LA’s John Terzian (H. Wood Group) and Craig Susser (Craig’s Vegan, Peppermint) detail how pandemic restrictions—like Newsom’s indefinite shutdowns of outdoor dining—cost restaurants $60K patios overnight while indoor venues like distribution centers stayed open, despite no evidence of higher transmission. With 70–75% of LA restaurants closed, they cite rising cases and Dutch study findings that lockdowns force unsafe gatherings, yet politicians like Garcetti and Kuhl (who dined at closed spots) ignored data-driven solutions like rapid testing. Terzian’s COVID testing company was blocked by the county, while Susser pivoted to virtual premieres and vegan sales, but warns legendary venues face permanent loss—hurting young comedians and workers deprived of social growth. The episode reveals systemic hypocrisy: officials prioritize political motives over public health and economic survival, leaving small businesses as collateral damage with no accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
It's one of the best restaurants in LA. Very highly respected place.
And we're here to talk about what the fuck is happening to the restaurant industry during this pandemic and how crazy it is.
You know, I've talked about this before, but having you guys on so you could say firsthand what it's been like to you and what this experience has been like...
How poorly it's been handled.
I want to give people a sense of this at home, what it's like from two men who have made their living in the hospitality and restaurant industry.
We're the ones that are used to handling the health department.
We're the ones that are used to, you know, doing everything that, you know, from a safety standpoint, right?
And now we're the ones that are being crushed or being picked on, so to speak, by – that's the way a lot of people in the industry feel because we're the ones that are being shut down in a city where a lot of other businesses are remaining open like malls, distribution centers, markets. by – that's the way a lot of people in Stores.
I mean, you can go to a mall and go shopping.
You can go on an airplane from LA to, you know, New York, take your mask off and eat.
And that's okay.
But you can't eat outdoors in a restaurant in LA that's following social distancing, all the health guidelines.
I mean, we know our business.
And so, it's been really hard since, what, it started March 15th.
We shut down.
We were then told to put glass in between our boots, so we did that.
A perfect example is they're doing rapid testing in certain areas.
So instead of losing all of this revenue, why don't they invest in smart technology That has rapid testing that allows people to go to a restaurant, get a rapid test, you're positive, you're negative, and then you get to go into the restaurant.
This is some sort of dictatorship happening that to me is a bigger picture.
If other governments, if other states, counties, cities see that they can just shut an industry down so easily, get a name for themselves, get their name out there… What's stopping everyone else from doing this?
I email this mayor, puts me on with some random person from the office, then 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 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.?
That's the time when people really start getting inebriated.
And I was like, but you realize you could at least say, hey, close up, let people make sure they get their check paid, and be out the door by midnight, 11.30, whatever it might be, rather than everyone out the door by 11.30.
10pm.
He said, well, you could seat someone at 9 and then kick them out at 9.50.
And I was like, do you have any understanding of the restaurant industry at all?
And I think that is where it's some sort of political gain situation in his mind.
And it's control.
By the way, I just found out recently, and I've been in this business for 15 years, I had no idea that we're considered independent restaurants.
Not franchise.
We had no representation.
We had no lobbyists.
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.
Well, 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, you know, 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 a rule that benefited not just my restaurant, but all restaurants.
By the way, this is the first time in nine months I've left L.A. And the only reason, the way I got down here through JetEdge, by the way, thank you for a great ride.
But I'm flying back United tonight, and it's the first time in nine months that I've left L.A. And I'm not a science denier and I take precautions and I'm around a lot of people.
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.
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 that employs 90 to 100 people and keep a business afloat.
We're not thriving.
Outdoor dining 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 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're 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 shut down an entire industry because you feel like you have a couple of bad actors makes no sense.
None of this makes any sense, and this is the first time we were talking about this before the show, that people are realizing how important it is who the mayor is, how important it is who the governor is.
And the fact that the mayor is actively targeting you guys, because you've spoken out against these fucking ridiculous draconian restrictions that don't have any...
