargain won't ever be available again. And I'm from Chicago, have been beaten up by cops in Chicago, but at least there when some shit is going down and someone is getting hurt something is done about it. Portland is in denial about how bad the meth/crack/heroin thing is getting here.
Walk down Fourth Avenue at midnight on Friday or Saturday night and you will get an education.
Well initially I loved Veganopolis. Just LOVED it. But I began to notice George and David had a peculiar, hair trigger temper. After eating there daily for a couple of years (they were always friendly to me) I witnessed them humilate an overweight woman who asked George where her salad was (we both had been waiting over 20 mintues). Not only did they collectively shout passive aggressive insults at this poor woman, George instructed the cashier to refund her money and ask her never to return. Then David gave me my salad and the love was done. I could never eat there again. Joey at Sak's had related some stories about their strange and off the handle tempers (but I chose not to believe because I loved the food so much). They had accused him of stealing (and when proved innocent they never offered an apology, but continued to be hostile towards him). I had had conversations with George about the Crime and her points were entirely valid, Portland can and should do more to facilitate safety for small business owners along 3rd and 4th. Convicted, violent sex offenders should not be roaming the streets period. At the same time I carefully observed two people with volumes of negative energy, and a strange collective mental illness. Bi-polar perhaps. They could be sweet one minute and yelling the F word the next. Chicago will be no different. They are just taking themselves there and will perceive themselves as innocent victims all over again. I wish them peace and serenity. And I hope they can see their part and move forward in a positive. I hope their franchise works out.
Vegan Lover Downtown PDX
Having moved to PDX from Chicago, I can say that in four years living in downtown Chicago, I never once saw a meth head fight, saw a needle on the street, had a person shout at me on the train platform or saw a store owner assaulted by a meth head.
In Portland, I've had the first three happen on a regular basis over the course of four years and apparently the fourth isn't all that uncommon either. Petty crime and drug crime are tolerated in PDX far more than any other city I've lived in, including NY, Boston and Chicago.
Unfortunately the owners of Veganopolis create most their own problems. They have a reputation for being very weird mean people who harass their own customers all the time. But NOBODY deserves to be assaulted or robbed of course. Sex offenders should never be let out of jail, they are sick and un-curable. I feel very bad that those things happened to them. And it is sad to see a any vegan restaurant close. But honestly I think this has more to do with their own customers hating them and all the bad reviews. Portland is a very safe city, much safer than Chicago of all places. I think it's just an excuse.
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