Bacon restaurant closes

Bacon restaurant closes, San Francisco is a pretty tolerant city, but it turns out that the smell of frying pig fat was too much for the olfactory senses of some residents.
Bacon Bacon – a popular restaurant in San Francisco's Upper Haight neighborhood known for items like chocolate-dipped bacon and bacon jam – was forced to shut down Friday after neighbors' complaints about "porcine aroma and grease disposal" held up approval for its permits from the city's planning and health departments, city officials said.

Richard Lee, director of environmental health regulatory programs for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said that Bacon Bacon had applied for a health permit back in December 2011, but has yet to get approval from the planning department.
The delay, according to Lee, is due to a neighborhood group that filed a discretionary review request with the planning department because of the bacon odor and other issues, which won't be addressed until there's a public hearing. "And that's still a few months away," Lee said.
Bacon Bacon owner Jim Angelus told the San Francisco Examiner that although he met with neighbors last year to discuss their concerns, the parties were unable to negotiate.
Neighbors say that they even offered to buy Angelus a new air filter to alleviate the smell, but he declined, the Examiner reported.
Meanwhile, Bacon Bacon fans have been inundating the restaurant's Facebook page with support, with many wondering how the smell of bacon could be possibly a bad thing.
There's been talk about bacon juju and bacon wars; even vegetarians have come out in support of bacon.
"Give us Bacon or Give Them Death," wrote Fred Harris.
Lucia Tallchief Mele wrote: "Hold ON! I'm one of Bacon Bacon's neighbors and I believe I speak for 99% of the neighborhood when I say: "Stay HERE". Don't let a coupla nasty nay-sayers or clueless bureaucrats deprive you of your livelihood! we will fight for you!"
Bacon Bacon — which was featured on Discovery's "United States of Bacon" as a "four wheel shrine to swine" — is determined not to give up without a fight.
Angelus has created a petition for support on his company's website, which has received more than 1,800 signatures so far.
"Heading into health department now to ask for an extension while lawyers and SF bureaucrats try to work this out," he wrote in a Facebook post Friday morning.
Calls to Angelus at his Bacon Bacon restaurant were not immediately returned. A restaurant employee said he was busy giving interviews to the press.

Source:http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/bacon-restaurant-forced-to-close-after-complaints-about-smell