There's no logic behind them.
There's no studies.
Obviously, when you take them to court and they show that the studies are about indoor dining and not outdoor, they're lying.
And they were openly lying about three weeks because when I would call the county, the inside that had the county, they were like, it's a minimum six weeks.
I'm like, well, why are you guys saying three weeks publicly?
We don't want pandemonium to happen.
I'm like, you realize this is the problem.
There's zero trust.
And when they said it, three weeks would have come right before holidays.
Their whole point was to get past January 1st.
Now I'm hearing they want to go until February or March and just keep it fully shut.
Because if nothing's changed in terms of the virus's impact and the ICU numbers, but yet you decide to open up restaurants again, that means you're admitting that you made a mistake.
Yeah, there's almost 400,000 cases in the last seven days in LA. Well, I saw a chart and it said that the highest number they could attribute to restaurants at all was 3%.
So if you're not going to a restaurant that's licensed and says, okay, you can have six people or less and there's eight feet apart and all of the rules that we abide by.
If you're not going to go to a restaurant, well, then you're going to have people over in your house.
I've taken friends to dinner that have not left L.A., and they've come here to visit, and I've taken them to dinner, and they have this look on their face like they're like, someone need to come take us away?
They're cutting their food up like they're Willy Wonka.
That don't make any sense, but they feel like they're right because it's written somewhere.
And this is the problem with human beings when it comes to power.
Power is very intoxicating for people.
And when you have some sort of a situation like this, where you have this pandemic, where you can semi-justify the wielding of this power, people will do it with impunity, and that's what you're seeing right now.
They keep talking about it is the fact that the reason they shut down all of the restaurants was because they couldn't...
They inspect 20,000 to 30,000 restaurants on a regular basis because they just didn't have the manpower, yet they're at his place five, six nights in a row.
We're two people, and we represent, like I said, we're on a chain of about 40 people, and we all feel the same way.
Nobody's a denier.
Nobody's saying there isn't an issue.
And we're all rule followers.
We're all willing to do whatever we can do to make sure that people feel safe, that the county's involved, the city's involved, and the state's involved.
And yet, there is no answer we can give them to where they say, okay, that makes sense.
So, and here's the thing, besides the employees that are just like heartbroken and they don't know where to go or what to do, a lot of us are feeling separated.
We're all scared.
It's a really weird time.
The one thing we do in common is eat and we normally do it in a social environment, whether it's small, four or five or six, or it's bigger.
It's the one thing that kind of makes us feel normal.
And what I think we're realizing through this whole time is that we are social animals.
We spend so much time on our technology and our devices that kind of pull us apart.
This time over the last eight or nine months has realized how much we actually need each other and how much we get from each other.
What's it like being in a comedy club with 400 people and hearing people laugh and doing it together?
That's a big difference than sitting in your home by yourself.
And being isolated and worried about a disease and just freaking out about your kids and your family and should I do this or should I do that or how am I going to pay for this or how am I going to keep my employees or how am I going to keep my business afloat?
The stress is almost worse than the actual disease.
But the unwillingness to course correct is one of the most disturbing things about this.
Like the understanding that this is deteriorating these businesses, destroying small businesses, destroying restaurants, destroying bars, destroying comedy clubs, and no willingness to course correct or make some sort of, like find some sort of middle ground.
I think back when this all started, when everyone thought this was like the Black Plague and this was the worst thing ever, everyone understood shutting everything down.
I think now that we've seen what's going on, I don't see why they can't correct it and say, you know, there's a safe way to do this.
Well, not only that, the disease itself, because it's not what we thought it was going to be, particularly when you look at the deaths now, the deaths are way down low.
The people that I know that have gotten it, including Jamie, Jamie kicked it in a day.
This is not something to destroy our entire economy for.
Well, I think what you're saying is very important that you guys are independent and you don't have lobbyists because it seems to show, it highlights the real inefficiencies of this system or the real flaws of this system.
