Subject: Recessions and Depressions

• The Morning Brew: Monday, 3.31

  March 31, 2008

• And the Sign Said: Scary Masked People, Need Not Apply

  October 29, 2008

• The Morning Brew: Friday, 1.2

  In today's news: guilty pleas in China's melamine scandal, a food crisis in the Gaza Strip and wine sales in the recession.

  January 2, 2009

• Become a Writer for Gut Check!

  NOTE: This is a sticky post. The latest Gut Check item follows.Recession? What recession? That's right: Gut Check is hiring! Specifically, we're seeking freelance writers who can offer unique and interesting takes on the St. Louis food and drink scene.What, exactly, do we want from you? You tell us! Maybe you're a server itching to show what the industry is like from your perspective. Maybe you're a culinary student wanting to describe what your program is like. Or maybe you're a wine geek who

  January 13, 2009

• Minneapolis Hip-Hop From Prof and Rahzwell, Kanser and St. Paul Slim at Atomic Cowboy, Thursday, June 4

  Hip-hop rules the night every Thursday at Atomic Cowboy, and this week's show is no exception: Minneapolis invades the Lou in the form of Prof and Rahzwell, Kanser and St. Paul Slim. Prof and Rahzwell are touring behind a free album called Recession Music, which they're releasing for free via Stophouse Records. Huzzah! Go check it out tomorrow night. Doors are at 10 p.m., show at midnight, and the admission price is just $2. The show is at the Fox Hole, Atomic Cowboy's new venue (next door to th

  June 3, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Friday, 6.5

  Two small farms sign up for a program to increase wages for Florida's tomato pickers. (AP)No second helping of prison loaf? The recession has states cutting back on inmates' food. (AP)Various celebrities of varying name-recognition urge famous restaurant Nobu to get bluefin tuna off the menu. (New York Post)

  June 5, 2009

• Business is Cooking at Local Crematories. Thank the Recession

  Flickr Urn-ing your business.If things keep going the way the are, gravediggers will have to find something else to do with their shovels. As the recession deepens, families in increasing numbers, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, are taking their dead to crematoriums -- just another way of cutting back amid the gathering economic gloom."Why just today, I had a family call me from a funeral home. They told me they didn't have the money for a burial and as

  March 3, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Tuesday, 4.7

  Georgia rallies around its beloved peanut, salmonella outbreak be damned. (New York Times)The stark realities facing chain restaurants during the recession. (New York Times)From the You Can't Make This Stuff Up Dept.: North Korea accuses South Korea of food poisoning its soccer team prior to a World Cup qualifier. (AP)

  April 7, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Tuesday, 6.2

  Do fish feel pain? An angler considers the question. (Slate)A fast-food chain as a sign of national security in the Philippines. (Washington Post)Screw the recession: It's a $4,000 (roughly) curry! (Daily Mail)

  June 2, 2009

• Fish Out of (Frozen) Water: Renée Zellweger as the anti-Norma Rae

  January 28, 2009

• Hard Times: When the going gets tough, some St. Louisans head for pawn shops

  October 29, 2008

• Malcolm blows his stimulus check on fast food

  May 21, 2008

• Bead Me Up, Scotty

  January 30, 2008

• Defiance, Ohio

  February 28, 2007

• Bucking the Odds

  Seabiscuit is a different breed of summer "ride" movie

  July 23, 2003

• Bill Maher: Was Also Tired of Making Fun of Bush; Enjoys a New World to Ridicule

  Depending on your own political bent, Emmy-nominated satirist Bill Maher is either a personality you love to hate, or a personality you hate to love. From Politically Incorrect to Real Time and religion to legalizing drugs he's never shied away from speaking his mind, whether in front of television cameras or atop a stand-up stage. Before he performs Thursday at the Fabulous Fox Theatre, Maher talked with the Daily RFT.How are things generally going at Real Time? Everything chugging along merril

  April 16, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Thursday, 5.7

  The FDA isn't keeping up with its audit of state-level food-safety inspections. (USA Today)KFC wasn't prepared for the onslaught of customers with coupons from Oprah for free grilled chicken -- but there were no "riots." (AP)ABC News claims to have identified our favorite "recession foods."

  May 7, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Wednesday, 6.17

  New FDA head Margaret Hamburg meets the press for the first time since being confirmed. (New York Times)A new U.N. report finds that crop prices have fallen with the global recession -- but should still rise over the next decade. (New York Times)Beginning in 2011, any food that uses the cochineal bug for red coloring will have to be labeled as doing so. (Seattle Times)

  June 17, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Monday, 6.22

  The mysterious outbreak of E. coli in Nestlé Toll House cookies. (Washington Post)The International Whaling Commission meets amidst concerns of increased trade in whale meat. (AFP)Recession be damned: It's time for the Bordeaux wine fair. (AFP)

  June 22, 2009

• St. Louis Consulting Firm Declares Recession Over! Or Does It???

  flickr.com/photos/carantiYou may have noticed the article Slate ran yesterday afternoon entitled "The recession is over! (Technically.)" You may have ignored the parenthetical and burst into a joyous rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again". Or you may have become suspicious of the term "technical," guessing that a "technical" end to the recession will not necessarily mean more money in your own pocket.The bearer of these glad tidings, it turns out, is none other than Macroeconomics Advisers, LL

  July 15, 2009

• The Morning Brew: Friday, 7.17

  Kirkwood residents will vote this November on a proposed smoking ban. (Post-Dispatch)The recession and federal food-safety legislation have the organic-food industry worried. (Reuters)From Australia, via the Baltimore Sun, comes word of a my kind of cat, camped out in a beer fridge. (The Standard)

  July 17, 2009

• FoodWire: Wm. Shakespeare's Gastropub Closed

  ​Just received a note from restaurateur Eddie Neill informing me that Wm. Shakespeare's Gastropub (601 North Grand Boulevard) has closed. It had been operating on greatly reduced "summer hours." Wm. Shakespeare's opened only last fall in the teeth of the economic downturn, and despite generally positive reviews (including from yours truly) couldn't overcome the recession and the curse of Grand Center.

  August 17, 2009

• That Little Light At the End of the Recession Tunnel is Actually Five Years Away

  flickr.com/photos/mickdansforth​Last month, Macroeconomics Advisers, LLC, a Clayton-based economic consulting firm predicted that the recession should be ending just about now, with a significant caveat: We won't actually start to feel any relief until jobs start coming back.Economist Ben Herzon told the Daily RFT he expected the job market to start expanding again sometime next year.But now the gloom-and-doom prophets at IHS Global Insight, an economic and financial forecaster, have released

  August 25, 2009

• RFT readers show no mercy for weak-kneed liberals, Gary Kaplan or Milton "Skip" Ohlsen

  August 26, 2009

• What to Expect When You're Expecting Economic Recovery

  Dorothea Lange, courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum​In an interesting piece in the October Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz surveys a collection of books about daily life during the Great Depression in an attempt to glean some lessons from the past about what we can expect in the near future as the nation lurches toward economic recovery.The good news, Schwarz discovers, is that the Great Depression was not, in reality, as terrible as the mythology that surrounds it

  September 15, 2009