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