Listen, I don't fault him for eating dinner in a restaurant.
Neither do I. I fault him for telling everybody else to not eat dinner and to be safe and to not do anything and to put your fucking mask on in between bites of food.
I never gave any consideration at all as to who the mayor was.
I never thought about it.
I'm just like, oh, the mayor?
What's his name?
Garcetti?
Going to the store.
See ya.
Going to this restaurant.
Going to Felix.
I've never thought it's so important that you have to scrutinize every potential decision they could make because if something goes wrong, if the shit hits the fan like it has, those people, these fucking incompetent morons that don't have...
There's no consequence whatsoever for their poor decision making.
The only consequence is they might get voted out in a few years.
Yeah, and I really do think it's a small amount of people that are responsible for this.
I really do.
I think it's a small amount of people that have made poor decisions from the beginning, but decisions in the beginning that probably they thought were good decisions that we all would have agreed to because we did think this was going to be the plague.
We thought this was going to wipe out a giant percentage of our population.
But there's been no course correction, and these people have dug their heels in, and now they're exercising this newfound power that never existed before.
The mayor's never had the ability to shut down entire industries.
The governor's never had the kind of ability that they have now to decide who goes to school and who doesn't.
And then they said, you know, the big thing John and I hear, and yes, it does help a little bit, but at least we left you with, you know, food to go and delivery.
So if you look at it, you've got 30% food cost, you've got 30% labor cost, you've got 20% for rent, utilities, incidentals, insurance, all that other stuff.
So at best, with no mistakes, And everybody doing everything perfect.
And the refrigerator not breaking or the plumbing not breaking or any of that stuff not happening.
Yeah, we need more like you to raise – I think – I don't live there anymore.
It's easy.
I know, but – yeah, but you have a – we need people to actually be outspoken about it because the only way to do it is they have a fear of bad press, of bad – Even word of mouth, essentially.
From the beginning, once they realized what the actual disease was, that it wasn't as dangerous as we thought it was, still dangerous, still we need to be precautious, but they should have made an adjustment and protected the vulnerable people.
They should have focused on isolating the vulnerable people, protecting the vulnerable people, shielding them from contact and from infection.
There has to be a consideration for the negative impact on these businesses and the health consequences of people being out of work and the mental health consequences, the drug addiction, all the things that go along with it.
You can't just look at the impact of the numbers.
You have to look at the impact on the community.
You have to look at the impact of what's the long-term health of the culture.
You're destroying an immense part of the city.
Going out to dinner is a huge part of people's social life.
They're like, what do you want to do?
Let's go to a restaurant.
People love it.
It's probably one of the number one things that people like to do.
3,000 miles away and 40 years later, my dad was dating her, got called up in Korea, figured he was a paratrooper, he figured he wasn't making it back, did seven jumps in Korea.
What?
And comes back, meets my mom, three weeks, gets married, never sees Jackie again.
So we started doing some direct deliveries to not only cut out Postmates and DoorDash and the percentage, but also people actually enjoy seeing our servers deliver their food.
It's a moment in their day that's like something normal.
It's the food that they like and it's a person that they know.
So they've been leaving some extra big gratuities to take care of the staff during this time because it's Christmas and everybody knows that it's hurting.
So restaurants have a really big impact on people's lives.
And I think that that's hit home more for me than anything.
And then people are always asking, I think they're asking John as well, it's like, what can we do to help you while things are working?
And I'm like, order food, order wine, order t-shirts, order Craig's vegan ice cream, order any of the products that people have and keep the restaurants alive until we can get past this moment and get back to operating because...
As far as I know, I think 70 to 75% of all the restaurants have already closed.
I'd be the first one to say, look, of all the draconian measures that California has taken, If it had knocked down the number of infections, I'd have been, okay, I'm wrong.
So to get together, to have a good time, somebody may sit down, and across the way is somebody that they know, and it's a party, and it's fun, and it's personal, and it's all that good stuff.
Okay, so in order to keep the restaurant open and to keep our employees employed and not furlough them and not let them go, we got some PPP money back in May that lasted six weeks.
80% of it was for payroll labor.
I've reinvested almost what I invested in the first place, 10 years ago, to keep the restaurant open during this time.
It's a tremendous amount of capital just to kind of get started.
And then it's not just the capital to get started.
It's you need a little bit of reserve in the bank because it's not linear, right?
You open, you get busy, you have slow nights, busy nights.
Things aren't happening as efficiently as they should be.
But once you get up to 8, 9, 10 months, the restaurants are efficient, you're rolling, there's not a lot of waste, people are doing things well, and your costs come down, your profits go up, and then all of a sudden you've got a business.
Right?
So there's going to be a lot of people that are going to gravitate towards their favorite places because it's like it feels like a hug and that's like, oh, thank God I get to go to this place or that place.
Are they going to keep coming up with, oh, we got a new strain, we got a new COVID? Well, there's a new strain right now in the UK. You've seen that, right?
The thing is, I think, like, we just touched on it a couple minutes ago, we've taken away that moment of getting together with your friends and having a couple of laughs and forgetting about the world's problems for just a minute, you know?
That social interaction where you have your favorite meal in your favorite place, and even if it's socially distant, and even if it's, you know, all that stuff is all on the table.
They've taken away all of those moments, and I don't know what it's doing to our, like, psychology.
I don't know what it's doing to, like, our brains, because we're not allowed to see our friends.
And then what I've had to come in, and I think, John, I think we've touched on it, is There are some people that are like, oh, I'm coming tomorrow.
We're great.
And I'm like, okay, cool.
And then there's other people I haven't seen for like seven or eight months.
And I just check in on text and I'm like, I don't make a judgment.
That's what you feel comfortable doing.
And I've had to become okay with it.
In the beginning, I started to take it a little personal.
But now I'm kind of like, okay, that's your level of comfort.
Okay, cool.
Like, I get it.
But yeah, it's dividing a lot of people.
There's some people that we were supposed to see over Christmas that I'm not sure they're going to want our family over because I'm down here doing this show.
What can be done that's not being done in terms of the people listening to this?
I mean, is there anything they could do?
Could they reach out to anybody?
Is there a way that we can organize where there can be some sort of impact from the people that are hearing this right now and listening to this and furious?
I think it's really important to contact, you know, we're so used to paying attention to the national politics that I think the local politics have become really, really important.
So reaching out to the L.A. County commissioners.
Right now, if I literally canvassed 100 people I guarantee you they probably wouldn't even be able to name her one.
And those inboxes need to be filled with their emails.
I also think you've got to give people the ability to make their own decisions.
This has never been the role of the politician to tell people how and how not to take risks and what to do with their lives.
Especially sensible, well-thought-out risks that have been mitigated as much as possible, like social distancing, like making sure that you follow all the health protocols, making sure that restaurants are compliant.
There has never been, and I've been in the business 30 years, I've had my own place, January 12th will be 10 years, okay?
There's never been an instance where a health inspector came in and said, clean that, I don't like the way that looks, reorganize that, and it hasn't been done in an instant.
We're rule followers.
That's how we stay in business.
The last thing in the world I want to hear is that somebody got sick from eating at one of my places.
So we're instinctively instilled with all of that.
Safety is our first protocol.
So driving people away from those institutions is insanity.
I think they're going to keep doing these rolling shutdowns, sadly.
And I think it's going to take a lot of uproar.
I think it's going to take more of us banding together and actually putting a stop to how it's being handled.
I think that's the only shot we have.
It's not as optimistic as I would like, but I think if and when it ever opens again, ideally you get safe outdoor dining opening in January, even February.
And I think proving it to everyone that it's going safely I think is all we're really asking for now and then eventually open the rest as more vaccines happen and more people kind of change their mindset toward it is what my optimistic goal would be.
I also think California needs government that's much more friendly to business and understands how important it is to have thriving businesses, to have all the other things you want.
All these other things you want are dependent upon the tax revenue.
The tax revenue is dependent upon successful businesses.
If you have practices and you have decisions that you're making that are unfriendly to businesses, you're going to lose all that money.
And then what are you going to do?
Are you going to tax the rich?
Because this is how they're looking at it.
This new wealth tax that they're proposing.
So then you're going to have people just move.
So then they're trying to say, well, if you move, we're going to tax you for the next 10 years.
It's one of those things where it's like, you were telling me about your friend out there who talked to Newsom and was saying, I'm moving because of you.
I kind of feel like we're fighting for our lives here in a lot of ways because I feel like California is handling it so poorly that if something doesn't happen, I don't know how this industry is reopening the way it should.
And also, when we got shut down right at Thanksgiving, You know, a lot of people had to lay off a lot of people in our industry.
And there was no, like, number for unemployment or no rapid way for people to get taken care of.
So you've basically, a lot of restaurants laid off all of their employees the day before Thanksgiving, going into the holidays.
So there's no, like, thought process of, like, well, how is that going to affect the 400 or 500,000 people that are employed by the restaurant business?
You know, I actually think that probably outdoor dining will resume at some point, three to four weeks after New Year's Eve, because that's considered another big super spreader event, right?
So it'll take about three weeks for that to crest, I think.
And then I think outdoor dining resumes in some aspect.
I always said I'll never open up another Craigs, but that thought pattern has changed.
So we're looking at other cities to maybe open in and diversify a little bit more.
And then Craig's Vegan is, you know, it's weird.
Even meat eaters, you know, this new term called flexitarians, where, you know, people are meat eaters, they eat eggs and milk and all kinds of stuff, but if they're looking for a way to cut back, they usually look for a non-dairy.
Dessert or something like that.
So that industry is exploding.
So the ice cream is doing really, really well.
Sales are great.
And then we're opening up a scoop shop at the Resorts World in Vegas.
It'll be kind of like the first vegan ice cream scoop shop, which will be really, really cool.
These are people and they're scared of getting the disease as well.
And they're trying to adhere to all the new protocols of the health department.
Masks, gloves, social distancing.
While they're, you know, prepping our, you know, you want your salad with no garbanzo meats and tomatoes and you want it chopped and you want your fish grilled.
You know, all those special orders are all being taken care of.
So they've done an amazing job.
And then we just noticed that back seven or eight years ago, we put some vegan items on the menu because some of our customers were demanding it.
And more and more people started to ask for it.
And so what we were realizing was if you've got a group of six people and one is a vegan, they're the one that makes the decision where you eat.
So we were like, well, we want a diverse clientele and we want them, let's not give them an excuse to go somewhere else.
So we started making vegan entrees.
That turned into a whole vegan section of the menu, which makes up about 18% of our sales.
So it's not insignificant.
And then we wanted it to be a complete meal, so we came up with a vegan ice cream.
And Chef just kind of buried his head in the books and figured out how to make ice cream.
And ice cream is essentially fat and sugar.
And it's the combination, and that's what makes it so delicious.
And we've reduced the amount of sugar, so it's rich, it's creamy, and it gives you that, like, satisfaction, but it's got no animal products, and it's a third less sugar.
So, you know, we're the base of the shake at certain, you know, hamburger, Fatburger's been great.
We're rolling into Johnny Rockets.
We're at some supermarkets, Gelson's, Air One, you know, so it's actually- Yeah, so if you go to Fatburger and you order a vegan shake, I mean, it's unbelievable.
But I think that they gave up, you know, so our product has great flavor and great texture.
And so we just, you know, Chef kept playing with the values and we kept just tasting and tasting and tasting it.
The great thing is you go on craigsvegan.com and people are shipping it all across the country and we deliver it on dry ice.
So good vegan products are kind of I would say an LA, New York kind of thing.
I think they've started the trend and so a lot of the places in the middle of the country haven't been able to kind of get their hands on really good products.
Whole Foods obviously has a really good cross-section now.
Trader Joe's has a really good cross-section now.
So we're just kind of rolling out nationally.
So we've used this time during COVID to kind of pivot into, okay, well, I guess we'll do food to go.
Okay, well, I guess we'll do outdoor dining.
Okay, well, I guess we'll put our foot on the accelerator on craigsvegan.com and let's just see where we can go.
Yeah.
It's made me more resourceful.
It's made the crew more resourceful.
I mean, like I said, what the kitchen's been through and what chef's been through, it's just been incredible.
And I give a big shout out to all the restaurant workers.
That especially in March, April, and May, that we're coming to work every day when we didn't know as much as we did about the disease.
And people were really worried about dying.
And we were hearing people on ventilators.
And we didn't have ways to mitigate the disease.
And they were still showing up for work.
And these are the very people that are being hurt by the shutdown now.
Like, these are the people that risked their lives to go to work to make sure that people were being fed and the way you're paying them back is by shutting down their industry.
And we have a lot of outlets and I've never, you know, and you're right.
So what happens when you reach out?
You know, they go down the road and then they all don't want to do it.
And they come back and they say, look, we just can't, whatever, you know, editor or media person or whatever, it's like the superior doesn't want the backlash, you know, whatever it might be.
I think there's a lot of public out there, and I don't blame them, that are very scared of the virus, and that's fine, but they're not looking at it in the way of, there's this balance.
And so, there's that, and then, yeah, they don't want the backlash from the officials.
But the other point, too, and I know John has done this as well, is like I said, it's not just about us.
It's about the mom and pops.
It's about the employees.
But we're also donating food to Cedar Sinai to help the frontline workers.
We've donated food and ice cream to Children's Hospital.
We've donated...
Ice cream to children mending hearts to charities.
We're actually in the middle of this pandemic, also a resource for these people and paying it forward.
We're not blind to the sacrifices that people are going through.
It's not just about our industry.
We're all in this together.
So Cedars called on Saturday night and they had a flex and they had a lot of patience and they had more employees there than they thought they were going to have.
But what dawned on me is the trickle down on this closure.
You know, I was in an Uber in LA and the guy was so down.
I was like, you're doing okay?
And he's like, well, you know, he didn't know who I was, didn't know anything.
And he's like, yeah, the restaurants, he's like, I can't, I gotta leave town.
They're all closed, so I have no business.
I realize how many people it affects.
Janitor services.
Obviously everyone knows chefs, waiters, bartenders, all that, but there's so much that it extends to that this industry is keeping people going business-wise.
The complete disregard for all of that from officials is what's driving me insane and why I'm so angry.
But the interesting thing is, so it's also thinking outside the box, not just for us in the restaurant business, but for everybody.
So Netflix is a really good client, and they're great.
So they've got a bunch of premieres, they've got a bunch of movies that they want to...
So now what we've been doing is virtual premieres.
So we've been creating, with Chef and our events team, these boxes that get delivered to people's homes, and it may be 100 people On the same day, and so they get to eat the same box of food from Netflix while they're watching the premiere of a show.
And so that whole end of our business has kind of increased.
It doesn't make up for what we do on a regular basis, but okay, that's a new kind of a thing, and it's a new way of doing premieres.
And I wonder if the old style of premieres are going to come back.
Because the celebrities that are in the show, they just get to Zoom regularly.
In, right?
Promote whatever they're promoting.
Everybody gets to eat the same food from their favorite restaurant.
But what's interesting is Netflix, Warner Brothers, Universal, they've all decided to kind of figure out a way to promote their products in a different way and also help support the restaurants that they like doing business with.
To just have a mic in front of his face and to be out and about.
And then, you know, we were talking to our good friend Jeff and Jeff's been on the road for 30 years, you know, performing in all over the country.
And he said to me, there's a part of me that's, it's kind of nice not to be, you know, in a suitcase on the road all the time and taking this little bit of a break.
But he goes, I'm not one of those comics that needs a microphone in his face to be happy all the time.
But I'm jonesing for it a little bit.
So it's interesting how everybody's kind of taking it differently.
And he goes on stage and kills, and then afterwards he grabs you by the shoulder and he goes, whatever we have to do, we're doing this again.
He got his fix again, and he's like, you realize people love having a good time, whether it's having a good time at a restaurant, having a good time at a comedy club.
You're taking away a big chunk of their life enjoyment.
It takes away from their quality of life.
It takes away from their socializing.
It takes away from their mental health.
It's a big impact, and it's not something you can just diminish without any consideration.
And I miss those interactions, like, when they come in the restaurant, and, I mean, to just get told off by one of those guys, or just have, like, a sharp little, like, right between the eyes.
Well, they've also reinforced this idea in a lot of people's heads that have leaned right, that are right-leaning people, that the Democrats are not business-friendly, that Democrats are not going to support them.
It's pretty clear.
Yeah, Huntington, Lagoon, those are all red areas.
We were talking about before that if the paychecks of the politicians was directly dependent upon the income That was coming in from the businesses being open.
If they really had an incentive to keep these businesses thriving because they actually benefit from it financially.
I'm hoping, and I'll go back on the positive side, and I'm just hoping that they see that this spike wasn't a result of dining and wasn't a result of some of the businesses that they've shut down, that maybe after the first of the year they start loosening some of these things and start really kind of thinking outside the box.
Everybody at that city, from the plan checkers, building and safety, fire department, everybody went out of their way To make sure that we got our patios open as quickly as possible.
Well, I think we really do need something to change in terms of the way people look at government because this has opened up a lot of people's eyes that it is important.
Well, let's hope that the politicians that are making these piss-poor decisions, that the new ones are going to learn.
I mean, that's what I'm hoping, that we're going to learn from this pandemic, and if something else does happen down the line, we'll be much better prepared for it.
I'm really worried about places like California that have gone so far down the wrong path that I just don't see how it corrects course and comes back to some sort of a rational...
By the way, I love LA. I love living in LA. I think it's a great city and it's diverse and it's fun and it's energetic and it's got comedians and actors.
It did.
People always say to me, how do you get the crowd you get?
And I go, it's just a part of the community.
It's just an interesting community.
So it's a blast.
And by the way, everybody that goes in there that's famous, we met, they weren't famous.
You're not born famous.
You're not born being top of the heap comedian.
You busted your ass and you work.
So I've been doing this for 30 years.
We've known each other forever.
I was a 22-year-old idiot running around town, not sure what I was going to do.
I didn't know I was going to have a restaurant called Craig's.
But we've all kind of come up together and we all support each other.
Well, that's one of the beautiful things about restaurants like yours or like Dan Tana's where you go there and it's this crazy melting pot of generations.
And then I ended up leaving and opening up my own place.
So everybody starts somewhere.
But comedy stores, restaurants, little venues like the Troubadour, those are all the places that people get to learn their trades, right?
When I started out as a waiter, I didn't know shit.
But they molded me and I learned, right?
So where's all that happening right now?
All of those young people that are trying to learn comedy, trying to be an actor, trying to be whatever it is that they're trying to do, none of that's happening right now.
Listen, I hope we've made some sort of an impact with this conversation.
I hope people are listening and I hope that it has some sort of an effect and I hope they do put pressure on these bureaucrats.
I hope they let these people know what you're doing as a real consequence, not just to the businesses and the community, but people are going to remember what you've done.
Yeah, I mean, I just hope we all get through this, and I hope at some point down the line, this is a great story that we tell a lot of people in the past, and we sound like these old bastards that keep repeating the same old story about, remember the time of the pandemic?